“Beauty is a witch
- MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
I will tear the core out of many yellow
pages of diffuse writing spiced with smug moral reflections.
Desire Michell had been no traditional
old hag, hideous and malevolent; no pallid, raving
epileptic to accuse herself in shrieking tales of
Black Men, and Sabbats, and harm done to neighbors’
cattle or crops. Her father was a clergyman who
brought his goods and his motherless daughter from
England to the Colonies, and settled in “ye Pequot
Marsh country.” There he found a congregation,
and they lived much respected. Their culture
appeared to be far beyond that of their few, hard-working
neighbors. Young Mistress Michell was reputed
learned in the use of simples, among other arts, and
to have been “of a beauty exceeding the custom
among godly women, to so great degree that sorcery
should have been suspected of her.”
However, sorcery was not suspected;
not even when her fame spread among near-dwelling
Indian tribes who gave her a name signifying Water
on which the Sun is Shining. Admiration was
her portion, then, with all the suitors the vicinity
held. But from fastidiousness or ambition she
refused every proposal made to her father for her.
She walked aloof and alone, until another sort of
wooer came to the gate of the minister’s house.
This man’s full name was not
given, apparently through the writer’s cautious
respect for place and influence. He was vaguely
described as goodly in appearance, of high family,
but not abundantly supplied with riches. However
he chanced to come to the obscure settlement was not
stated. He did come, saw Desire Michell, and fell
as abjectly prostrate before her as any youth who
never had left the village.
He pressed his courtship hard and
eagerly. At first he was welcome at the minister’s
house. But a day came when Master Michell forbade
him to cross that door and rumor whispered, scandalized,
that Sir Austin’s suit had not been honorable
to the maid.
Sir Austin sulked a week at the village
inn. Then he broke under the torment of not seeing
Desire Michell. Their betrothal was made public,
and he rode away to prepare his home for their marriage
in the spring.
Travel was slow in the winter, news
trickled slowly across snowbound distances. With
spring came no bridegroom; instead word arrived of
his affair with an heiress recently come to New York
from England. She was rich in gold and grants
of land from the Crown. Her husband would be a
man of weight and influence, it seemed.
Sir Austin had married her.
Desire Michell shut herself in her
father’s house. The clergyman did not live
many months after the humiliation. Alone, the
girl lived. “Student,” wrote Abimelech
Fetherstone, “of black and bitter arts.
Or as some say, having, like Bombastus de Hohenheim,
a devil’s bird enchained to do her will.”
In his distant home, Sir Austin sickened.
He burned with fever, anguish consumed him. Physicians
were called to the bedside of the rich man. They
could not diagnose his ailment or help him. He
screamed for water. When it was brought, his
throat locked and he could not swallow. He raved
of Desire Michell, beseeching her mercy. In his
times of sanity, he begged and commanded his wife
and servants to send for the girl. In her pardon
he saw his sole hope of life.
Finally, he was obeyed. Messengers
were sent to the village. They were not even
admitted to the house they sought, or to sight of Mistress
Michell.
“Your master came himself to
woo; let him come himself to plead.”
That was the answer they received
to carry back to the sick man.
Sir Austin heard, and submitted with
trembling hope. Writhing in the anguish wasting
him by day and night, he made the journey by coach
and litter to Desire Michell’s house. At
her door-sill he implored entrance and pity.
The door did not open.
It never opened for him. For
three days in succession he was borne to her threshold,
calling on her in his pain and fear. His servants
and physician clustered about staring at the house
which stood locked and blank of response. At
night fire-shine was seen from an upper room; some
declared they heard wild, melodious laughter.
On the third day Sir Austin died.
A stern-faced deputation of men went to the house
of the late clergymen. They found the door unlatched
and open to their entrance. In the upper room
they found Mistress Michell seated before her hearth
where a dying fire fell to embers, her hair “flowing
down in grate bewty.”
“What have I to do with Sir
Austin, or he with me?” she calmly asked the
men who gaped upon her. “How should I have
harmed him, who came not near him, as ye know?
Bury him, and leave me in peace.”
If she had been aged and ugly, she
might have been hung. Gossip ran rife through
the countryside. But indignation was strong against
the man who had jilted the local beauty, there existed
no proof of harm done, and the matter slept for a
time.
New matters came. A horror grew
up around the house. The girl was seen flitting
across the fields at dawn, a monstrous shadow following.
Her voice was heard from the room where she locked
herself alone, raised in unknown speech. Strange
lights moved in her windows in the deep night.
The old woman who had served in the house for years
was stricken with a palsy and was taken away mumbling
unintelligible things that iced the blood of superstitious
hearers.
There was a young man of the neighborhood
whose love for Mistress Michell had been long and
constant. One morning he was found dead on her
doorstep, his face fixed in drawn terror. Under
his hand four words were scrawled in the snow:
“Sara daughter of Ruel”
There were those who could finish
that quotation. Next Sabbath the new minister
took as his text: “Ye shall not suffer a
witch to live.” And he spoke of Sara the
daughter of Ruel, who was wed to ten bridegrooms, each
of whom was dead on the wedding eve; for she was beloved
by an evil spirit that suffered none to come to her.
Authority moved at last against Desire Michell.
But when the officers came to arrest her, she was
found dead in her favorite seat before the hearth.
“Fair and upright in her place,
scented with a perfume she herself distilled of her
learning in such matters; which was said to contain
a rare herb of Jerusalem called Lady’s Rose,
resembling spikenard, with vervain and cedar and secret
simples; in which she steeped her hair so that wherever
she abode were sweet odours. So did she escape
Justice, but shall not escape Hell’s Damnation
and Heaven’s casting out.”
I closed the book and laid it down.
Reading those dim, closely printed
pages had taken time. I was astonished to find
the window spaces gray with dawn, when I glanced that
way. The night was past. Neither from Desire
nor from the Thing without a name which had sent me
to this book could I find out what I was expected
to glean from the narration.
My enemy had made no conditions on
directing me to the book. It had asked no price,
uttered no menace. Why, then, had I so solemn
a certainty that a crisis in our affair had been reached.
I had come to an end; a corner had been turned.
I had opened a door that could not be closed.
How did I know this? Why?
Why was the fog against the windows
this morning so like the fog that shrouded the unearthly
sea opposite the Barrier?
By and by Cristina came downstairs
and busied herself in the kitchen. Bagheera,
who had slept beside my chair all night, rose and padded
out to the region of breakfast and saucers of milk.
Next, the voices of Phillida and Vere drifted from
above.
To have Phillida find me there in
her sewing-room, finishing an all-night vigil, involved
too many explanations. I did an unwise thing.
From the lowest shelf of the bookcase I gathered such
books as were readable by my knowledge, and carried
the armful up to my room. After a hot bath and
breakfast I would look over these companions of the
New England witch book.