Bella Webb

Bella Webb is the cook at the Pale Horse and one of the three women whom Thyrza Grey presents as a team with distinct powers. Her role moves from unsettling presence at the house to practical participation in a ritual: she attends to white cockerels, marks out the ceremonial space, and chants while Thyrza prepares an electrical device. The contrast between the uncanny reputation attached to Bella and the observable tasks she performs keeps her significance poised between occult suggestion and staged procedure.

Identity and Reputation

Mrs Dane Calthrop identifies Bella as the household’s cook and describes her as a witch from the village of Little Dunning, where she had acquired a reputation for witchcraft. According to Mrs Dane Calthrop, this reputation ran in the family: Bella’s mother was also regarded as a witch. The account presents this as local history and inherited standing, not as independently verified proof of supernatural ability. Mrs Dane Calthrop delivers it matter-of-factly, giving the claim an everyday tone that contrasts with its extraordinary content.

Thyrza Grey later includes Bella in her account of the group’s powers. She describes Sybil Stamfordis as an exceptional medium and says that Bella has powers of her own, though in a different degree. Thyrza’s language makes the three women’s collaboration central: Bella is not merely a cook who happens to live at the house, but a member of a team whose work Thyrza frames as contact with uncanny forces. The distinction matters, since Bella’s role is presented through both other people’s claims and her own visible actions, while the nature of the claimed power remains uncertain.

Mark Easterbrook’s First Impressions

During Mark Easterbrook’s visit, Bella enters the former inn’s sitting room carrying a silver teapot. She wears a plain dark-green overall, and her face initially strikes him as crude and unsettling. As the visit proceeds, however, Mark questions his own suspicion, reflecting that the converted inn and its three middle-aged women seem far less ominous than he had imagined. Bella’s ordinary service at tea briefly unsettles the atmosphere built around the house’s reputation.

That impression changes when Bella leaves the room. She has looked at no one, but just before going out she raises her eyes and gives Mark a quick glance. He reads it as malicious and as carrying an oddly intimate knowledge of his thoughts, though he cannot explain what in the look produces that effect. Thyrza notices his reaction and acknowledges that Bella can be disconcerting. The moment does not establish that Bella can read minds; instead, it shows how her small, controlled gesture reactivates Mark’s suspicion after the domestic scene had softened it.

Bella’s Place in the Group

Bella’s connection to the white cockerels gives her a defined practical responsibility within the group. When Mark mentions them, Bella says they are useful, and Thyrza identifies them as Bella’s province. The brief exchange associates Bella with the birds without explaining their purpose. It also makes her contribution distinct from Sybil’s mediumship and Thyrza’s direction of the group: Bella is linked to particular materials and tasks rather than only to a general claim of occult power.

That association becomes more concrete in the barn. On a dark, overcast night, Mark follows Thyrza from the house, which has no entrance directly into the converted barn. Inside, the space has been arranged for the ritual: a raised divan bears a purple cloth marked with signs, and a brazier and copper basin stand nearby. Thyrza’s manner has become controlled and workmanlike; she puts on a long protective garment and mesh-like gloves, explaining that precautions are necessary. The ceremonial setting therefore combines symbolic furnishings with signs of practical preparation.

Actions in the Ritual

Thyrza tells Mark that ritual can affect the human spirit, even when an observer dismisses its words and forms as nonsense. As she explains the possible force of repeated, time-sanctioned practices, Bella leaves the room and returns carrying a live white cockerel. She kneels and draws signs in chalk around the brazier and basin, then places the bird with its beak at the curved line. It remains motionless there, as Bella continues drawing and chanting in words Mark cannot understand.

Bella’s work gives the ritual its most visible sequence of actions: she brings the bird, marks the floor, positions it, and sustains the chant. Mark observes her swaying as the performance intensifies, but the scene does not confirm whether the effect is supernatural, psychological, or produced by some other means. Thyrza then announces that they are ready and approaches what Mark had taken for a radio cabinet. It opens to reveal a complicated electrical contrivance, which she wheels near the divan and adjusts. Bella’s ceremonial activity and Thyrza’s machine thus occupy the same procedure, leaving the ritual suspended between occult display and technology.

Narrative Significance

Bella’s characterization depends on the distance between reputation, impression, and action. Mrs Dane Calthrop supplies the inherited village story; Thyrza assigns Bella a place in a group with supposed powers; Mark’s glance-based encounter makes her seem privately perceptive; and the ritual shows her performing specific, observable work. Each layer strengthens her association with the uncanny without settling the truth of the supernatural explanation.

The white cockerels are the clearest recurring marker of Bella’s function. At first they are only described as useful and as her responsibility; at the barn, one becomes part of the ritual’s arrangement. The shift turns a cryptic detail into a visible practice, but does not by itself explain what the birds accomplish. Bella’s narrative importance lies in this controlled ambiguity: she helps make the Pale Horse’s occult atmosphere tangible while the scene also places that atmosphere beside precautionary clothing and an electrical device.