6
With daylight the tides of Hell recede. Doll wakes but to a more determined Evil.
At last she awoke to see, not the procession of Hell, but bright day. The humming, however, still continued in her head, rising and falling, but not going away. She was frozen cold to her marrow. Now the loss of her foster father had become a tiny thing infinitely far away and long, long ago. All her previous existence seemed removed from her as if again a barrier had come down upon her, shutting one part of her life from the next. So, although she thought sadly of the kind man’s death, it already seemed one with the destruction of her parents—that is, a thing which has happened long back in childhood.
She recalled to herself the story of a girl who had slept in a fairy-wood for a hundred years, and she looked fearfully at her hands, expecting them to be gnarled with a century. But they were as they always had been. Her hair about her shoulders was black. She thought that it was possible (and at that time it even seemed most probable) that, although her body might have retained its youthful form, a great flight of time had passed. She would go back to Cowan Corners to find the dark forest had swallowed it. There would be cellar holes lost in thickets, where Boston, Salem, Cowan Corners, Ipswich, etc., had stood. She felt herself alone upon a whole continent. Her body had grown so light and so unreal, she scarce could stand, nor was she wholly convinced of her own reality until she observed she still could cast a shadow.
Doll Bilby had always longed for the comforts of religion, so it was natural that she, having as she believed just witnessed a manifestation of her ‘god,’ should now reverently stand and give thanks. She called upon her Father in Hell, thanking him that he had made manifest to her visible proof of his greatness. She called upon her father and mother, blessed them in the great name of Hell, and promised to serve them. She called upon all that vast host of evil things, blessed them, and promised to serve them.
So she floated lightly forth, intent to see the place where Cowan Corners once had stood. Voices called her through the wood, and these she knew were true voices of men, not the eerie cries of ghosts or demons. She answered, ‘Here am I.’
Four men came to her, nor was one of them a minute older than he had seemed last Sabbath at Meeting. Mr. Zelley cried out in pity, for her five days of despair, suffering, and even the astounding pleasures of the night before, had marked the face of Doll Bilby, altering its pretty childish shape.
‘My child,’ he said, ‘you need not have run away. There is no reason to believe Mr. Bilby’s death due to anything but nature. Such a congestion of the lights is not uncommon and often results in death. Doll, as he lay dying, we questioned him if he was worked upon by any witchcraft, and he cried in a loud voice, “I die spirit free.”’
Doll wept with her hands over her face. None saw that she shed no tears. But she knew that the springs of her tears had dried in the night. Mr. Zelley kissed her gently upon the forehead, and with that kiss he entered into pact with her, for after that he cherished her and became at last her confidant in all things, even in all evil things. And he had once been a minister of God.
Mr. Zelley walked by her side. The three other men looked at her doubtfully, thinking each to himself, ‘This young woman is a murderess and a witch.’ They soon outdistanced the minister and the woman, so it was he alone who took her back to her own home.
He told her that from now on, for a little space of time, life would be hard for her. She must live peaceably in the house with Hannah (there was no other place for her to go). She must, by a godly, upright, and virtuous life, and by the goodness of her conversation and dignity of her demeanour, give the lie (he said) to all those who would with tedious rustic simplicity believe her a witch. Both he and Mr. Kleaver knew Mr. Bilby died by nature and not by art. She was, moreover, in all things to trust him. He would clear her name (he said). He had power among these people (he hoped). She was to be of good heart, and the Lord God would be with her. Also he promised to come to her often, praying with her, and strengthening her.
So he took her to her door. In the yard they saw the two indentured servants nailing together a wooden coffin. A group of serious men stood, watching them, and discussed the mutabilities of life, etc. Now and again one helped himself at the barrel of cider that had been rolled out to accommodate their thirst (for thirst is like to rise from serious discourse and ponderous thought).
Mr. Zelley took her within the house. The ovens were fired and pots boiled on the hearth. There was the leg of a great ox on a spit over the coals. The little turnspit dog, which ordinarily served at the tavern, had been brought over to serve for the sad yet pleasing occasion. He turned the spit, as he had been trained to do. His eyes were red and rheumy. The hair was burned away from his hind quarters, and they were red and scorched. Doll remembered how often her foster father at the tavern had given scraps of food to this same miserable small dog, and how he called it ‘Old Father Time’ even when it was a pup, for it had always seemed bent, wizen, and full of many cares. She turned away her head.
The house was full of neighbour women who had come to help prepare the funeral meats. Doll entered. All found reason they must go to the milk-house, the cellar, the barn, the pantry, or to the best room where the corpse lay and the widow sat in black. Doll and Mr. Zelley were left alone except for a squat and horrid form, who stood its own and feared no woman nor man nor witch. This was the form of Goochey, she who had the laying-out of the dead. She had a face and voice like a man’s. Indeed many believed that she was a man who, perhaps having committed offence in the Old World, had fled, thus disguised, to the New. She came from the Welsh borders, and would never touch a corpse unless she had first set upon her hands ten iron rings—one to each finger; for she feared that, without this protection, the spirit of the corpse might enter her veins and thus havoc her body.
When Doll saw this dwarfish man-woman standing in the fire-room, fitting iron rings to her fingers, she shrank from her in horror. Goody Goochey muttered at her, and Mr. Zelley was distressed because he believed she was calling the distrait young woman a witch. However, such was the hoarseness of Goochey’s voice and such was the coarseness of her nature, he could not be sure. She might have been calling her another, no more flattering, but surely less dangerous, epithet. Mr. Zelley sincerely hoped so, for he was far more concerned with the reputation of Doll than he was with the good or bad language of Goochey.