5
Abortive attempts to save a SOUL and more infernal manifestations of the Demon Lover.
Now was her physical body in sore plight, for she was bound in irons heavier than a strong man might bear. The jailors feared her, and, although an eye was forever at the chink, they did as little for her as might be. The Court permitted only these to go to her: her jailors; the two ministers of God, labouring in Salem, and Mr. Increase Mather whose mind was at that time big with a demonology. He wished to study and examine her. It was three weeks before Mr. Zelley got a permit from Boston to visit her. He guessed by the cold, tardy manner in which his request was answered that he himself had fallen into ill-repute. This was true. His people thought him a warlock and feared and hated him.
When twenty years later, in the days of the great witch-hunting and hanging in Salem, Mr. Zelley himself came to be tried, John Ackes was commanded to tell the Court (if he could remember) of what it was the witch and the warlock had talked through those long hours they had sat side by side upon the witch’s straw bed. He testified (swearing to his truth upon the Bible) that they talked but little. Zelley’s head was forever in his hands. He did not see the witch-woman’s face—nor her eyes. He did not see how constantly she gaped at empty corners; how she smiled and nodded into space; how sometimes she would close her eyes and raise her mouth for the empty air to kiss. All this she did behind Mr. Zelley’s back. They asked John Ackes if Mr. Zelley made no attempt to save the woman’s soul. No, he only sat. Sometimes he talked a little to Doll and sometimes he talked to one whom he designated as ‘god.’ But he did not really pray at all—not as Mr. Mather prayed—him you could hear through stone walls and up and down the street. The crowd would gather outside the jail when Mr. Mather prayed. He was a most fearful and righteous suppliant before the Throne of God. After his prayers the wonder was no lightning came to destroy the young witch where she sat—grimacing and leering at spectres. When one considered Mr. Mather, one could not say that Zelley prayed at all.
However, it was true that Zelley would sometimes seem to beg Doll Bilby to turn to God before it was too late. She would always explain to him that she wanted no other God than Lucifer and no Heaven, for where her parents were and her foster father and her dear husband—there with them was her Paradise, not in Heaven with the cold angels singing psalms forever to an angry and awful God; not in Heaven where doubtless Hannah Bilby would be found and all her cruel neighbours—no, no, a thousand times no. Hell was her true home—her Paradise.
Sometimes he would read to her from a stout big book, and John Ackes swore he thought it was a Bible, although it was possible that the book was a book of magic—perhaps this was even probable. Still the stories he read to her from this book sounded to him like Bible stories. What would he read to her? He read to her of Mary of Magdala, how she laid her head upon our Saviour’s feet and wiped them with her hair. He read to her the holy promises of John. It was evident, said John Ackes, that Zelley was not for a long time conscious of the fiend which lurked forever in the witch’s cell.
Towards the end no one but Mr. Zelley dared go to her dungeon. They were all afraid. It was remembered and marked against him that, where other and more godly men felt fear, he felt no fear. At last even Mr. Zelley knew that he and the witch were never alone. There was another and more awful presence about.
Now he would look up quickly from his reading and catch her eyes as they sought those of some one or something close behind his own shoulder. When their eyes met, she would smile so softly and happily he knew that the invisible presence must be that of the one she loved. Mr. Zelley confessed that this consciousness of a third and unseen party in the cell sadly upset and confused him. He sweated, he could not read. One afternoon she gave him such close attention he decided that the fiend had left, so he closed his book and asked her abruptly if her demon lover had come back again. She was surprised that he asked this question. ‘Of course he is back,’ she said. ‘Now he will not leave me until the end.’ It was not he, she said, whom the Thumb twins saw at the trial, and Doll again wickedly said that perhaps that creature had been an angel. ‘My fiend never came near me as I stood all day on trial. Now he has sworn to stay with me. If I go to Gallows Hill, he will go with me. If I die here first, he will hold my hands.’
Zelley asked her if she could really see this demon. For instance, was he at that very moment in the room? Oh, yes. He sat yonder by the cupboard. His head, she said, rested upon his bosom. ‘Last night I had a fearful fit of terror. I thought I could not face the gallows. He held me in his arms and sang to me until sunrise. Now he sleeps.’
‘Is he now in seaman’s clothes and has he the likeness of proper man?’ (Mr. Zelley whispered. He feared to wake the demon.)
‘No. He has returned in shape of true fiend. For he is horned, naked, scaly, black. His feet are cloven. He has vast leathery bat-pinions. His tail is long and spiked.’
‘How, then, can you know that this is your own fiend and not another one?’
‘By his eyes and by his loving voice. These things have not changed.’
‘How is it he returned to you? In what manner did he make himself manifest?’
‘You recall that day after the trial when you came to me and let me know beyond a doubt that I must die? All the next day I felt him in the cell with me. Then little by little he took visible form. At first he was a vapour that seemed to rise between the flags of the dungeon floor, and then I could see the shadow of his great and most awful form—a transparent shadow through which one could look, even as one looks through smoke. But daily he gained more and more in body and he now is as hard and sturdy as mortal man. At first seeing horns, tail, and so fearsome a scaly black body, I cried out in my disappointment and despair. I, in my simplicity, had imagined he would always be to me as he had been—shaped, dressed, and coloured like comely, mortal man. He seemed monstrous to me—more likely to inspire fear than love. At last I could see his eyes and they were unchanged. And his voice (for, having gained complete actuality, he could speak) was the same. So I knew him as my own husband, and now I love him more in his present infernal majesty than I did in seaman’s form. This shape is fairer to me.’ (Thus twenty years later Mr. Zelley testified in court as to his conversation with Doll Bilby.)
On being pressed, Mr. Zelley confessed still further. He said he asked her why it was that no one—not even the jailors—dared go to her cell. Did they fear the spectral presence? She was amazed that he had heard no gossip. Surely the village must by now be buzzing with the tricks her demon had performed. Had he not heard what had befallen her peeping jailors? They used (to her unutterable torment and vexation) to watch her through a chink in the masonry. But the demon punished them by blowing into their eyes. This had given them the pink-eye. Surely he must have noticed that her jailors suffered from pink-eye? Now that she mentioned it he said he believed he had noticed it. And she was to tell him further. Why did the great Mr. Mather come no more? She clapped her hands, laughing and purring. Her demon had hated Mr. Mather so bitterly, and had so resented his long, loud prayers, that he had several times been on the point of strangling him. In his utter foolishness the man had dared to read the story of Tobit to her—how Sara was beloved of the fiend Asmodeus and how this fiend strangled her many husbands upon their marriage beds, but how at the last this fine fiend Asmodeus had been driven to farthest Egypt by the stench of a burning fish’s liver. This story the wicked witch claimed to be utterly false—it made no jot of difference to her that it was found in Holy Writ. She said it was a black lie that did much to minimize that dignity of Prince Asmodeus—who was a close friend to her own lover. She put up her hand and whispered to Mr. Zelley that, although her fiend had never told her his own true name, she had reason to suspect that he himself was none other than this same Asmodeus, for he was touchy beyond all reason for the dignity of the Prince and he had told her at some length how dull, tedious, and complaining a woman Sara had been, and how gladly her lover had surrendered her in the end to the young Jew. The burning fish’s liver had never driven him forth—he went as it pleased himself. The stench had almost expelled the bride from her bridal chamber, but it had had no effect upon the stalwart demon Prince.
Mr. Mather had insisted on reading this story thrice over to her, and on the last reading he had also endeavoured to burn the large liver of a cod-fish. Then her husband rushed at the fire. His tail stood up rigid in rage; he shook his horns like an angry bull; he rustled his vast pinions, and, as he snuffed out the fire that made the stench with his two horny hands, Mr. Mather looked up and of a sudden saw him there and was close to dying of terror. Doll begged the fiend again to assume invisibility and not to strangle the distinguished Divine. So Mr. Mather went away and never came again. But surely, surely Mr. Zelley had heard this thing spoken of? And how her demon had served the two Salem clergymen—the tricks he had put on them—surely these things were common gossip? No, of these things he had heard never a word. No one gossiped with him—now.
It was then at that moment he first came to know he was under suspicion. Doll knew this too. She told him how she had never heard that the Thumb twins were bewitched until the very day Captain Buzzey rode up and accused her of their bewitchment. She said she pitied Mr. Zelley and he said his life grew strange. Every one in all the world was far removed, and even God had turned His face away from him. He said (foolishly) that all his life he had felt that if he believed in witches, demons, etc., he could not believe in God; for that God Whom he worshipped would not tolerate such evil things. Yet now had he seen the proof that such things were true—and, if true, where, then, was that great and good God whom he had long worshipped? ‘My Doll,’ he said, ‘you have taken away my reason and my God—now I have nothing. I have not even one man I may call “friend.”’
She comforted him, not by words, but by putting her small hands (now thin as a bird’s claws) upon his bent head. She kissed his forehead. He got up and went away. He did not stay as he should have stayed with his flock in Cowan Corners. He slept at the Black Moon, for such was the bewitchment that Doll had set upon him he must see her again and that early upon the next day.