When we will beWhere we would be,When we shall beWhat we should be,Things that are notNow, nor could be,Then shall be—eeOur own!
When we will beWhere we would be,When we shall beWhat we should be,Things that are notNow, nor could be,Then shall be—eeOur own!
While we remained standing, Pentecost raised his hands in benediction. And so to dinner.
* * * * * * *
Breaking of Bread, though the principal service, was only one of five each Lord's Day at the Room, all of which I attended regularly before I was seven. There was but an hour at home for dinner ere I set forth for Lord's Day School at half past one, which lasted for an hour and was followed immediately by the Young Persons' Prayer-Meeting. I got home for tea, after which we all sallied forth to the Gospel Address for Unbelievers, usually delivered by Brother Browning, two hours long and dreary beyond belief, in a ghostlyatmosphere of guttering candle-light. This was followed by another Prayer-Meeting, followed again, at least in the summer months, by the Street Testimony, when we all repaired to the Strand, and gathered together a mixed circle of friends and curious and scoffers—like the Salvation Army in the next generation. Even this was not the end; for at home there was Reading and prayers, just as on week-days. If I were more deadly-tired than usual after that awful Sunday, Aunt Jael would spin the prayer out and choose a specially long chapter. Most Sundays I went to bed half sick with fatigue, my head aching, hardly able to undress.
Smiling was forbidden, and I had little reason to break the rule. Tears, however, were allowed, and I shed them in plenty.
* * * * * * *
If Breaking of Bread was not our only Meeting, nor was our Room the only Meeting in the town. I knew of four others. First, the Grosvenor Street Branch Meeting, offspring of ours, in the special care of Brother Quappleworthy, who preached there on Sunday evenings. Salvation always derided my Grandmother and Aunt for calling it Grow-vner Street. "I'm no scholard," she said, "but tidden common-sense to mispernounce like that. Gross-veener 'tis, and Gross-veener ollers 'twill be!"
Second, there was the Close, Exclusive or Darbyite Meeting, ruled over by one Mr. Nicodemus Shufflebottom, a giant-tall man with a flat white face, who reminded me of a walking tombstone. The Exclusives or Darbyites regarded us, I suppose, much as we regarded the rest of Christendom; as walkers in darkness. We regarded them as wandering sheep, foolish perhaps, rather than sinful. "Those brethren," Mr. Pentecost described them, "whose consciences lead them to refuse my fellowship and to deprive me of theirs." I never went to their Tawborough Meeting while I was a child.
Third, there was Brother Obadiah Tizzard's Upper Room for Celibate Saints, a kind of loft in which half-a-dozen old maids and two or three bachelors met together for meditation and breaking of bread. All were singular as all were single. Their service was one of silent hymnless worship interspersed by personal quarrels; silence broken bybackchat. The last word as well as the first was with Salvation. Glory did duty for Brother Lard; less vulgar if more incessant. All were sustained by the conviction of their unique fidelity to scripture. "We break bread in an upper room," said Glory to my Grandmother time and again on Tuesday afternoons, "as did Jesus with the Twelve. We are poor an' 'umble: an' so was Jesus. We are not wed, an' no more was Jesus. We shall go to heaven pure: an' so did Jesus."
Fourth, there was Ebenezer. The name was applied indifferently to the meeting-room itself or to the one gentleman who attended it. He was the Meeting, the whole Meeting, and nothing but the Meeting. He sat on a bench for silent prayer all alone by himself, got up and read the Word aloud to himself, mounted on a little dais and lengthily harangued himself, handed round the bread and wine to himself, and (for all I know) took the collection from and appropriated it to himself. Ebenezer had once belonged to our Meeting, but in some occult way we had displeased him, and he left us for Mr. Nicodemus Shufflebottom, leaving him also in turn for the straiter ways of Brother Obadiah Tizzard. Him even too he left finally, to worship God in his own way all alone. I doubt if he was really mad: odd only, and nearer to Heaven than Hanwell. His real name, if he had one, I never knew.
* * * * * * *
Perhaps I have said too much of the Meeting; for though the one great piece of the whole outer world I saw during many years, it was never more than that: something I saw. I was neverofit, as of Eight Bear Lawn. It never helped to fashion my child's life or longings, nor touched at any time theinsidelife I led: the real Mary.
One other thing stands clearly apart in my memory as taking place that first Lord's Day.
Alone together at my bedside my Grandmother confirmed my dedication to the Lord's service. She told me of her vision, renewed that day as she had drunk the sacred wine, that I should serve Him as a Missionary in the foreign field with glory and honour. She told me of the trials and tribulations I should have to face; but that if a faithful steward, I should find my reward in heaven. Then she read aloud my favourite seventh Chapter of Revelation. When she came tothe fourteenth verse,These are they which came out of great tribulation, I could keep silence no longer. I cried to her to stop. Words had already a magical effect on me, and could throw me into ecstasy. All through my childhood "tribulation" was big magic. Now it threw me into a trance of disordered emotion and delight.
"O Grandmother," I cried, "I will! I will! I will serve Jesus for ever! I am longing to go through tribulation, through lovely lovely tribulation!"
I broke into crying and laughing. I hungered to suffer, to embrace, kiss, adore, go mad, abase myself, throw myself on the floor before her feet, love, hold, possess, be possessed, mingle.... Why could she not put her arms around me, seize me, comfort me, crush me?
For one imperceptible moment my child's soulunderstood. The moment passed; too swift to be retained, even remembered.
Had I been dreaming? What was it all?... Yes, I had wanted something, something that Grandmother could not give, could not take.
"You're overwrought and tired, my dear," she was saying. "What you want is a good sleep."
Next morning Grandmother and I sallied forth. It was a bright spring day, with a high wind blowing. We went down Bear Street and along Boutport Street to where it joins the High Street; and just beyond, on the far side of the road, saw the old ivy-coloured house whose door was to be my portal of worldly understanding.
My future instructresses, the Misses Glory and Salvation Clinker, were our only regular visitors at Bear Lawn. They were third cousins of a sort, though a social grade or two lower than ourselves, I apprehended,—more Devonshirey, "commoner" than we. Tuesday after Tuesday they came to our house for a long-established weekly afternoon of tea and godly discoursing. Glory was a tall, thin, bony old woman, with a bleary far-away stare. She wore a faded black serge dress, whereon the only ornaments were dribble-marks in front, which spread fan-wise from her chin to her waist; and a tiny black bonnet, tied round her chin sometimes by a ribbon, oftener by a piece of string, at one whimsical period by a strip of carefully-prepared bacon-rind. She spoke little, chiefly of Death and the New Jerusalem, though a perpetual clicking noise—represented most nearly by er-er-er, and variously explained—always kept you aware of her presence. "Life," ran her favourite aphorism, "is but one long prercession o' deathbeds." She was quite mad, very gentle, wrapped in gloom, and beatifically happy. Er-er-er-er was unbroken and continuous. You could have used her for a metronome.
Salvation was a saner, a coarser type: a noisy, aggressive woman, whose chief subject of conversation was herself; a pious shrew with a big appetite and a nagging tongue. She always ate an enormous tea, though Aunt Jael, of whom alone in the world she was frightened, would sometimes keep her hunger roughly in check. Glory, on the other hand, always brought special provisions of her own, and at tea-time made her own exclusive preparations. First she wentinto the far corner, where she had deposited a net-bag full of parcels. From this she abstracted a saucepan, a little spirit-lamp, a box of rusks shaped like half moons, a bottle of goat's milk, a porringer and a great wooden spoon. She put the lamp on the floor, lighted it, boiled the milk in the little saucepan, threw in six or eight of the rusks and stirred with the wooden spoon until she produced a steaming mush. She didn't eat this, nor yet did she drink it; neither word describes the fearful and wonderful fashion in which she imbibed, absorbed, inhaled, appropriated it. Of every spoonful she managed to acquire perhaps a quarter; the other three-quarters strolled gently down her chin. As she was short-sighted, and as when she ate she ignored her food and looked steadily ahead at the glories of the New Jerusalem, she often missed the spoon altogether. The noise she made was notable. Hence Aunt Jael always refused to allow her to eat at our table, and consigned her to "Glory's corner."
Though I saw the Clinkers in our house Tuesday after Tuesday, I had never yet beheld them in their own. My eyes fastened on the brass door plate:
The Misses ClinkerELEMENTARY EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTFor the Daughtersof Gentlemen.
The top line was in elegant copy-book writing.
"Look, Grandmother," I cried, "Misses is spelt wrong. Why do they put M-i-f-s-e-s? It's silly." I resented the absurd "s". My faith in the infallibility of the twin Gamaliels at whose feet I was to sit was dashed on their very doorstep. Could the blind lead the blind?
"Why, 'tis often written that way," rejoined my Grandmother, "'tis an old way of writing a double S. You've plenty to learn, you see."
If the first line was offensive to common-sense, the remainder of the notice challenged mere truth. Elementary youcould not gainsay, but Educational Establishment for a description of that frowsy den and those two ignorant old maids was florid rather than faithful, while Gentlemen as a term to connote the male parents of the clientèle was—even in the most dim and democratic sense of that unpopular word—just false. Finally, there were sons as well as daughters: some three or four of the fifteen pupils who comprised the school.
Salvation opened the door, grinning an aggressive welcome, but we were officially received by Glory. "Welcome! Welcome to this place!" she cried impressively. I saw that the sisters' rôles were here reversed. Glory was as unkempt as ever, the "black" serge she wore shades greener than her Tuesday afternoon one, and quite four inches higher one side than the other. As next-worldly and bleary-eyed as in our house, her part here was the part of a Principal: Principal of an Educational Establishment for the Daughters (yea and Sons) of Gentlemen. Salvation, screech she never so loudly, was in this schoolroom but second fiddle.
* * * * * * *
The schoolroom was an old-fashioned kitchen. The day's dinner was cooked before our eyes on a spit before the fire; the pupils acted as turnspits. The room was low, smoke-begrimed and dingy; the windows opaque with dirt. On the filthy walls were a print of the Duke of Wellington (?), all nose and sternness, an old Map of the World on Mercator's Projection with the possessions of the Spanish crown yellow, and the possessions of the British crown red, and many framed texts worked in white and blue wool. One huge text, worked in many colours, stood over the doorway: A ROD FOR THE FOOL'S BACK. Prov: xxvi. v. 3. There were two classes, on different sides of the room. I was put with the younger. They were all new faces, except one or two that I had seen the day before at the Room. They were, indeed, the first children I had ever spoken to. In grown-up parlance the pupils would have been dubbed lower-middle class, though Marcus Browning, whom I knew by sight because he lived in the Lawn in a house just opposite ours, was as middle-middle class as Aunt Jael and my Grandmother. I felt these distinctions perfectly, and regarded one SusanDurgles, a lank untidily-dressed fluffy-haired child of seven or eight, and the leading spirit in our class, with that feeling of quiet disdain which the sureness of higher caste can alone bestow: her father was a mere cobbler in Green Lane, and while I looked at her as though I knew it, she looked back lovingly as though she knew I did. Between Susan and myself sat a pale thin child, Seth Baker, who had St. Vitus' dance. I had never seen anything of the sort before, and stared more through curiosity than pity as his slate and slate-pencil shook in his hand.
The first lesson was Rithmetick with Miss Glory called (vulgarly) by Miss Salvation Figurin'. With her best far-away look Miss Glory peered forth into eternity: "If eggs be twenty-eight a shilling" (theywerein those days, at any rate in Spring) "how many be you agwain to get for, er-er-er-one poun' three shillin' and vourpence ha' penny?"
Up shot the grimy hand of little Seth Baker. "Please'm, please'm," appealingly. He was always first and always right, but the rest of us were not suffered to dodge the labour of calculation, as Miss Glory would oftenest ignore Seth and drop on weaker members of the flock, myself or Susan Durgles.
"Now then, Susan Durgles. 'Ee heard the question. How many then-er-er-er-er-er-?"
"Please'm, I-er-er-er-er-er-don't know."
This shameless mockery was allowed to go unpunished. My mind strove to picture Aunt Jael coping with a like impertinence. I imagined the black wrath, the awful hand upon my shoulder. With what new weapon would she scourge me? Scorpions, perhaps, if obtainable.
During our mental arithmetic lesson, the advanced students at the other end of the room were receiving combined instruction from the deputy-principal in crochet-work and carikter-formation. Miss Salvation was shouting technical advice of the stitch, slip, three treble, four chain, and draw-through-the-first-loop-on-the-hook order, together with more general instructions how to earn the joys of heaven and eschew the fires of hell.
After a while the sisters changed places, and my efforts were transferred from high finance to handwriting, called(whimsically) by Miss Glory, Penmanship. Miss Salvation distributed dirty dog-eared copy books. I was set to work on the last page, the Z page, of an otherwise completed and wholly filthy book, to reproduce fourteen times in zealous copper-plate: "Zeal of Thy House hath eaten me up." Meanwhile Miss Salvation transferred to us her godly bawling as to the way we should, or chiefly, shouldn't go: interlarding this with fragments of more specialized holy information, which being entirely useless I have never forgotten; e. g., which was the longest verse in the Word of God, and which was the shortest; the number of books in the Old Testament, and in the New; that "straightway" was the private and particular word of St. Mark, while "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet" was the chosen cliché of St. Matthew.
Miss Glory took turn with us again for the third lesson: Reading. Our book was of courseTheBook. One mouldy old Bible was passed round, and we read in turn from its brown-spotted and damp-smelling pages. I think it was my first or second day that it fell to my turn to read from the eighteenth chapter of the Book of Genesis, where the Lord appeared unto Abraham in the plains of Mamre, and Abraham said unto the Lord concerning the destruction of Sodom, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? I knew the passage well, and read with relish and excitement the diminuendo Peradventures.
"Good, my child, good. Your readin' is a credit to your dear Grannie and your dear Great-Aunt. You read it fine, as to the manner born."
For the first time in my life the enchanting incense of praise filled my nostrils. I flushed, and while others read of Lot at the gate of Sodom and what-not else, I ceased to listen. My heart was beating to this refrain: You read it fine—as to the manner born. So I was good for something, for all Aunt Jael's daily blows and curses, my Grandmother's nightly She-is-weak-Lord-and-sinful petitions. I read fine!
The first day Mrs. Cheese called for me; but afterwards I was entrusted to Marcus Browning as escort. He was two years older: "a good child, not like some I could name" (Aunt Jael), "Born of Saints" (Grandmother), and possessedof the more fleshly merit of also living on the Lawn. We spoke little together.
The event I remember best of my first days at the Elementary Educational Establishment was a fight. Susan Durgles was for ever making fun of poor little Seth Baker's affliction. One day when Miss Glory and Miss Salvation were both out of the room Susan went a little too far.
"Look to 'im, look to 'im!" she mocked. "He looks like wan o' thase yer weather-cocks what wag and wobble about on the church steeple. Goes like this, do he? Ha, ha. Can't help hisself, can't he, palaverin' li'l wretch?" She flapped her hands in Seth's walrus way, and nodded her head convulsively in mocking imitation of poor little St. Vitus.
He was a meek child, but this time he could stand it no longer. "Dirty cobbler's lass!" he cried, and banged Susan full in the face with his small clenched fist. A regular fight began. My sympathies were wholly pro-Seth. Was not Susan the sneerer, the tormenter, the tyrant, the Aunt Jael, and Seth the harried one, the oppressed one, the victim, theme?
Seth punched and lunged and butted with his head. Susan slapped and shoved and scratched. The boy kicked in payment for the scratching, and the girl tore at his hair to get even for the kicks. Fair play and fair-weather methods went by the board. Rules are for the ring; when ultimate things are at stake, a child's sneer at her schoolfellow's deformity to be repaid, a nation's existence to be lost or won in war, then red tooth and claw tear the paper conventions of sport asunder, and each side fights to win. Miss Glory returned to witness a bleeding and bedraggled pair still scuffling savagely. Not one of the rest of us had dared or wished to intervene. Very properly Miss Glory decided that we were the guiltier ones, and while the two principals amid tears of gradual forgiveness were hustled away to soap and water, we lookers-on had to stand up on our forms for one solemn hour with our hands behind our backs while Miss Glory preached us a sermon; the text being Matthew five, nine.
A brighter feature of school-life was the frequent sweetmeats brought, passed round and devoured. There were chocolate drops, sticks of Spanish, peppermint humbugs,jujubes, lollipops and toffees. I had never tasted such dainties before.
"Wude 'ee like a sweetie?" asked Susan Durgles one day.
"Yes please," said I.
"Quite sure, are 'ee?"
"Yes please. Please give me one."
"Nit likely, nit likely," she sneered.
"But why?" I flushed, not understanding.
"Why? And a very gude raison fer why. 'Cause 'ee gobble up other volks' sweeties fast enough, but you'm not so slippy about bringin' any of yer own fermeto eat, are 'ee? Nit likely."
I felt as though she had struck me in the face. All the other children were looking and listening. It was not that I ever had any sweets of my own which I consumed in greed and secret, it was not that I had any money, or hope of money, for buying any. The sting of Susan's words lay in this: that I ought to have seen and pondered on the fact that while I took all that was offered me I offered nothing in return. I was in the wrong, and therefore all the angrier.
"You wait!" I cried. My tone was not too confident, for in a second's rapid survey I could not see the how or the wherewithal of obtaining sweets to fling at Susan. It must however have been confident enough to inspire her with a lively sense of joys to come.
"I didn't mean nort. Only my li'l joke. Have a lollipop—or two."
On the way home I left Marcus Browning in silence, and evolved plans. Suppose I were to ask Aunt Jael to give me a penny! My heart beat at the thought. I rehearsed to myself my opening "Please Aunt Jael" a score of times. Such rehearsings, inspired by my timidity, served always to increase it. Then I remembered a bottle of acid-drops in the medicine cupboard in the bedroom. Dare I beg a few? Ortakea few? suggested the Tempter, take being His pretty word for steal. This was the easier plan, but I shunned its dishonesty. I would ask herfirst. Or ask even for the penny, I decided, if at the moment I found courage enough.
All the way through dinner I put off making my appeal.Several times I moistened my lips and came to the very brink, where the glimpsed precipice of Aunt Jael's wrath drove me back. Yet brave the precipice I must, or tumble into the abyss of Susan's scorn on the morrow.
At last I blundered in, heart beating and face flushed: "Please may I have a penny?"
"A penny?"
"To buy some sweets."
"Highty-tighty! Don't you get enough to eat here? Never heard of such a thing. Your Grandmother and I never had pence for sweetmeats and such trash. Be off with you."
"But—"
"No buts here." The thorned stick stamped the floor. Grandmother concurred.
Fair means had failed. I would try foul. By her meanness she had forced me to help myself to her acid-drops. My guilt be on her head.
I waited until she was well away into her after-dinner doze, and Grandmother safely closeted for her afternoon's study of the Word. Then I stole softly up to Aunt Jael's bedroom. Her physic-cupboard was on the far side of the bed. It had a sliding door; inside there were four shelves, the bottom shelf dedicated to Aunt Jael's night-needs. At every watch she fed. Once or twice I had slept with her, and discovered that though she had rusks and beef-tea just before getting into bed (soon after a heavy supper) and rusks and a cup of green tea while she was dressing (just before a heavy breakfast), yet she got out of bed twice during the night to brew herself a potion and chew old crusts or gingerbread-nuts or rusks. The bottom shelf was complete with every accessory of these four bedroom feasts: spirit lamp, matches, saucepan, cups; green tea, Ceylon tea, beef-tea, meat extract, herbs of divers properties and powers; gin, cowslip wine, elderberry wine, brandy; with many tins devoted to gingerbreads, half-moon rusks (bought at the same baker's as Miss Glory's), seed-cake, Abernethy biscuits, and old crusts rebaked in the oven. The upper shelves bristled with medicine bottles and jars. These were grouped methodically according to the ills they combated. There was a cough-and-colds corner. For burns scalds and chaps, bruises weals and wens, there was poor-man's-friend,a great jar of goose grease, and a small white pot of mixed whitening, most drastic of all; often my Grandmother used it on my body after a bad beating, fitly borrowing Aunt Jael's whiting to ease the marks of Aunt Jael's stick. The particular galaxy of bottles from which Grandmother had oftenest to beg and borrow for me consisted of various telling encouragements and exhortations to those like myself whose mills ground slowly and withal exceedingly small. Castor oil, Epsom salts, senna pods, fennel seeds and roots of jalep: I knew them all. It was to King Senna I answered swiftliest (five pods to be soaked in a tumbler of water for a few hours, and drunk last thing before retiring to bed); to replenish this jar meant frequent visits to the druggist's, for which my Grandmother paid. To pods she added prayers. Whenever the last thing before retiring chanced to be the tepid tumblerful, the last thing but one was always a supplication to Heaven to speed the parting dose. "O Lord," pleaded my Grandmother on her knees, "Bless the means! Bless the means, Lord; and if it be Thy will grant her relief!" But Aunt Jael relied on worldly remedies exclusively. Her medicine cupboard was her shield and buckler, and like the cupboard in the front room downstairs, ministered to her pride of possession also. And the night-life made possible by that festive bottom shelf! O 'twas a Prince of Cupboards, a vineyard planted with bottles.
Today I had eyes for one bottle only. I reached it down, and regarded the precious objects which would confound the sneers of Susan. Thief! said a voice within, as I tipped the bottle up and curved my other hand to receive.
Susan's sneers! urged the Tempter. How just they are, and how they wound you! I hung doubtfully; the acid-drops' fate and my own trembled in the balance. I remembered how Aunt Jael counted everything. For a certainty every acid drop was counted; she would miss the meanest couple, and then the sequel! No, I dare not.
The moment my indecision was over, I was braver. Once I had decided I dare not eat any, I dared to reflect how pleasant theywould have beento eat. It was the bravery of cowardice, that valour that is the better part of discretion. I smelt the bottle's mouth long and longingly. Suddenly the fair odour inspired in me a new idea. I would just suck thedrops, and then put them back. They were of the shiny sort, which judicious sucking would hardly change; not your dangerous powdery acid drops, which merest touch of the tongue transforms. I set to sucking as evenly as possible, so that none would look smaller than the rest. They were delicious, and I enjoyed recompense for my noble decision not to steal. Suddenly my heart stood still. The door-handle turned. To fling the bottle into its place in the cupboard, and slide the cupboard door to, was the work of a fevered moment. Aunt Jael entered. She must surely have seen. My guilt was clear, for all the look of meekness I sought to wear. She had her suspicions too of what the guilt was: she seized my arm and ducked her nose down to my mouth to confirm them. Acid-drops have a tell-tale odour, unique, unmistakable. My smell bewrayed me. Out of my own mouth I stood convicted.
"I thought as much,"—even for her the words came grimly—"how many have you stolen?"
"None, Aunt Jael."
There coursed through my veins the perverse exultant delight of her who utters a great white lie. Not for anything would I have told a downright falsehood. Here was an answer true as Truth herself—sucking is not stealing—yet by the look (and smell) of things plainly false. Aunt Jael darkened.
"I-have-not-stolen-one. I-have-not-eaten-one," I repeated, noddingly.
"Liar, black little liar!" she shouted. "The rope-end at last; you'll taste it now."
She rummaged under the bed. As she barred the egress by the foot of the bedstead, I scrambled over the bed, gained the door, and fled to the attic. She was after me at once, wielding the famous weapon, a good yard of stout old ship's rope, a relic of Grandfather Lee or maybe Great-Grandfather Vickary. In the middle of the attic stood a large elliptical table. Round and round it she chased me. It was a defiance I had never shown before. She was appalled. I was appalled. Defiance was a quality she never encountered, and now for meek miserable little me to show it! Her features were a livid blue-black. She lashed out with the rope frequently; I dodged and ducked. The attic was wide enough for me to elude her reach. In a corner I should have had no chance; so Knightof the Round Table was the part I played. Once the rope grazed my shoulder. After ten minutes perhaps, the part of slasher at emptiness had become so undignified that Aunt Jael suddenly stopped. A ruse? A minute's rest before a last wild spring for victory? No; for she could hardly breathe. Then she gave me a long cruel stare, eyes sayingI Will Repay: for all my defiance I cowered. She went out, slammed the door behind her, and stumped heavily down the uncarpeted attic-stairs.
The heat of battle over, my spirits sank. Why had I defied her? There was no ultimate escape. For every gesture of defiance, every moment of that round-the-table chase, she would repay me a hundredfold. Yet what else could I have done? If I had owned up tostealingher sweets and thus (perhaps) incurred a lesser wrath, I should have owned up to something I had not done. I should have lied. I had told the truth instead, and my only reward was a clear conscience. (I was staring, as so often, at the great blue picture on the wall, whose deep violet blue seemed to be toned down by the cold grey-blue of the room; an old print of some tropical sea with a volcano belching forth fire, smoke and lava in the background,—the Caribbean Sea perhaps, with one of the Mexican craters, or the Mediterranean with Vesuvius; a gaudy gorgeous thing such as sailors buy on their travels.)
I waited over an hour before risking a descent. When I turned the half-landing by Mrs. Cheese's bedroom door, I sprang back. There beneath me, sitting on the stairs, her feet on the main landing just outside her bedroom door, was Aunt Jael. A small table was drawn up to the foot of the stairs. A good tea was spread thereon; she was eating and drinking heartily. I spied the rope by her side; she heard my footsteps above her, and her hand closed on it. I went back. She meant grim business. Still, she could not stay there all night. I sat down outside the attic door and listened. Mrs. Cheese cleared away her tea things, grumbling; Grandmother came up to her, gently remonstrating. She stayed on. Darkness set in. I heard her stamp the floor for Mrs. Cheese to bring her supper. After all, she might stay there for the night: knowing her will to be not weaker than mine, I put my self in her place, and I felt almost sure she would. I washungry, and there would be no escape. Escape I must. How? My first plan was that Mrs. Cheese—Aunt Jael would have to get up to let her pass, I reflected, since either one of them was as broad as the attic staircase—should bring me something to eat when she came upstairs to bed. Then I could survive till the morrow, sleep on the attic floor, and confound Aunt Jael. I would show her who had the stronger will. The weak point of this notion was that I could not shout instructions to Mrs. Cheese to bring me something to eat, nor rely on her doing it unprompted. A more desperate plan suggested itself, and before I had time to shrink back, I put it into action.
I slid down the banisters and took a flying vault safely over Aunt Jael's head and the little supper table in front of her. If there had been a big open space beyond, all might have been well. Unfortunately the banister that surrounded the sort of well in which you saw the ground floor began only a yard beyond Aunt Jael's door; my flying feet knocked against it, and I fell; I was hurt badly, and could not get up. In a second Aunt Jael was up, and at me with the rope, savagely. She saw I was in pain and helpless, so lammed the more brutally. I screamed. Grandmother came running upstairs, and with a strength and daring she rarely used wrenched the rope from her sister's hands.
I limped downstairs.
"Before you eat, child, confess your lie, and apologize to your aunt for telling it." Grandmother was unwontedly stern.
"What lie?" I did not flinch.
"Smell her! Smell her!" shouted Aunt Jael.
"Mary, in all her life your mother told not one single lie."
"It's not a lie," feebly. "I swear it," pitiably.
At last Grandmother succeeded where Aunt Jael had failed (this was a little sub-triumph in my defeat). I told the true version and for all the Tempter's hints I knew that my Grandmother was right that evening when in our bedside prayer she pleaded, "Forgive her, Lord; in her heart she lied!"
Next day, I learnt from Mrs. Cheese that the bottle of acid drops had been flung by Aunt Jael into the ashpit. I rescued it, and pocketed the contents, which were stuck together like a coarse hard sponge, emerald bright. There were thirty-sevenin all. By the distribution of this lordly largesse I rose high in the esteem of the school. A pocket full of acid drops: my position was assured. None doubted their virginity, all consumed them with zest. Thus did I triumph over Susan Durgles, who sucked humbly; humblier, had she known that another had sucked before her.
* * * * * * *
School took but a small place in my life. The music-lessons I began to take at home were much more to me: for piano-playing was a worldly luxury some generous whim of Aunt Jael's supplied. Her reward was her own loud announcement, whenever topics even remotely musical were mentioned, "Ipay for the child's music." These lessons, and a very occasional dress and hat—once a pair of mittens—were all she contributed to my upkeep in all those years. I am glad it was never more. She had no call to do it, she often explained. Well and good: I had no call to be beholden to her. All my expenses, nothing heavy, but heavy enough for a light purse, were borne by my Grandmother: and thus at the end of their lives, Aunt Jael had three times as much to bequeath as her sister. Grandmother accepted five pounds a year from my great-uncle John on my behalf, refusing his offer of more, and taking nothing of what my father's relatives had proposed from the beginning. Yet she would have laughed, and the mirthless Saints would have laughed, if you had called her proud. Meanwhile, because of these music lessons, Aunt Jael cried her generosity from the house-tops. I little cared: I was grateful. I could soon play all the simpler tunes in Hoyle's Anthems.
My life was still entirely spent in the Bear Lawn household; I was never allowed to see anything of the other schoolchildren, Saints or no Saints, beyond school hours. None ever crossed our threshold, nor I theirs. I watched the daily struggle between the two old women, Grandmother and Great-aunt. I read the Word. I prayed, and I lived wild lives within myself. I was for ever visualizing, thinking out dramas in which I and those I knew would figure, living in a self-fashioned self-fancied future, deciding on lines of conduct in innumerable situations I invented. At this time my imaginings did not run, as with megalomaniac little boys, toambitious futures for myself: great sounding deeds done before admiring multitudes. My castle building was conditioned by the narrow humble life I knew. The stuff of my dreams was my own hates and loves.
At this early time my surest emotions were I think three: hate of my tyrant aunt; longing for some one to love and some one to love me; fear of eternity and hell. I would play with these terrible ideas sometimes with the cheerfulness natural to six-years-old, more often with the despondency more natural to myself. Hate achieved no triumph of hate even, would eat itself out miserably and everlastingly in my visions as hate always. Longing was never appeased; love would never come to me. Fear was justified of her child.
A cheerful vision I conjured up was Aunt Jael on bended knee before me, making a hoarse and humble appeal to be forgiven for her wrong-doings, to be shriven of her many sins. I revelled in the delightful picture. How I dealt with it depended on my mood. If it was soon after a beating (a real-life beating) my conduct would be just, stern, inexorable. "Go to, thou vixen, thy judgment awaits thee!"; and I would deliver her over to the tormentors. If beatings of late had been few or frail, and a sentimental rather than revengeful mood held me, then I would act with a high Olympian generosity, imagination's sweetest revenge, and lifting her gently to her feet would say "Thy sins are forgiven thee—Go, and sin no more!"
I often tried to create an imaginary person to love, some one I could embrace and be embraced by. Once I got as far as picturing a face for perfect loving, but I found that it was the spirit, the soul, the person who gave you love, and my perfect face (a dark young girl's) though I named it Ruth Isabel, remained a face and a name only. There was no real Ruth Isabel behind the face; so she faded away. I had one success, one consolation. By a hard effort—closed eyes, clenched fists and fervid prayer to God—I could sometimes picture my dead mother so vividly, that I could literally feel and return her embraces. She was clad always in white; her face was warm, and glowed. "Kiss me, Mary," I could make the vision say, though whensoever I put out my hungry arms to draw her closer to my breast, the vision fled.
Of my chief fears, hell and eternity, the first was alwaysterrible—I pictured it in all the luxurious completeness of horror Brother Brawn described—yet I had this comfort: I believed in the Lord, and He could save me. But save me for what? He rescued me from hell to grant me eternity in heaven, and from His boon there was none to rescue me.Eternal life!Once my brain attempted to grapple with everlastingness and to think out the full frightful meaning ofliving for ever, I sickened with fear. There was no escape: ever: anywhere. A terror, unanswerable, unpitying, controlled me. One way out of it, one mad child's trick to cheat Infinity was to convince myself I had never been born. "You're not real!" I would say to myself, "You're only dreaming you're alive. You're a dream of God's. You have never really lived, so you can never really die. So you escape eternity. You cannot live for ever, if you are not alive at all!"
This belief I helped by staring into my own eyes in the glass, my face close up to its reflection. After a minute or two, a tense expectancy would seize me. I was elated, exhilarated.
"Mary, what are you, who are you?" I cried to the face in the mirror.
My own voice sounded strange and far away, belonged to some one else, proved thatIhad no voice, that there was no real me, that I was Another's dream.
"What are you? What are you?"
The exhilaration and the expectancy grew. I was on the brink of solving the mystery of all life: my child's mind would find what the universe was, whatIwas.... The exaltation was almost more than I could bear. I kissed wildly the reflection of my own mouth in the mirror. Suddenly, imperceptibly, elusively, the great hope vanished. There was a swift reaction in my mind and body, and I half swooned away on to a chair.
In other moods my picturings were completely black. I saw my future as an unbroken series of savage triumphs for Aunt Jael. She discovered new and horrible beatings. I should be left quite alone with her: Grandmother would die. She would flog me from morn till night, always brutally, always unjustly. Or I would think of love as a thing I should never, never know. I pictured myself a lonely old woman, loved by none, loving none. Or, if I thought of hell, I doubtedmy salvation, and suffered in imagination all its pains. Or, with eternity, the fiction that I was not alive failed me dismally. I pictured myself sitting for ever on a throne near God, bearded and omnipotent. A billion years rolled away, I was still no nearer the end, no nearer escape from my soul, from life, from me. Sometimes I shrieked. My cries rent heaven. God motioned the golden harps to cease and consigned me to the torments of hell. I was borne downwards at incredible speed by two bright angels who, as we got lower and lower, took on the shape of devils. They cast me shrieking into the lake of fire and brimstone. Sometimes in heaven I could keep my agony mute. This was no better. Amid the angels' psalmody there rang in my heart like a beaten bell:For ever, for ever, for ever!—taunting me into a supreme feverish effort to thinkFor everout. Then came the last moment, the crisis of hypnotized fear, as my finite mind flung itself against the iron door of the Infinite. The struggle lasted but a few seconds, or I should have gone mad. Then the warm back-rush of physical relief as the blood poured back into my brain.
I came to believe there were two persons in myself, two distinct souls in my body. It was my way of accounting for the two strangely different manners of thought I experienced. I thought and felt things in an ordinary, conscious, methodical way—the self-argumentative, cunning, careful little girl that most often I was. At other times, ideas, promptings, wishes, beliefs came to me in quite different fashion—or not so much to me as from within me, from some inner source of my being. They coursed through my blood and stormed my brain; they were blind, warm, intuitive; supernatural, sudden. There is no one word in my vocabulary, still less was there in those seven-year-old days, to define or explain this distinction. It was no matter of Reason with Common-sense on the one hand, and Conscience or Instinct on the other. Conscience—"God knocking at your heart's door," Grandmother called it—is a very incomplete description; at most it could apply only to the good promptings of the other Self. For the reverse reason Instinct will not suffice. It was no question of two modes of thought or feeling, but of two persons inhabiting my body. The Mary Lee every one saw and knew was the two ofthem taken together. I called them Me and the Other Me. I felt the difference between them in a physical way. With the more usual self, my blood flowed gently, my pulse was normal. The other self marched through my flesh like an army with banners; the hand of this more mysterious me literally knocked at my heart; she came from some deep inmost place and vanished as swiftly as she came. She went; my pulse flagged.
My loneliness too encouraged the sociable idea that there were two people inside me—Two's company, one's none! In bed or blue attic, duologues were better than monologues: but as a rule I could not arrange these, because Other Me blew where she listed; I could never fix her for a talk as I chose. She came with some sudden word or warning, prompting or precept—and was gone. When I was bent on some moment's peccadillo, she—he?—would come, whisper "It is wrong"; for one moment the whispering voice was my voice, the voice of another Me, a new person and soul whose being seemed to flood my veins. She fled, and I was alone again. The way I tried to formulate the experience was this: One is my normal human sinful Self, is Me, Mary; Two is the Spirit of God possessing me, the movement in me of the divine, the indwelling spirit, the Holy Ghost made manifest in my flesh. I saw it all as a special privilege, a new proof that the Lord had set me apart.
Sometimes the two selves battled for mastery. I thought that one thing was the right course to follow, and felt that another was. I knew it was thefeelingI ought to obey, though sometimes I was not positive of its divine, Other Me, Apostolic quality. In such cases my plan was to count thirty-seven—aloud as a rule—and if at the end of my count the impulse was still in me, I obeyed it. The test itself was of course ofOtherorigin. "In cases of doubt, count thirty-seven" came to me one day with a warm lilt of authority I did not question. I adopted it as my sacred number for all emergencies. When Aunt Jael was flogging me—I remember well how it helped me in that rope-end beating after I had sucked the sweets—I would shut my eyes and see if I could count thirty-seven between each stroke. Success depended on my rate—and hers;in any case the mere endeavour seemed to lessen the pain.
Note, too, that there were thirty-seven acid drops in the fatal bottle, and that my favourite psalm, number 137, was on page 537 of my old Bible:—Heavenly proofs of the pure metal of my golden number.
(Note: This chapter in my notes fills exactly 37 pages!-M. L.)
That rope-end beating was a bad one, but I can remember worse. The worst one of all came a year or so later, when I was about seven years old, and formed part of a series of events that stands out with peculiar clearness in my memory.
It all began with porridge lumps.
One morning Aunt Jael went into the kitchen before breakfast, and began stirring at the porridge pan and looking for something to grumble at.
"Lumps!" she cried angrily. "Lumps! What's this mean? 'Tis a pity if a woman of sixty don't know how to cook a panful of porridge. Or too idle to stir it, most likely. Lumps! Lumps!"
Mrs. Cheese lost her temper: the end desired.
"What d'ye expect? Do 'ee think I cude see to the stuff while I'm trapsing up and downstairs to yer bedrume all the time waiting on 'ee 'and an' foot, an' you thumpin' and bangin' away wi' yer stick ivry blissid minute? I can't be in two places at once, and I ain't agwain ter try. Lumps indade! I've 'ad enuff o'n. You do'n yersell, ol' lady."
Whereupon did Aunt Jael aim the lid of the pan at Mrs. Cheese's head, which it just managed to miss. A frying-pan full of half-cooked potatoes lay to the wronged one's hand for retort perfect. She mastered the dear temptation when she saw my Grandmother quietly edging up toward Aunt Jael; found vent instead in bitter irony. Sarcasm hits surer than sauce-pan-lids, and harder.
"Behavin' like a true Brethering, aren't us? Like a meek bleatin' Christyun lamb as doesn't know it's weaned? I tells yer straight, Miss Vickary, I crosses your doorstep this same day. Ye'll be done wi' yer lumps termorrer."
Grandmother contrived to calm her down till she consented to stay after all; and, with more difficulty, to close her sister's mouth.
Mrs. Cheese, however, was not the one to sit down under a saucepan lid, and I think it was revenge, joining forces with a long-repressed love for a good "tell," which prompted her to close the kitchen door that afternoon when the dinner things were put away, and to sit down to tell me a story. She had once begun to speak to me of fairies, and Aunt Jael's reproof was too violent and too recent for her to have forgotten. Rather it was that she remembered it, and rejoiced, as she posed me the unfamiliar sweet question:
"Wude 'ee like me to tell 'ee a story?"
"Yes, please, Mrs. Cheese." I cocked my ear. Far away in the dining-room the dread one snored.
"Wall then. This tale is all about what a sailor-man did. Even 'er" (she jerked her finger in the proper direction) "cude say nothin' agin it, for 'tis all true. 'Tis true gospel, I'll be blummed if tidn': tho', Dear Lawr, some o' the things is that wunnerful that if a body had told me, and I did'nknawfer certain that 'twas all true, and all written 'pon a buke that the party wrote hisself, I shude 'a zed they was lyin', I shude railly. 'Tis'n everybody, you knaws, as lives a life like we, always quiet and peaceful like, always the same ol' place. There's many volk, sailor chaps and sich like fer the bettermos' part, that has middlin' excitin' times in these yer vorrin parts, and zees the most wunnerful things. Wall, this one chap in partic'lar lived for thirty year all alone on a desert island with not another soul to pass the time o' day with, thirty years I tell 'ee if 'twas a day. Robinson Crewjoe 'is name was—"
"Why?"
"'Cos fer why? 'Cos that's what 'e were caaled, o' course, silly mump'ead! Anyway, there 'twas. Some say 'e 'ad 'is wife and childer to the island with 'im, and they talks of the Zwiss Vamily Robinson, but 'tisn't true anyway; first 'cos 'e weren't alone in an island if there was other folk with 'im, second 'cos he wasn't a Zwiss, or any sort o' them vurriners, third because 'e 'adn't got no vamily, 'cept for 'is ol' vamily at 'ome that is, as tried to stop'n runnin' away to sea, 'is ol' father and 'is ol' mother—"
"What did his father do?"
"Didn'tdunort."
"I mean like Brother Briggs is an oilman and Brother Quaint keeps a baker's shop—"
"Oh I don't know thikky. 'Tis some 'undreds o' years agone since it all first 'appened, you knows. 'Owsomever—" And so on: the whole imperial tale.
When in later years I read the book for myself I found how accurately she had stressed the salient points. The father of young Robinson, always growlin' and scoldin' like some others she cude mention; the young raskel himself with whom these methods were not entirely displaced; the flight to sea; the ship doing battle with Turks and Portugeeses and Vrenchies and Spanyerds; the wreck on the desert island, young Robinson alone being saved; his infinite resource, practical, mechanical, architectural, culinary, dietetic; his ills, moral and physical.—Every known pain of the body he suffered, finding some slight alleviation, it is true, in the miniature Aunt Jaelian physic-cupboard from the all providing Wreck. His worst affliction was a malady—the Blues or Deliverums—at once moral and physical, a kind of soul's nightmare accompanied by sharp "abdominable pains." All around him, as he writhed in agony, roared an islandful of wild beasts; tigers and jeraffs and hullyfints and camyels and drumming-dairies—
"What's that?" I remember asking.
"Wull, either 'tis camyels wi' one 'ump to the back, or else 'tis camyels what 'ave one 'ump and drummy-dairies two; 'tis one or 'tother—and bears and munkeys and girt sarpints what they caal boy-constructors, I don't knaw fer why:—a regler munadgery like Tobbery Vair—and birds too. The pore chap 'ad one particler parrit or cocky-two as they caals 'un, what 'e taught to 'oller out: 'Pore ol' Robinson Crewjoe! pore ol' Robinson Crewjoe!' 'Tis true what I tell 'ee, my dear, 'tis true's I zit yer."
Nor did I doubt it. The notion of an invented story was one I could not have conceived.
The narrative came particularly near home with the arrival of the savages, and the domestication and conversion of Man Vriday—"or Man Zaturday maybe—I know 'tis one o' the days o' the wake." Robinson saw that he could atone for his own unholy past by snatching this black-skinned brand from the burning. I listened eagerly, with conscious professionalinterest; the snatching of black-skinned brands was the very work for which the Lord had set me apart.
"And so he praiched the Gospel to 'im, and shewed 'im all the mercies o' God A'mighty."
"Butcouldhe, Mrs. Cheese? Was he a Saint, was he one of the Elect?"
"I don't knaw fer certin'. Don't rekellect it ackshilly zaying 'pon the buke that 'e was a Plymith Brethering in so many worrds as the sayin' is. A Methody maybe. But that's neither 'ere nor there."
"But it is, it'sveryimportant," I cried, "it's everything!"
"'Owsomever, 'e taught this yer Man Vriday ter pray ter the Lord. That's gude nuff. 'You goes down on yer knees, and you prays to Im,' 'e zes. 'Why that's jis' what we do too,' zes Man Vriday, toourGod'—meanin' a girt idol set up on a hill in the other island 'e com'd from, zummat like the girt idol o' Miss Vickary's in the corner there in that ol' front-room uv 'ern. 'Us valls vlat on our vaces before un,' 'e zes, 'and us 'owls out O-o-o-o Benamuckee! O-o-o-o Benamuckee!' that bein' the god's name, as yer mid say. Tis a fac', I'll ait vire an smoke if tid'n."
"Did he convert him?" anxiously.
"Zome zay 'e did, but I shudn' 'ardly think 'tis true, fer Man Vriday turns to ol' Robinson Crewjoe—'e was an ol' chap now, you knaws, 'aving been there the bettermos' part o' thirty years—and 'e zes to 'im, zes 'e, 'I don't zee much odds to't, master. You prays to your God up i' the sky, and you zes 'O God' and we prays to our god up i' the mountain, and we zes 'O Benamuckee.' He'm a great god too, a mighty great god like yourn; I don't zee much odds to't, master,' 'e zes. So if 'e did convert 'im, it was a middlin' stiff job, I reck'n. And I ain't afraid ter zay that ol' Robinson was a middlin' big fule ter try. If a vorrin savage is so big a fule as to lay down flat on 'is stummick and 'oller out 'O-o-o-o Benamuckee' and sich like jibberish, 'e's a bigger fule still as tries to make 'im mend 'is ways. Missyunaries can't du much gude wi' such fules as they—"
Blasphemy supreme. The listener behind the door could restrain herself no longer. Aunt Jael stumped in.
"Well?"
"Wull?" said theraconteuse, bold and unabashed. She had the morning's score to settle.
"Well? Well this: 'eetalked about notice this morning, madam. Now I give 'ee notice."
"Du yer, Miss Vickary, du yer? Wull, I don't take it then. I'm Missis Lee's servant as much as I'm yourn. You only pays 'alf my money, tho' you may du six-vivths o' the mistressin'. An' 'tis no lies I've been tellin'; 'tis all true gauspel—"
"Order!" stamped the thorned stick. "'Ee leave a week to-day. Silence!" (For repartee was ready.) "And for you, Child, there's no excuse. None. You knew. You knew your sin sitting listening all through that pack of lies—"
"'Tiznotlies!" cried Mrs. Cheese. "'Tis true's I stand yer," for she had risen to face the adversary. "Can't the poor lil chil' listen to a trew story? Thank the Lawr there aren't many little children in Tobbry cooped up like 'er is, as can't move her lil finger wi'out gettin' cussed and banged; I ain't got no patience wi't, and there's plenty uv other volks as I cude mention as 'ave passed a few remarks too—"
"Silence!" shouted Aunt Jael, furiously stamping the stone floor two-to-the-second with her stick.
In came my Grandmother, drawn by the tumult. At once both Aunt Jael and Mrs. Cheese began defending themselves: the first word with neutrals counts for much. To Mrs. Cheese: "Miss Vickary first"; to Aunt Jael: "Speak, sister."
"I've caught her telling the child a long lying rigmarole about savages and idolatry—"
"'Tis not lies! 'Tis truth!" blazed the other, "and don't yer let the pore chil' be punished for listenin', Missis Lee."
Grandmother apportioned blame: for me "You knew you ought not to have listened"; for Mrs. Cheese "Be more careful in what you talk about, and don't forget your manners with Miss Vickary"; for Aunt Jael "There's not much harm been done, Sister; no need whatever to carry on so."
Aunt Jael was infuriated. The balance of Grandmother's judgment was obviously against her; the fact that her younger sister was judging at all was against the first principles of the household, a slight to her position—and to all those sixty-nine years' of an eighteen-months' seniority.
"There!" looked Mrs. Cheese and I, and though neither of us smiled nor spoke, Victory sang in our eyes. My triumph was short. She struck me with her clenched fist; my shoulder received all she owed to Mrs. Cheese and Grandmother as well. So brutal and unexpected was the blow that it stirred me to a spontaneous and venomous cry: "Ugh, Ihateyou."
Fear and forethought which shrouded and bowdlerized most of my remarks when angry had no time to give me pause. "I hate you!" I repeated savagely.
Silence, Sensation, Crisis. Who would resolve it? How?
Grandmother spoke first: "Hush, child, hush. Your Aunt is angry, but you are beside yourself. Jael, I'm ashamed; to strike like that! But 'hate,' child: the Devil speaks in you. Think, do you mean it?"
"Not quite, no, not—not so bad as that," I faltered convincingly, not from contrition, but to ward off, if might be, another blow, which in the logic of things lay near ahead.
"H'm. 'Tis as well as not. It all comes to this, young minx: You're bad all through; the Devil's in 'ee all the time. Your Grandmother and I have always forbidden 'ee tales of fairies and such like. 'Ee knew, and 'ee listened. Were 'ee wrong—or were 'ee not? I correct 'ee, and all I get for years of care is that 'ee spit out hate. Are 'ee sinful—or are 'ee not?"
I looked at Grandmother: I must take care not to alienate supporters. I looked at Aunt Jael: that blow must be exorcised. "Yes."
She thirsted for super-victory. "Repeat: 'Yes, Aunt Jael, I was sinful and wrong.'"
"Yes, Aunt Jael, I was sinful and wrong."
"And so when I reproved 'ee for being wrong and gave 'ee a well deserved blow, I was right?"
No reply. Her brow darkened. Blow nearer again.
"Come now, quick about it: 'ee were wrong?"
"Yes, Aunt Jael."
"And I was right."
No reply. She half raised her stick—not fist this time—but noting Grandmother's eye, restrained herself with an effort. Both belligerents played still for neutral sympathy. She must be moderate, as Salvation said of her scholastic fees.
"Now, child, I'll give 'ee five minutes. If by that time 'eehaven't looked me in the face and repeated twice ''Ee were right, Aunt Jael, and I'm very sorry,' then I'll bang 'ee till 'ee won't be able to sit down. Now then."
She leaned against the table, eyeing the clock. Mrs. Cheese sat silent, but ready I could see for intervention. That was Grandmother's look too. Both were ready to ward off the soon-to-be-uplifted stick. Aunt Jael feared this, and was uneasy. She broke the silence after about two minutes.
"I warn 'ee. For your own good, mark. 'Tis no odds to me: I'd as lief thrash you. Don't 'ee know your Proverbs, child: 'Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy rod spare for his crying.'I'llnot spare for your crying. And 'ee'll be free from me for a spell, for 'ee'll dwell up in the attic for a few days all alone to give 'ee time to think over your sins. Now then. What d'ye say to that?"
"What do I say?" I shouted. "I say this: 'It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house!' Don't 'ee know your Proverbs, Aunt Jael?"
The supreme defiance of my childhood; the aptest quotation of my life. Never before nor after was I so great. There was no hope now, the beating would equal my deserts, and I had doubtless alienated my best ally. Even so, there mingled with my fear delight in my retort-perfect. It was worth living to have said that; I must be brave and show that it was worth dying for.
For a moment my boldness had staggered her; for a moment only. Then she brought down the great stick with a crash on my shoulder that sent me reeling against the dresser. Grandmother snatched at the stick; she flung her roughly aside, and sent her tottering against the flour-bin with a savage shove.
"How dare you? How dare you knock my Grandmother about? You bad, cruel old woman!"
"There's perlice in this town, Miss Vick'ry, you'm forgetting."
"Jael!"
For answer to the three of us, she struck me brutally twice, once on the leg, and once on my ear, which began to bleed. The two others made a joint rush for the stick.
"Jael, you're beside yourself."
"'Old 'ard, ol' biddy."
I had one idea: flight. There was a nightmare sort of struggle now in progress, swaying first toward one side of the kitchen, then toward another: three black-bodiced old ladies in a Rugby football scrum, Aunt Jael and Mrs. Cheese, as far as one could see, scuffling for the stick, and Grandmother half-scuffling for the stick also, scuffling also to prevent the other two from scuffling each other to death: at once participant and peacemaker, and certainly not blessed. Past this black swaying mass I dashed, along the hall, hatless out on to the Lawn, and on into the forbidden street outside the Lawn gates.
I ran blindly; where, I did not know. It was a sultry day; my aches and bruises began to tell, and I had to slow down before my rage was worked away. I was wild and rebellious, not only against Aunt Jael, but against God Who allowed her to treat me so. I was walking slowly now. I looked about me; stared at a new brick building on the other side of the road, crossed to read the notice-board outside. "Roman Catholic Church!" Aunt Jael had spoken of this;—this monster we had weakly allowed to be erected in our midst, this Popish temple, this Satan's Synagogue.
"Go in!" said Instinct. This was puzzling: the suggestion was clearly sinful, yet here it came with the authority of my trusted better self. Well, I would commit the sin, the sin deadlier than the seven, the sin crying to heaven for vengeance, the sin against the Holy Ghost! No modern mind could grasp the sense of supreme ultimate wickedness with which my deliberate contact with the Scarlet Woman filled me, for there is no live anti-Popery left among us today. As I pushed open the red baize door, my heart beat fast. Here indeed was defiance to Aunt Jael and to God Who permitted her. I was making a personal call on the Devil in his own private residence. I should have been much less surprised than frightened to find him inside the chapel, seated on a throne of fire; tail, hoofs and all. What should I find? I trembled with emotion.
My first impressions were of the darkness and the smell. This curious odour was doubtless the "insects" against which Miss Salvation thundered; that burnt-offering which cunningly combined cruelty with idolatry. It was an interesting smell;I thought of the paint-and-Bibles odour of our Room. Much of the character of churches, as of books, is discovered in their smell: it is by my nose rather than my mind that I can best recall the rich doctrinal differences between Calvinistic Methodists, and (say) Particular Baptists. You may smell out a Tipper—or a Bunker—or a Believer in the Divine Revelation of Joanna Southcote—with blindfold eyes; and the odour of an English Roman Catholic Church is, I think, the most distinctive of them all. So too its darkness. How unlike the bare lightness of the Room. This Papistry reminded me of Aunt Jael's front parlour with its perpetual yellow darkness, its little heathen images and its great wooden god. Everywhere there were images and idols, though I was disappointed—and surprised—not to see more sensational symbols of evil. I dared not begin tothinkso, though Ifeltalready that this mysterious place gave (somehow) pleasure.
"Habitation of devils and cage of every unclean and hateful bird": our phrases did not fit here,—but perhaps I should soon behold a Sign. A young man came in and knelt before one of the idols: a mother and baby-boy, the Mary Mother and the Son of God. I watched him on his knees before the graven image, Man Vriday on his knees before God Benamuckee. I had a wild notion of crying aloud; I would then and there testify to the true God. But I could not—something held me back—the incense, the holiness, the young man's face, pale and kind and pure.... I looked away. In the side aisle were two or three old women in prayer. How like our old-lady Saints were these Papist women! However different their souls, how alike their clothes and faces! The one nearest me reminded me at once of my Grandmother. Kneeling with her eyes closed and her lips moving in prayer, she looked strangely like the dear devout face I watched each night at bedside prayers. Said Reason: this is an old Papist sinner, a lost soul, an eldest beautiful daughter of Antichrist, who hath glorified herself and lived deliciously, whose sins have reached unto heaven, whose iniquities God hath remembered. Said Instinct, which came from the Lord: "She is good." (Perhaps she was one of those two or three Papists who were going to heaven, as Grandmother said, despite all.) The kind old face, rapt, adoring, the lips praying as my Grandmother prayed;the pale clean sorrowful young man too; above all, the rich sacramental stillness—these thingsof coursewere wrong. In the swifter more intuitive way I knew that they were right, and thatIwas wrong. I was baffled; and frightened. These impressions come back to me dimmed maybe, or rather, over-clarified by the notions of later years; but however vaguely and childishly, they are what I surely felt. I had come into this place to commit sin: I knew now that I was committing sin by having come here in such a spirit. I had known it was sacrilege to hold communion with the evil thing; now the sacrilege seemed to be in the mood in which I had come here. For Papist temple or no, God was somewhere here. The dark incensed holiness of this unholy place was sapping my faith and will. I must fly.
And my revenge? I had forgotten that. I slunk out feebly, fleeing from the church and fleeing too from new thoughts I dare not think. I ran to stop myself thinking.
There was no alternative but home. They must be wondering where I was, searching perhaps. They would be anxious; Aunt Jael's conscience, I hoped, would be smiting her. It was already near dusk when I slipped through the Lawn gates. When I reached the door my fear grew again; but I was too tired to wander further. Beatings or no beatings, I would go into Aunt Jael's own front room, curl myself up in the armchair; the place was so strictly forbidden that she would never dream of searching for me there. The key, as always, stood in the door; mean and purposeful temptation. It was not far from supper-time, and with the blind drawn the room was pretty well dark. I lay back in the armchair and looked around me at the yellow darkness, at the great oak cupboard, the blanched plants in their row of saucers on the floor, the walls covered with spears and clubs, the mantelpiece littered with gods. There straight ahead, high on his walnut whatnot, the great idol blinked down at me.
Here, here was my revenge! The notion stormed me. Dare I? Dare I go down on my knees and worship the graven image? 'Twas a fine way of getting even: to kneel on the floor of her sacred room, and there perform that idolatry which was for her the nameless sin, through even talking of which today's trouble had begun. It would be getting even with God too.If He allowed cruelty and injustice to go on, if He let me be treated as I was, if He failed to deal fairly and faithfully between Aunt Jael and me, if He came short in His duty to Himself and myself; then in my turn I would fail in my duty to Him, I would break His commandments. From the second the notion came, I knew I should obey; though it puzzled me to hear what seemed to be the Tempter's voice speaking for the second time today with the voice of God. To give the Right every chance, and as a sop to fear, I would count a slow and impartial thirty-seven. If at the end of my count the desire to sin was still there, I should have no choice but to obey: the deed must have been predestined, foreordained. Slowly I counted, trying desperately not to influence the decision, and keeping an even balance between wickedness and fear: ... thirty-five ... thirty-six ... thirty-seven. Yes. The idol still leered invitation; worship him I must. Yet fear numbed me as I sank on my knees; so I made this pitiful pretence, that I was only pretending to do it, not really performing idolatry, but just making believe that I was. (In a way this was true.)
Aloud I piped feebly in faint shameful voice: "O-o-o-o Benamuckee," but dare not face the idol yet. In my heart I screamed, "O God, God, I'm not doing thisreally. Strike me not dead, show no vengeance, spare me, O Lord. 'Tis all make-believe, that I'm worshiping this idol. Thou knowest it. Spare me, spare me!" Every second I expected some dread sign, waited God's stroke. Surely it must come. Here was I—a Christian child, Saint of Saints, dedicated to preach the gospel to the heathen, who in their blindness bowed down to wood and stone—doing the self-same thing, and with no blindness for an excuse. Jehovah would bare His terrible right arm in one swift gesture of supreme revenge—lightning, thunder-bolt, death—only let the stroke come quickly! I waited through a moment of abject fear. Nothing happened; nothing. Was God—? I dare not ask myself the question I dared not formulate.
The first moment passed. I grew less fearful. I grew bold. I felt confident in the instinct that had prompted me, morbidly delighted with the quality of my sin, mighty in its importance and in my own. I felt I was the central spot inthe universe: all the worlds were standing still to gaze upon my wickedness. God did nothing. He gave no sign. I took courage; I abandoned all pretence that I was pretending, and flung myself prostrate on the carpet.
"O-o-o-o-Benamuckee! O-o-o-o-Benamuckee!" with all the fervour of true prayer.
Still no sign. By now I was not afraid, but rather disappointed. Why had the Omniscient and Omnipotent left me unpunished, unreproved, unscathed? Swiftly the answer rushed to my brain—I counted a desperate thirty-seven, but the notion stuck—He gave no heed because He so utterly despised me. He saw nothing in me but a miserable play-acting little worm, too mean even for punishment. It was true, and in the same moment I despised myself. "O-o-o-o" died lamely on my lips. As I got up from my knees I dared not look around me for fear some one was watching my folly and shame. Had anybody seen? And what harm had I done to Aunt Jael, the source of all my misery, the real author of all my folly? None. First by going into a house of idolatry, and now by performing it myself, I was wreaking no hurt on her, while imperilling my own eternal soul. I was a fool.