We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.For there they that carried us away captive required of usa song; and they that wasted as required of us mirth, saying,Sing us one of the songs of Zion.How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.For there they that carried us away captive required of usa song; and they that wasted as required of us mirth, saying,Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
I finished the psalm and then tried to sing my hymn as I had promised my Grandmother, but I could not. My heart and my voice failed me:How could I sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
I awoke next morning, refreshed, to see the bright sun shining in. I did not know the time, as nobody had called me, and I had no watch. Just as I had finished dressing, a clock outside struck, the same clock as the night before. I counted; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven—on the eighth stroke I went downstairs. I'll be punctual, I said to myself. Uncle Simeon, Aunt Martha and Albert were already at the table. I looked at the timepiece; it marked nearly a quarter after the hour! Yet last evening it had tallied with the chime outside. Aunt Martha and I exchanged a brief matutinal peck; I found it easier, after the first effort the night before, to keep away from Uncle Simeon. "Good morning, Uncle," was all I said.
"Good morning," he replied, with a new touch of spite and venom in his whispering honeyed voice. "Not a good start, young woman. One said eight punctual for breakfast. 'Tis now fourteen minutes past."
"I came down the second the clock outside struck the hour. Last night it was the same time exactly. One of them must have gone wrong all of a sudden, or been altered perhaps."
"Altered? So you hint that this clock has been deliberately changed?" (I never thought of this till he suggested it, but then I knew; his shifty eyes betrayed him.) "One is not used to that sort of hint, and one has a way of dealing with it, a certain way."
I began my bowl of porridge. Meanwhile Uncle Simeon and Albert were beginning their eggs, and as soon as I had emptied my porringer, I looked around for mine. There was no egg within sight. I waited; none appeared. I plucked up my courage to ask.
"When is my egg coming, Aunt Martha?" There was a dead silence. Aunt Martha went red in the face, and lookeduncomfortable. Uncle Simeon broke the silence. He looked hard at me, though never into my eyes.
"When is your egg coming? It isnotcoming. In one's house little girls are not pampered. They do not live on rich, unhealthy foods, nor wear sumptuous apparel. They do not lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches until a late hour, nor eat the lambs out of the flock, nor the calves out of the midst of the stall. They do not live in kings' houses; they live at Number One the Quay, Torribridge; under this Christian, if humble, roof. They eat humble Christian fare, and thank our Lord for it in a humble Christian way. If a fine generous bowl of porridge does not suffice, there is always plenty of good, plain bread. Your Aunt will give you as many crusts as you can wisely eat."
So I was to be starved, and preached at in my starvation! He was going to make sure of his eight shillings' worth. I felt red with anger, but held my tongue, schooled to silence by ten years of Aunt Jael. Aunt Martha looked ashamed of his meanness, but was far too weak to fight it. What will she ever had was stamped out of her on her wedding-day, poor wretch. Albert, dull, greedy little beast, gloated coarsely over my discomfiture, his tongue (all yellow with egg) hanging out of his mouth. Uncle Simeon tried to disguise his triumph under his usual loathsome mask of meekness, or perhaps he felt that he had gone too far too soon.
"Come, come! One is forgiving, one can be generous, merciful," and handed me the little top of his egg slit off by his breakfast knife.
This was adding insult to injury. Tears of anger stood in my eyes, but I managed to get out a calm "No, thank you," which enabled him to write to my Grandmother, I afterwards found, that "the little one refuses even part of an egg for her breakfast."
After breakfast came prayers. He whined where Aunt Jael thundered. Then came lessons with Albert and Aunt Martha. The former was stupid to a degree; the latter was very interesting to me, after my years of Miss Glory, especially in the French, to which I took at once. Dinner consisted of an interminable grace, three times as long as Grandmother's longest, and a tiny portion of hash. For "afters" there was aroly-poly pudding, quite plain, with no lovely hot jam worked in between the folds. Uncle Simeon and Albert had cold raspberry jam with theirs, out of a jar on the table. Aunt Martha and I did not. Manifestly the womenfolk at Number One the Quay did not live in Kings' houses, if the males did. Uncle Simeon was the King and Albert the King's son. My slice, the nasty dry bit at the end, was not four mouthfuls. He served everything.
After dinner Albert and I were sent out for a walk together.
"Where are we going to?" I asked.
"Where I like," was the reply, in a sulky voice, ruder than he dared use before his father. "And look here you, learn at the start, when you go walks with me you'll do what I tell you. And if you see me doing aught as I choose to, and there's any sneaking—I've got a fist you know."
The little brute lowered. I wondered what the dark things he hinted at might be; pitch-and-toss with boon companions of a like age, I afterwards discovered. Anyway, his hand too was against me: I was a young Hagar. For tea I had a bit of plain bread and a mug of hot milk and water, though Uncle Simeon and Albert had butter and whortleberry jam with their bread, and tea to drink. Afterwards I worked at the morning's lessons, sums and grammar andje donne, tu donnes, il donne. Then knitting—grey woollen socks for Brethren missionaries—evening prayers—my own bedside devotions—and bed.
All days were much like the first one, when not worse. It was the most miserable period of my life. Soon the daily round at Bear Lawn became almost cheerful in my memory. I was wretchedly underfed; though I sometimes lost appetite, and could not even eat the scanty fare he allowed me. When I left food on my plate, unlike Aunt Jael he did not force me. Rather he made it a good excuse for saying I had more to eat than I needed. My morning porridge was what I liked best, and one day I said so. "Ah, gluttony!" he cried, and snatched my porringer, pouring off the milk and scraping the brown sugar on to his own plate; "Whosoever lusteth after her victuals, the same is lost. Ah, to make one's belly one's God, 'tis a sin before the Most High!"
A starvation day in the attic was a favourite punishment, as it combined economy with cruelty. At times I should have fainted away half-famished but for what Aunt Martha privily conveyed me.
Three evil passions, I soon found, held pride of place in Uncle Simeon; meanness, greed and cruelty. Sometimes, if at a meal-time Aunt Martha went into the kitchen for a moment, he would get up with a cat-like speed, scrape all the butter off her slice of bread-and-butter, and spread it on his own piece. Aunt Martha said nothing, to such depths of fear and obedience can women sink; though she flushed the first time she saw thatIsaw this husbandly deed. He was too mean to keep a servant; helped once a week by a charwoman, a tall funereal Exclusive Sister named Miss Woe. Aunt Martha did all the work of a house twice the size of Bear Lawn.
Cruelty came nearest to his heart. He flogged me brutally. The first time the trouble began over a letter, a few days only after I arrived at Torribridge. He came into the dining-room, sniffing spitefully. I knew something was afoot by the look of mean anticipated triumph in his eyes. He held out a letter for my inspection, placing his thumb over the name of the person to whom it was addressed. I could read "1, The Quay, Torribridge"; the handwriting was my Grandmother's.
"'Tisa letter from my Grandmother," I cried, "a letter for me."
"A letter from your dear Grannie, true, true; but who said it was for you? Who said that? ha! ha!"
"It is, I know it is. Give it me, please."
Sniffing and sneering, he handed it across. There was "Miss Mary Lee" true enough; but the envelope had been opened.
"'Tismine then; who opened it?"
"Who opened it? One who will open every letter that comes if one chooses, in accordance with your dear Great-Aunt's wishes."
"It's not true. I'm ten years old. Can't I open my own letters from my own Grandmother? She's my only friend in the world. It's not true."
"Have a care what you say, young miss, have a care. There is another little friend for you in the drawing-room. You shall be introduced at once."
I followed him upstairs, rabbit-like, not knowing what to expect. He locked the door. "Here is the Little Friend," he said, fetching from a corner a ribbed yellow cane. He gave me a cruel thrashing, clawing my left shoulder and whirling me round and round. The room was enormous; a spacious thrashing place. He hurt me as much as Aunt Jael on a field-day with the ship's rope, but I bawled less; no pain could draw from me the shrieks I knew he longed to hear.
Never more than four or five days passed without his thrashing me. I could review impartially the modes and methods of the two tyrants I knew: Aunt Jael with her stout thorned stick, Uncle Simeon with his lithe ribbed cane. Aunt Jael dealt hard brutal blows, Uncle Simeon sly mean strokes. She hit and banged and bruised. He swished and stung and cut. Hers was the Thud and his the Whirr. Both of them would have been prosecuted nowadays; there was no N.S.P.C.C. then to violate the sacred right of the individual to maltreat his human chattels. Both Great-Aunt and Uncle always left me bruised, and sometimes-bleeding. Yet of the two I dreaded his canings more; because he seemed so much the viler. Not that the dust of the Torribridge beatings formed as it were a halo round the Tawborough ones, not that Aunt Jael's grim masterpieces were becoming a winsome memory, not that a safe distance lent any enchantment to my mental view of her strong right arm. But with a child's instinctive perspicuity, I felt, though I could not have put my feelings into words, that there was some notion with my Great-Aunt beyond mere brutality; some sense of duty, of loyalty to her own Draconian creed. Her Proverbs counselled her thus. Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying—little she spared for mine;—I found it needed loud houseful of crying for briefest moment of sparing. He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes—then indeed was her love for me exceeding great, out-measuring far the love of Paris for Helen for whose sake terrific war was made and Ilion's plains shook with thunder of armed hosts and Troy town fell, or King Solomon's forhis Beloved in the garden of lilies and pomegranates. She thought she was doing her duty.
I knew that Uncle Simeon had no such excuse, and that he was something much worse than Aunt Jael: a coward. He was craven, creeping, caddish. He liked to flog me because I was weak and small and defenceless. His pale face sweated, his eyes lit up with a loathsome triumph, his lips were wet with joy. His cold clammy hands—like wet claws—gripped my shoulder. As evil breeds always evil, his hate bred hate in me: a physical, unhealthy hate I feel to this day, though he is long since gone to his judgment.
I had no friend, no affection, to protect me from this creature or compensate me for his presence. Aunt Martha, in whom her mother's gentleness ran to feebleness, was sometimes petulant, often kind (if she dared), and always null. With Albert, except on walks, I had little to do. Sometimes he bullied me, or spat or cursed at me, when there was nobody about. At times he was bearable, because too idle to be anything else. I missed my Grandmother terribly, whom I saw through this dark atmosphere as a very angel of kindness.
Life was even now more monotonous than at Bear Lawn, except for the daily walks: there were no changes, no variety, no visitors. Once indeed Mr. Nicodemus Shufflebottom, who had been ministering on Lord's Day to the Torribridge Exclusive Saints, and had missed the last conveyance back to Tawborough, was reluctantly put up for the night by Uncle Simeon. The ill-concealed tortures the latter endured at beholding the egg and bacon Aunt Martha had the temerity to put before Mr. Nicodemus for his breakfast, was a delight that stands fresh in my memory today.
On Sundays the week's monotony was hardly broken by the Meeting, a dull funereal affair, with none of the godly enthusiasm of our Great Meeting. Some ten dull or consumptive-looking creatures attended. Uncle Simeon was the one High Priest: he did fifty per cent of the praying, seventy-five per cent of the exposition, chose and called out almost all the hymns, and always took and "apportioned" the offertory. Nobody else counted for anything. I can just recall one Brother Atonement Gelder, who sniffled richly throughout the service in away that reminded me of oysters. I see, vaguely, aBrother Berry; and, more vaguely, a Brother Smith. They are shadows; the Meeting never filled a place in my life as at Tawborough. I remember more clearly Uncle Simeon's long sticky half-whispered supplications to the Lord, and one particular hymn we droned out every Lord's Day:
Come to the ark! come to the ark!Oh come, oh come away!The pestilence walks forth by nightThe arrow flies by day.Come to the ark!the waters rise,The seas their billows rear:While darkness gathers o'er the skiesBehold a refuge near.Come to the ark!all—all that weepBeneath the sense of sin;Without, deep calleth unto deep,But all is peace within.Come to the ark!ere yet the floodYour lingering steps oppose!Come, for the door which open stood,Is now about to close.
Come to the ark! come to the ark!Oh come, oh come away!The pestilence walks forth by nightThe arrow flies by day.
Come to the ark!the waters rise,The seas their billows rear:While darkness gathers o'er the skiesBehold a refuge near.
Come to the ark!all—all that weepBeneath the sense of sin;Without, deep calleth unto deep,But all is peace within.
Come to the ark!ere yet the floodYour lingering steps oppose!Come, for the door which open stood,Is now about to close.
Most of the hymns were in the old London Hymn Book we used at Tawborough, so I could join in the singing from the very first. It pained me to hear the thin peevish rendering the Torribridge Exclusives gave ofHe sitteth o'er the water-floods, or their pale piping of Brother Briggs' stentorian favouriteI hear the Accuser Roar. Aunt Martha and I squeaked feebly, Brother Atonement Gelder sniffled in tune, and Uncle Simeon whispered the words to himself with his eye in godly thankfulness turned heavenward. We stood up for the hymns; it is the only Meeting—but one—at which I have known this done. We worshipped in a dark stuffy little room behind a baker's shop. Aunt Martha scarcely spoke to the other Saints or they to her.
My one idea was to get back to Bear Lawn. Aunt Jael said I was to live here for at least one year, and for three if it proved satisfactory—satisfactory to her. I was to have one holiday in Tawborough each year; but not till the first year was out. Grandmother had said she would come oversometimes; I knew that Uncle Simeon was not eager to have her and would find excuses for delaying her visits. Could I abide it for a year? Fear and ill-usage and hunger were worrying me into a state of all-the-time nervousness and wretchedness beyond what I had ever experienced. How could I tell Grandmother this, and how much I wanted to come back to her? He read all my letters, and I knew she would disapprove if I tried to write without his knowing. What should I do? Counting the days and crossing them off each night on the wall-almanac in my bedroom might help to make them pass more quickly.
After all Aunt Jael was no magnet drawing me back to Tawborough. If life was worse here with him, it was bad enough there with her. Life was a wretched business altogether. Still, Uncle Simeon was worse than Aunt Jael, and if the walks and fresh air I got here compensated for the better food at Bear Lawn, my Grandmother weighed down the balance overwhelmingly in favour of the latter. Imustget back. But how? I was ignorant and inexperienced beyond belief. I first thought of just leaving the house one day, and running back to Tawborough. I could manage the nine miles from one door to the other,—but the doors! I already felt Uncle Simeon's claws dragging me in as I sought to cross his threshold, and Aunt Jael's heavy hand on my shoulder at the other end if ever I should reach it. If I dared to run away, even if not sent back to worse days here, I could see a bad time of punishment and wrath ahead at Bear Lawn. It would be jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire, bandying myself between the thorned stick and the ribbed cane, escaping from unhappiness to unhappiness. It was hell here, and near it there—hell everywhere. If my face was as disagreeable as my heart was bitter and wretched, I must have looked a dismal little fright. Albert assured me that I did.
Uncle Simeon did not improve on closer acquaintance; nor on closer reflection did my chance of foregoing that acquaintance improve. Just as he abandoned all pretence of being kind and affable, so I began to abandon all hope of getting back to Tawborough for the present. How could I escape him? gave place to: How could I harm him?
I soon came to see that he was in constant fear of something. Slight sounds and movements would make him start. Sometimes when we were talking he would slink away suddenly as though to reassure himself that all was well in some other part of the house. Could I somehow expose him, triumph over him?
In those days Torribridge Quay, though much decayed, was far livelier than it is today; the river-side was dark with masts, and you could still see the serried line of brown sails: trading ships that plied the routes to the Indies and the two Americas. Number One was a substantial square-looking house hard by the bridge. It was dark, darker even than No. 8 Bear Lawn and very much bigger. The house had belonged to Uncle Simeon's brother, and came to him when the brother died. On the ground floor were three big living rooms—in only one of which we lived. The first floor contained a gloomy sort of drawing-room of enormous dimensions, known to me as the thrashing-room, and five bedrooms. Three of these were large, one being occupied by Uncle Simeon and Aunt Martha, and the other two permanently untenanted. Two smaller bedrooms were used respectively by Albert and myself. Two narrow staircases led to the garrets, the front one to "my" attic (I call it such because I was locked therein not less than three times a week), a small bare apartment with one window, so high in the wall that I could barely see out of it even when standing on tip-toe; the back one to Uncle Simeon's "study." Here he concocted potions if any of us were ill, and here for long hours at a stretch he studied the Word of God. Sometimes he spentwhole days there, descending only for meals. This back staircase to the second storey was from the first forbidden to me, forbidden in so marked and threatening a manner as to arouse my curiosity. It was on my second or third day that he found me loitering about near the foot of it. He came upon me suddenly in his carpet-slipper way. I started. He started too.
"Ifone were to find you where one forbids you to go"—he looked expressively up the narrow staircase—"if—well, one thinks it would be better not."
His words had, of course, the opposite effect to that he intended. I determined to risk a rush up this staircase. There were difficulties. I was never alone in the house, and the creaky uncarpeted floor would be sure to give me away. My strong impulse towards obedience, whether the fruits of a nine-year-long régime of thorned stick, or of natural instinct, or both, also counselled leaving well alone. Again, fear was a deterrent, especially when I found that he was watching me; though this stimulated curiosity as well as fear. For some days the battle, Curiosity versus Fear, raged within me: a passion of curiosity as to the mystery of the forbidden room, a lively sense of what Uncle Simeon's mood and methods would be like if he caught me there.
One day I plucked up courage for an attempt. I took off my shoes and tip-toed upstairs. The old stairs creaked villainously. To every creak corresponded a twinge of fear in my heart; I waited each time to see if anything had been heard. At last I reached the top in safety. The key was in the lock inside the door, so I could see nothing. It was some seconds before I realized the fact that the key was inside proved that Uncle Simeon was probably there! For a moment I stood petrified with fear. As he did not seem to have heard me, however, a swift descent was my best policy.
It was some days before I recovered enough spirit to make a second attempt: one afternoon, after tea, when Uncle Simeon was out. This time there was no key in the door, but it was too dark to see much. All I could make out was a big square box, painted dark green, straight ahead of the key-hole—a safe, though I did not know it—and, by peering up, a dark thing which looked like a big hole in the top of the wall. This was disappointing; next day I seized anopportunity of going up earlier. I could see the big green box quite clearly, and could confirm my idea that the black thing was a large square hole in the wall. There was nothing more to be seen, and I returned for a cautious descent. But my feet refused to move.
There at the foot of the narrow staircase was the white leering face. I was caught, without escape or excuse.
I stood still with fright, waiting for him to say something, to come up to the little landing on which I stood, to touch me, maul me, strike me. He slunk up the stairs. While he came along, smiling, smiling, I stood numbed and helpless. We were the cowering hypnotized rabbit and the sure triumphant serpent. But no, as he came nearer I saw that his face bespoke anything but triumph. There was the same fear and anxiety I had noticed on the first day, and in addition a queerer look I seemed to remember in some more poignant though less definite way. That half-hunted half-hunter look, sneer of triumph distorted by fear, what was it? What string of my memory did it touch? As he reached the top I saw he was sweating with fright, and his fear assuaged mine. I was by now excited rather than frightened, and puzzled even more. He peered into my face. It was an unpleasant moment, quite alone with him on that tiny lonely landing at the top of the house. I feared I did not know what. He clawed my shoulder.
"Trapped, young miss, trapped. One will bear with much, but with disobedience never" (a sniff). "If this should happen again,—but ha! ha! one has something, something very sure, that will prevent that. Something that stings and cuts and curls, ha! ha! Something worse than one's poor mere cane."
"What?" I said faintly.
"A whip," he whispered. As my fear grew, so his lessened. Then the queer unremembered look came to his face again, and he changed his tone completely. His grasp of my shoulder was transformed from a menace into a coax.
"Well, well, we will say no more about it, we will say no more about.We," he repeated meaningly. (With anybody else I should not have noticed the word, which fell strangely from his lips. "Onewill say no more," was hisnatural phrase.) "If you hold your tongue and don't tell your Aunt Martha I found you here—there'll be no flogging." It was a tacit pact. He descended the staircase, and I followed him.
I thought perhaps I might learn something by pumping Albert.
"What is there in your father's study?" I asked him casually on a walk.
"Oh, some old bottles and books; nothing much, father lets me go in sometimes, but there's nothing special to see."
This was a genuinely casual reply. It puzzled me. If the room was so mysterious, why did Uncle Simeon take Albert there, yet forbid me entrance with such obvious fear? "He thinks I'm sharper," I flattered myself. This was true, but it explained very little. My curiosity grew. I rehearsed every detail: the green box, the hole in the wall, Uncle Simeon's original veto, and his extreme fear the day he caught me.
And that look? Where had I seen it? I racked my brains without success. Then one night in bed, with a mad suddenness it flashed into my mind as these things do. It was the self-same look I had noticed at Bear Lawn on Aunt Jael's seventieth birthday when we were talking about his brother and how he died and I had said artlessly: "Perhaps it was Poison?" The expression on his face that day was the same as when he clutched me on the staircase.
The dead brother was part of the same mystery as the attic.
Wild ideas coursed through my head. The so-called study was one vast poison-den. The dead brother's skeleton was lying there, the bones were strewn about the floor. Or he had been pushed through the strange black hole in the wall—where did that hole lead to? or his body had been squashed into the green box.
I resolved to raise the poison topic in front of him, and to watch the effect. I would mention it as though quite by accident, and look as artless as I could. Necessity which sharpens all things, had equipped me with a special cunning to achieve the chief aim of my existence: the smallest possible number of beatings. But all my cunning never reduced the least little bit in the world my extreme timidity.Thus while I was quite equal to preparing beforehand a seemingly offhand question for Uncle Simeon as to Poison, I quailed at the thought of actually putting it. I simply dared not talk to him direct, nor should I be able to look at him so closely if I did. I decided to introduce the topic to Aunt Martha one day when he should also be present. Should I begin talking about the dead brother, or more specifically about poisoning? The latter was more difficult to introduce, but a more crucial test. How could I begin a conversation about poison? I prepared a hundred openings, none of which seemed natural. As usual the opportunity came unexpectedly. Thanks to my scheming I was not quite unprepared.
One evening Uncle Simeon was sitting at the dining-room table reading the Word, while Aunt Martha was discoursing to me on God's Plan of Salvation, exhorting me to repentance while it was not yet too late. "Ah, how great is the likelihood of hell for every one of us! For you, my child, it is woefully great. You, who have been brought up in the glory of the Light, who have communed from your earliest days with the Saints—"
"The Saints, my dear?" sniffed Uncle Simeon, "one would hardly saytheSaints. To be sure there are many true and earnest believers like your dear mother and dear Miss Vickary amongst them; yet the Open Brethren are for the most part but weak vessels. Only we of the Inner Flock are truly entitled to be calledtheBrethren,theSaints. But proceed, my dear."
"Well, my dear, though your uncle is of course right, none will deny that you have had more light shed upon your path than many poor little children. Think of the little black children out in Africa and India, think even of the little ones in England who have Methodist or Churchgoing or Romanish fathers and mothers. Unless you are saved, what will you do if the Lord takes you suddenly? Are you ready to face Him? Are you ready to die? There are many, you know, whom the Lord calls away very, very suddenly. Today they are, tomorrow they are not. One moment healthy and strong, the next white and stark. The Lord takes them in an instant—"
"Like Uncle Simeon's brother," I broke in. "Didn't the Lord take him very suddenly?"
I managed to keep my voice steady and to watch him while pretending I was not. He tried to pretend he was not watching me. Whether I betrayed my excitement I do not know.Hewas certainly uneasy.
"Yes, my child, the Lord took him in a moment. It was never known of what disease he went." She spoke in her usual lifeless way. She suspected nothing.
"Perhaps his heart?" I said learnedly. It was a favourite ailment of Miss Salvation Clinker's; 'er 'eart. "Or perhaps he had eaten something that was not good for him, too much laver or some mussels or periwinkles, maybe?" Here again my dietetic insight was based on Miss Salvation's lore. I was killing time while I summoned up courage for the crucial word—"or—or—took something that poisoned him?"
The word was out and it had gone home. He did not scold me as he ordinarily would have done for talking so much. I saw him looking sickly and frightened by the glare of the lamp by which he was pretending to read. Then he got up hurriedly and left the room.
I began to rack my brains for some more ordinary remarks to cover my retreat. Aunt Martha saved me the trouble. "Poison," she said, "nonsense, most likely heart failure."
"Yes," I replied, "Miss Salvation Clinker says all sudden deaths come from heart failure."
"All sudden deaths come because the Lord calls," she corrected. "The Lord called him, that was all. If He callsyou, be ready."
What I had so far discovered came to this: first, that talk of his brother's death brought a queer look to Uncle Simeon's face; second, that if you spoke of poison there was the same look; third, that it was one and the same with the expression on his face the day he caught me outside his study door. In my heart I had already charged him with the worst of all crimes. I was determined by hook or crook to get into that study; to solve that mystery, which had the shadow of death—and of Uncle Simeon—upon it.
This was about the end of August 1859. Then for a few weeks a happier interest came into my life. But here again the shadow of Uncle Simeon interposed, and darkened the happy dream.
Uncle Simeon did not allow me to go for walks alone. Albert, however, who was my usual companion, got into the habit of leaving me as soon as we were away from the Quay, with a curt intimation to clear off in another direction and to meet him later at a given place and time so that we might return to the house together.
One fine day in early Autumn, I climbed to the top of one of the hills that looks down on Torribridge: a picture made up of white houses, shining river, old bridge, green bosomy hills sloping down to the stream, and over them all the sun. The scene was pleasing, yet it meant very little to me. There was the sun in my blood, and a young creature's delight in the fine bright day, and in the feeling of space and power that you may feel in high clear places; no more than that. There was no conscious enjoyment of the loveliness beneath me. The joy that beautiful scenery can give to the soul I did not know. Children, like animals, do not feel it. This emotion comes from books, pictures and art generally. As to romantic little boys who draw, or say they draw, their deepest emotions from Nature's well—if so, it must be because they are learned little boys who, taught by the magical words of fine books that Nature is beautiful, have turned to her to find it true.
The sounding cataractHaunted me like a passion: the tall rock,The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,Their colours and their forms, were then to meAn appetite; a feeling and a love,That had no need of a remoter charm,By thought supplied, nor any interestUnborrowed from the eye ... a sense sublimeOf something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;A motion and a spirit, that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things.
The sounding cataractHaunted me like a passion: the tall rock,The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,Their colours and their forms, were then to meAn appetite; a feeling and a love,That had no need of a remoter charm,By thought supplied, nor any interestUnborrowed from the eye ... a sense sublimeOf something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;A motion and a spirit, that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things.
Wordsworth (that lost soul) felt those things and described them in authentic terms. He could do this because he was not an ordinary, but a very extraordinary, child of the mountains. How many shepherd boys sallying forth at dawn with their flocks up the Stye or along the Little Langdale are haunted "like a passion" by the natural beauties they see? They do not share the poet's emotions because they know nothing of the lovely words and pictures and ideas that can invest poor Nature with romance.
In any case, I was neither a romantic nor a learned little boy, but a very ignorant and unromantic little girl. It was only when I became suddenly a little less ignorant of books, history and ideas, that I came to see—where before there was at most a vague unconscious sense of pleasure—that Torribridge town seen from the hills was a fair prospect.
This is how it happened.
I was leaning on a stile, idly looking down towards the far-away bridge and trying to count the arches.
"Fine!" said a quiet voice behind me.
I started, turned round, and beheld a stranger looking down at me. He was a tall young man of perhaps twenty; his face pale and rather thin. His eyes peered. A proud mouth contrasted with earnest eyes. He wore breeches and carried a gun. Half squire, half scholar; something of the studious, the aristocratic and sporting all combined. All I was sure of just then was a pair of kind brown eyes which I immediately and favourably contrasted with the steel-blue glitter of Uncle Simeon's, and something exquisite and somehow superior to myself in their owner. I had an unerring instinct of class inferiority: I knew my betters.
"Fine, isn't it?" repeated the Stranger.
"Ye-es," I said. I thought him a bit silly, and felt sillier myself.
"It's a fine sight," he said, leaning against the stile by my side. "Isn't it, little girl? Come, say Yes."
The enthusiasm I failed to understand made me combative. "What's the good of it?" I said tartly. "It hasn't a soul."
The Stranger stared. He was surprised—or amused—I was not sure which.
"Hasn't a soul! This little town that has nestled there for a thousand years, from the days when the Vikings first sailed up the Torridge till the days when the New World was found, when ships sailed forth to the Indies from that quay there and came back laden with gold and wonderful spices? This little town we're looking at now that sent many ships to the Armada and hundreds more to harry the Spaniards on all the seas? Hasn't a soul, little girl! Are you sure?"
"I didn't know all that; I have never heard of all those things and people. There's Robinson Crewjoe, who sailed away to the Indies and lived on an island, that Aunt Jael wouldn't let Mrs. Cheese finish telling me about. Did he sail from here?"
"I'm not sure, but plenty of people like him did."
"And what's the Vikings and the Great Armada? I've heard of the Great Leviathan. Is that the same?"
"Not quite. Most little girls have heard of these things. It's very strange you know nothing about them. Don't you go to school?"
"I did when I lived in Tawborough with my Grandmother and Aunt Jael: I went to Miss Glory Clinker's. But now I'm in Torribridge I do lessons at home with Aunt Martha."
"Well, hasn't either the lady with the peculiar name or your aunt ever taught you any history?"
"History? All about Saul and David and Solomon and Ahab?"
"Yes, but there's other history; the history of Torribridge for instance, and of England; the History of the Armada we have just been talking about."
"Why: didyoulearn about those things at school?"
"Yes. I do still."
"But you don't go to school still?"
"I do."
"But you're grown up."
"Well, I go to a school for grown-ups, don't you see?"
"I've never heard of one. Where is it?"
"In an old city a long way from here called Oxford."
"Oxford! Why I've heard of some one who's there. Do you know Lord Tawborough?"
The Stranger started.
"I do—well; very well. What doyouknow about him?"
"I know he was there at Oxford, that's all; I heard my Grandmother say so. What's he like?"
"That's rather a hard question, young woman."
"Well, is he like you?"
The Stranger smiled.
"Something like me perhaps; about the same age."
"Does he know about the Armada and all these wonderful things you've told me about?"
"Yes, I expect so, I expect he does, and"—he switched away from Lord Tawborough—"you must learn about them too. You shall read about them in a book I'm going to give you."
"A book? What do you mean? My Grandmother would not let me read any book but the Word, nor would Uncle Simeon. Torribridge doesn't come into the Bible, nor do the Vikings nor the Armada, because I've read it all through five times and I would remember the names."
He smiled; it was a kind smile, yet quizzical. I liked him, but was not quite sure of him. I went on a little less confidingly.
"All other books except the Bible are full of lies. Aunt Jael says so."
This was final. How loyally I quoted Aunt Jael! Sure weapon with which to combat error. I knew I was a little boorish; perhaps I meant to be.
"Well," said the Stranger, "your Grandmother and Uncle Simeon would let you read this book, I know, and as it's all quite true, Aunt Jael won't mind either. We will go down into the town and buy it."
I was proud of his company, proud of his voice, his face, his breeches, his gun, which conferred distinction upon me. I apprehended that there was something odd or special about me that amused him. He liked me and I liked him. He was from a kinder handsomer world than mine. His face was a new treasure in my heart.
I refused to go into the book-shop with him, partly through fear of being seen by Uncle Simeon, partly as a concession toConscience. If I was going to read a worldly book at least I would not go into the evil place where it was sold. He came out and thrust a parcel into my hand. "Good-bye. Meet me on the hill some other day and tell me if you are still quite sure."
"Thank you, Sir. Sure of what?"
"That Torribridge hasn't a soul!"
I stuffed the book into my blouse and rushed to the meeting-place Albert had fixed. I was half an hour late and he swore at me. When we got home, I put the parcel still unwrapped under the mattress. This was a safe place, as I made my own bed; I must wait to begin reading till the morning. If I were to begin tonight Uncle Simeon would see the light under the door and come in to complain of the waste of candles. So I resolved to wake early.
Next morning I woke at five o'clock and undid my parcel. The book was a dark red one. On the cover was printed in gold letters "WESTWARD HO!" It was as big as an average Bible, but not so thick. The moment I opened it, I was struck by the scent of the new pages. All smells are indescribable, though smell aids the memory and quickens the imagination as much as any other sense. To this day, it is by digging my nose between those pages that I can best recall the sentiment of forty years ago: the pleasure of talking with the Stranger, the first wild rapture of reading.
I began to read. Here was Torribridge, a place I knew and lived in, described in print. I had read no other book but the Bible, which was so familiar as to have become part of myself, part of my life, something more than any book. Then, too, its glamour was of far-away folk and lands, holy places and holy people. The fact that now for the first time I saw printed words about seen and homely places—that I read of Torridge instead of Jordan, of Torribridge instead of Nineveh, of little oak ships that sailed from Tawborough Bay instead of great arks of cedar wood that went forth from Tyre and Sidon—gave me a new and exciting sensation very hard to describe. In the degree that the little Devonshire town was less sacred than the Holy City of Mount Zion, so it seemed to my eager eyes more wonderful to read about.
"All who have travelled through the delicious scenery ofNorth Devon, must needs know the little white town of Torribridge, which slopes upwards from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and many-arched old bridge where salmon wait for autumn floods, towards the pleasant upland on the west. Above the town the hills close in, cushioned with deep oak woods, through which juts here and there a crag of fern-fringed slate; below they lower, and open more and more in softly-rounded knolls, and fertile squares of red and green, till they sink into the wide expanse of hazy flats, rich salt marshes, and rolling sand-hills, where Torridge joins her sister Taw, and both together flow quickly toward the broad surges of the bar, and the everlasting thunder of the long Atlantic swell. Pleasantly the old town stands there, beneath its soft Italian sky, fanned day and night by the fresh ocean breeze which forbids alike the keen winter frosts, and the fierce thunder heats of the midland; and pleasantly it has stood there for now, perhaps, eight hundred years since the first Grenville cousin of the Conqueror, returning from the conquest of South Wales, drew round him trusty Saxon serfs, and free Norse rovers with their golden curls, and dark Silurian Britons from the Swansea shore...."
That afternoon I climbed the hill again, and saw for the first time something of the romance of the little white town; the bright roofs, the line of masts and great brown sails in the harbour, the old bridge, the yellow sands, the fields green golden or red with pasture harvest or loam, the dark velvet forests, deep blue sky and quiet silver river. I could imagine now the fierce Atlantic not far away, to which the gentle stream was flowing. I saw that it was beautiful, in the same way that the lilies and roses in Solomon's Song are beautiful; or Heaven in Revelation, the city of jasper and pure gold, that has set in its midst the great white throne. This change was wrought by a book. My Grandmother's oft-repeated words that the salvation of God could only have been revealed in the Book came into my mind.
When I came to the story proper of men who sailed