And presently he was calmer; quite quiet. He knelt, his arms around her, looking over toward the bookcase with wide eyes, realizing the truth. The breakdown — what he had been afraid of — it had come. This was it; all this. Everything. He had spent the afternoon unconsciously, an automaton, while his consciousness had been busy... here. The whole story — the precautions, the details, the vivid enactment — he could see it all now, the fantastic, pettifogging logic of the disordered mind. And the imagination — what he had done to Vera. Good God, if that was delusion, what was there to hold onto in life?
Steady — that was the way to go off again. He held on tight to Muriel for a minute; then, calmer, he took another look at the floor, grimacing oddly.
“Do you know,” he blurted, “I thought I’d—” And then he broke off short. He’d have enough troubles without that. Least said, eh?
With gradually narrowing eyes, he listened to all the soothing things Muriel was saying over the top of his head. She’d been noticing how tired he was getting, how overdone. He needed a change. A nice rest, and a change. They’d go off together, down to the sea—
“That knife,” he exclaimed suddenly, looking up at her. “I haven’t had that for years. I remember now. I gave it away, years ago.”
“Yes, darling. Of course you did. Don’t worry about it any more,” and she was on again, how all he needed was a rest. Then he realized he needn’t trouble to guard his tongue. Anything he said she would attribute to his breakdown. Poor little Muriel! She was frightened, badly frightened, and putting a splendidly brave face on it.
He got up and sat beside her on the sofa, putting his arms around her, telling her not to be frightened.
The Witch’s Vengeance
by W. B. Seabrook
The quarrel between Mère Tirelou and my young friend Philippe Ardet grew out of the fact that he had fallen in love with Maguelonne, the old woman’s granddaughter.
Although Maguelonne was past nineteen, by far the prettiest girl in the village, she had no suitors among the local youths, for the native peasants of Les Baux, this savage mountain hamlet in the south of France which I had been visiting at intervals for years, were steeped in superstition and believed that old Mère Tirelou was a sorcière, a sort of witch.
Maguelonne, orphaned by the war, lived alone with the old woman in an ancient tumble-down stone mas, somewhat isolated from the village proper, among the ruins of the seigniorial castle close above it, and gossip whispered that Mere Tirelou had involved the girl, willingly or unwillingly, in her dark practices. They were not persecuted or hated — in fact, the peasants and shepherds of Les Baux and the surrounding mountainside sometimes consulted Mere Tirelou in certain emergencies — hut save for such special consultations, paid for usually with a rabbit, a jug of wine or oil, the old beldam and her granddaughter “apprentice,” if such she really was, were generally avoided if not actually disliked and feared.
Philippe, however, who considered himself to be now of the great world — he had been to technical school in Marseilles and was working in an airplane plant at Toulon — regarded all this local superstition as stuff and nonsense. He had come up vacationing from Toulon on his motor cycle. We had known each other at Les Baux the previous summer. He and I were now staying at the same little hotel, the Hotel Rene, perched on the edge of the cliff, run by Philippe’s aunt, Madame Plomb, and her husband Martin. And Philippe, as I have said, had fallen in love with Maguelonne.
This was the situation, briefly outlined, when the strange series of events began which first involved me only as a chance onlooker, but finally as an active participant.
They began one hot mid-afternoon when I lay reading in my room, which was in an angle of the wall with windows overlooking the valley and a side window immediately above the medieval rampart gate from which the road serpentined downward.
Close beneath this window, all at once, I heard and recognized Mere Tirelou’s querulous croaking voice raised angrily, and Philippe’s in reply, half amiable, half derisive.
It was hazard rather than eavesdropping, impossible not to hear them, and then after some muttering the old woman raised her voice again, but this time in such a curious, unnatural tone that I got up to see what was occurring.
They were standing in the sunshine just beneath the window, he tall, blondish, ruddy, tousle-haired, bare-headed, in knickers, and sport shirt; she gray, bent and hawk-like — bat-like, rather, in her Arlèsienne coiffe and cloak, with arms outstretched barring his path. And she was intoning a weird, singsong doggerel, at the same time weaving in the air with her claw-like hands:
She was now no longer barring Philippe’s path but standing aside, inviting him to pass, so that her back was turned to me, while Philippe stood so that I could see his face and the expressions which flitted over it — first an interested, incredulous, surprised attention as if he couldn’t believe his own ears, then a good-humored but derisive and defiant grin as the old woman repeated her doggerel.
“No, no, Mere Tirelou,” he said laughing. “You can’t scare me off with stuff like that. Better get a broomstick if you want to drive me away. Save your cobwebs and incantations for Bléo and the shepherds.”
So with a defiant, gay salute and an au revoir he was off down the road whistling, while the old woman screamed after him, “Down, down, down you go, but not up, my pretty boy; not up, not up, not up!”
I watched Philippe descending the winding road into the valley while Mere Tirelou, leaning over the parapet, watched him too, until he became tiny far below and disappeared behind the orchard wall which skirts the road by the pavilion of the Reine-Jeanne. Then she picked up her stick, called Bléo her dog, and hobbled in through the gate.
“So,” thought I, “that old woman really believes herself a witch, and probably thinks she has put an effective curse on Philippe!”
But it didn’t occur to me to be in the least disturbed. I knew, or thought I knew, a good deal about witchcraft technically. I believed it all reduced finally to suggestion and auto-suggestion. I had known it to produce tangible results, but only in cases when the victim himself (usually among primitives or savages) was deeply superstitious and consequently amenable to fear. I felt absolutely sure that complete, hard-headed, skeptical disbelief, derision, laughter, constituted a stronger “counter-magic” than any amount of exorcism and holy water, and therefore it did not occur to me for an instant that Philippe could be in the slightest danger.
Holding these convictions, and therefore regarding the safe return of Philippe as a foregone conclusion, I thought little more of the matter that afternoon; finished my reading, dined early, strolled to the top of the cliff to watch the sunset, and went early to bed.
Usually after ten o’clock at night the whole village of Les Baux, including the interior of the Hôtel René, is sound asleep and silent as the grave. It was the noise of hurrying footsteps clattering along the stone floor of the hotel corridor which awoke me late in the night, but at the same time I heard lowered voices in the road beneath my window, saw lights flashing, heard sabots clacking along the cobbled street.