“Did you?”
“I didn’t know I did. I thought I came here to be in the country, and to escape being an aunt.”
“Titus came here to write a book on Fuseli, and to enjoy himself.”
“Titus! I can’t believe you wanted him.”
“But you believe I wanted you.”
Rather taken aback she yet answered the Devil honestly.
“Yes! I do believe you wanted me. Though really I don’t know why you should.”
A slightly malevolent smile crossed the Devil’s face. For some reason or other her modesty seemed to have nettled him.
“Some people would say that you had flung yourself at my head.”
“Other people,” she retorted, “would say that you had been going about seeking to devour me.”
“Exactly. I even roared that night. But you were asleep while I roared. Only the hills heard me triumphing over my spoil.”
Laura said: “I wish I could really believe that.”
“I wish you could, too,” he answered affably; “you would feel so comfortable and important. But you won’t, although it is much more probable than you might suppose.”
Laura stretched herself out on the turf and pillowed her head on her arm.
“Nothing could feel more comfortable than I do, now that Titus is gone,” she said. “And as for importance, I never wish to feel important again. I had enough of that when I was an aunt.”
“Well, you’re a witch now.”
“Yes. … I really am, aren’t I?”
“Irrevocably.”
His voice was so perfectly grave that she began to suspect him of concealing some amusement. When but a moment before he had jested she had thought a deeper meaning lay beneath his words, she almost believed that his voice had roared over her in the thunder. If he had spoken without feigning then, she had not heard him; for he had stopped her ears with a sleep.
“Why do you sigh?” he asked.
“Did I sigh? I’m puzzled, that’s all. You see, although I’m a witch, and although you sitting here beside me tell me so, I can’t really appreciate it, take it in. It all seems perfectly natural.”
“That is because you are in my power. No servant of mine can feel remorse, or doubt, or surprise. You may be quite easy, Laura: you will never escape me, for you can never wish to.”
“Yes, I can quite well believe that; I’m sure I shall never wish to escape you. But you are a mysterious Master.”
“You seem to me rather an exacting servant. I have shaped myself like a jobbing gardener, I am sitting on the grass beside you (I’ll have one of your apples if I may. They are a fruit I am particularly fond of), I am doing everything in my power to be agreeable and reassuring … What more do you want?”
“That is exactly what I complain of. You are too lifelike to be natural; why, it might be Goethe’s Conversations with Eckermann. No! if I am really a witch, treat me as such. Satisfy my curiosity. Tell me about yourself.”
“Tell me first what you think,” he answered.
“I think”—she began cautiously (while he hid his cards it would not do to show all hers)—“I think you are a kind of black knight, wandering about and succouring decayed gentlewomen.”
“There are warlocks too, remember.”
“I can’t take warlocks so seriously, not as a class. It is we witches who count. We have more need of you. Women have such vivid imaginations, and lead such dull lives. Their pleasure in life is so soon over; they are so dependent upon others, and their dependence so soon becomes a nuisance. Do you understand?”
He was silent. She continued, slowly, knitting her brows in the effort to make clear to herself and him the thought that was in her mind:
“It’s like this. When I think of witches, I seem to see all over England, all over Europe, women living and growing old, as common as blackberries, and as unregarded. I see them, wives and sisters of respectable men, chapel members, and blacksmiths, and small farmers, and Puritans. In places like Bedfordshire, the sort of country one sees from the train. You know. Well, there they were, there they are, child-rearing, housekeeping, hanging washed dishcloths on currant bushes; and for diversion each other’s silly conversation, and listening to men talking together in the way that men talk and women listen. Quite different to the way women talk, and men listen, if they listen at all. And all the time being thrust further down into dullness when the one thing all women hate is to be thought dull. And on Sunday they put on plain stuff gowns and starched white coverings on their heads and necks—the Puritan ones did—and walked across the fields to chapel, and listened to the sermon. Sin and Grace, and God and the—” (she stopped herself just in time), “and St. Paul. All men’s things, like politics, or mathematics. Nothing for them except subjection and plaiting their hair. And on the way back they listened to more talk. Talk about the sermon, or war, or cockfighting; and when they got back, there were the potatoes to be cooked for dinner. It sounds very petty to complain about, but I tell you, that sort of thing settles down on one like a fine dust, and by and by the dust is age, settling down. Settling down! You never die, do you? No doubt that’s far worse, but there is a dreadful kind of dreary immortality about being settled down on by one day after another. And they think how they were young once, and they see new young women, just like what they were, and yet as surprising as if it had never happened before, like trees in spring. But they are like trees towards the end of summer, heavy and dusty, and nobody finds their leaves surprising, or notices them till they fall off. If they could be passive and unnoticed, it wouldn’t matter. But they must be active, and still not noticed. Doing, doing, doing, till mere habit scolds at them like a housewife, and
