The yellow eyes turned from her as she struggled with her unhallowed thoughts, and the thing was gone. Far away, mile after mile, a voice no bigger than a sparrow’s cried sadly to her, and in great agony of spirit, ‘Bilby’s Doll....’ She thought to run after the voice, to catch the naked soul in her hands. Of what avail? Gone already a thousand miles. In the littlest voice, no larger than voice of flea or worm, she heard once more her foster father cry to her, ‘Bilby’s Doll....’
She knew that, as there are certain forms and incantations for the destruction of life, so must there be others for the rekindling of it. What had Our Lord said before the tomb of Lazarus? Could she but remember the words she herself had said in church—perhaps by repeating them backwards she could countermand the curse.
She fell to the ground in an ague, and lay sobbing dryly, exhorting the powers of Hell. Twigs snapped in blackness about her. Feet padded in silence.
The cold of the night, the terror of her soul, the dearth of food, the sorrow of her heart struck her into a stupor from which she could not move. Through this stupor, in steady procession, and with much pomp and circumstance, a long parade of figures, fiends, witches, warlocks, imps, beasts, familiars, satyrs, and even the beautiful chaste Diana herself, moved in fleshly form: a wicked, most fantastic procession. Goblins were there with faces of cats and owls, salamanders but lately crawled from fire. Basilisks were there, serpents, vampires with bats’ wings and horrid mouths swollen with blood. The pretty pink bodies of innocent babes were there, who had died unbaptized, and therefore must stand as servants in the halls of Hell, and with them were pucks and pugs.
After them rolled through the forest a great orange cloud—like an old and tarnished fire—no longer heat-giving. At first her eye could make nothing of it. Then she saw projecting through the dun vapours were naked legs and arms, bits of bodies, and drawn and skull-like heads with tortured eyes. These were they the French burned at Mont Hoël in Brittany. Although she might not know them, her parents were among them. A group came slowly after these, shrouded and shuffling through the woods. In the midst of these she saw Goody Greene. This woman, alone of all the passers-by, turned and looked towards Doll. But her eyes were blind.
Last of all came Ahab shaking his black head, a cowslip hanging from his blue lips. She would sleep and wake, but the procession would still be passing by, and every so often Ahab would pass by. The woods were humming-full with an infinity of unearthly things. There was continuous lovely singing—or rather a rhythmic humming that rose and fell and rose again.
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.