CHAPTER XVIII: NEW YEAR'S NIGHT

Hark the herald angels si-ingGlory to the new-born King—

For an instant he was unnerved, but for an instant only, and with

Peace on earth and mercy mi-ild

the first stroke of the whip fell across my back.

The memory comes back to me in nightmare. I see the honey-yellow face ghastly against the growing darkness of the room. I see the coarse little brute gloating on the bed. I see the young prisoner at the bed-post flushed with rage and pity, biting his lips manfully. I hear the voices of the singers out on the Quay mocking me with merry Christmas hymns. To this day I can never hear the opening notes of The Herald Angels without starting back, and living over again for a moment all the horror. For all my fear and bodily agony, I would not cry out. I would not give Robbie the pain nor Uncle Simeon the pleasure. The whip tore my legs and body and back. I bled all over. He thrashed me till I was faint with pain; till he could thrash no longer. Then he kicked me and I fell half-dazed to the ground, where as a final tribute from his humble if Christian person he spat in my face. As I lay I heard vaguely the singers outside. The voices now seemed dreamlike and far-away in their last triumphant unison:

Mild he lays His glory by-y,Born that man no more may di-ie,Born to raise the sons of earth,Born to-o give them second birth.Hark, the Herald Angels sing,Glory-y to the new-born-king!

In the following silence I heard his voice, far away too it seemed. "Yes, you'd better go at once; dear Mr. Vivian Fortescue would not have you stay another day to be so corrupted."

I felt another kick. "Come, up with you now to bed."

I rose painfully, but was too weak to stand, and tumbled. Albert guffawed. At last I got up and crept to the door.

"Good night," he smiled. "Bid us good night, if you please. Let there be no malice, no evil rage in your heart, for thislittleforetasteof correction. Let there be no evil spirit of revenge. One harbours none oneself. One forgives, forgives freely. Later on when Master Robert is gone away one maybeginto think of the just punishment that is due. One must not shrink, grievously though it pains one. It is the Lord's will, and His will be done. One forgives you, my child, forgives you freely, despite all the wickedness and trouble you have brought into the house. One forgives, yet one must punish."

I crawled upstairs to my bedroom. I had only my vest to take off—or tear off, for it was stuck to me with blood. When I was naked I looked at myself by the candle-light in the long wardrobe mirror. My white breastless little body was covered with blood and dark strokes and great weals. I bathed the worst places with the ice-cold water in my basin and then rubbed in plenty of the mixed whitening with which Grandmother had supplied me. It relieved me a little, and I got into bed.

Soon the door opened. My heart beat fast. It was only Aunt Martha, bringing my Christmas supper. Not flap-dragons, nor raisins nor almond paste; just a small basin of mutton gruel.

"I'm sorry you've been so naughty, child, and have had to be corrected."

She produced two apples craftily from her pocket, put them on the bedside pedestal with the gruel, and went out. I did not touch them. I was too sick and wretched to eat.

Nor could I sleep. The long night began; pain, hate and wretchedness possessed me, first one more than another, and each in turn. My rough woollen nightgown chafed my sores; the bed, which was never a soft one, hurt me everywhere. My whole body smarted and ached. Why had I to suffer such pain? Why was I starved and bullied and abused and beaten and half-killed? Why had a man, professing to be one of the Lord's own people, the right to flog me so? Oh, the tyrant, I could only hear to think of him by picturing to myself a glorious day when my turn would come, when I would cat-o'-nine-tail him till he fainted and bang his face against a stone wall till his pale features were one red indistinguishable mush.Hate, hate, a bitter ointment, had eased my pain; hate for him, hate for the world, and by silly bitter moments the Devil's temptation to hate God. From hate for the tyrant I came to pity for the victim, which was self-pity, so sweet a misery that it drove away all other trouble. I was the wretchedest of all God's creatures, the wretchedest being since Creation. For me all things were unjust. Robbie and Albert were never treated as I was; in this alone were they alike, and all children save me alike. Every little child I saw in the street was happy, free, well-treated. Every one else had brothers and sisters, and friends—and a mother.

The old new bitterness returned; why had my mother been taken away? She would have protected me and cherished me. I tried to think more clearly than ever before what she would have looked like if still alive; like Grandmother, I fancied, with the same kind gentle face, but taller and younger and warmer. I should have nestled to her bosom, she would have taken me in her arms. I should have comforted her. She would have loved me. The agony of the thought was torture. I needed her to madness. I could lie down no longer. I knelt up in bed and my soul cried out for her. Involuntarily my voice was crying too, "Mother, mother!"

I uttered the words without knowing, as it were, that I spoke; they were wrung from me without my consent; it was my soul not my mind which spoke. And I knew this time that the prayer would be answered; I had the sure supernatural instinct that my mother was coming to me. She had been mouldering in Tawborough graveyard for ten years now, yet I knew she was coming. I did not call again, but waited in intense expectation. I clasped my hands in an agony of hope.

She came. Right up to the bedside she moved in a white robe. She spoke. Her voice seemed nearer to me than if it had been at the bedside; inside me, in my very soul. Mother was with me, in me, around me.

"I am here, Mary, I love you. You want to know that I love you, and I have come to show you that I do."

The darkness was made radiant by the white figure before me. I was bathed in a new presence, and I knew that it was love. I was still kneeling on the bed and my face was on alevel with my mother's. I bent forward to fulfil my supreme need; I went nearer, my arms were closing round her—and she was gone.

My arms closed round empty space. I came back to reality. I was kneeling on the cold bed. And she was gone. The feeling of her presence faded away; the sense of love and comfort was abiding. It abides with me still. I was sad, forlorn, but happy to think she had gone back to heaven, and that she loved me enough to come ten million miles to comfort me. She had shown me the truth of the resurrection, of the immortality of the soul; and something far greater, the truth of love.

Hate, pain and weariness were forgotten in the joy of my mother's love, I nestled in it, sheltered in it, clasped it to me, and soon it was wooing me to sleep.

Then—a soft tread in the room—and I was wide awake in a flash. The moon did not light the corner of the room by the door, but I seemed to see a white figure standing there. Was it my angel mother again?

"Mother," I cried faintly. I did not feel the divine sureness of her presence I had known before. It could not be. Yet I heard the soft tread again. The white form moved nearer.

Uncle Simeon! Pity, pity, he had come to flog me naked, torture me in the darkness, rub salt into my wounds as he had threatened; to kill me. I hid my face under the bedclothes in terror, then withdrew as quickly for fear he would stifle me beneath them. His ghostlike figure was still there. "Mother—God—Jesus!"

"Mary, don't be frightened."

It was Robbie.

Reaction from fear was so strong and overwhelming that for a moment I could not think. The first words I could speak were prompted by the fear that had fled, just as the life that has gone enables a tiger still to spring, though shot through the heart a second before.

"Hush, hush," I whispered. "Don't make a sound. What is it? Why are you here? Think, if he found us! Oh, you frightened me. First, I thought it was Mother, then that it washim."

"Mother?" said Robbie. "Are you dreaming, Mary? Are you awake properly? I've got bare feet, and he can't hearwhispering. Besides he's snoring. I listened outside his door and it's nearly midnight."

"Why have you come?"

"To tell you I'm going away either tomorrow or the day after. He has written to Uncle Vivian's housekeeper, Mrs. Venn, telling her to expect me back straight away; and he has forbidden me to try to see you before I go; dared me to.... This is our only chance, Mary. I overheard him saying that tomorrow morning very early, before breakfast, he's going to lock you in the attic and keep you locked there till after I'm gone away. Well—I came to tell you that—and—to say good-bye." He paused and took courage. "And to tell you that when I'm a man I've made up my mind to come back and beat him till he bleeds as he has made you bleed."

He stopped and waited. I knew what he was waiting for. I trembled, shook like an aspen leaf; my heart, soul, brain, were all aflood with what he longed for me to say.

"Why don't you come nearer?" huskily. He came a little nearer and waited again, pretending, for all the world like a grown human being, that he did not see the invitation he longed for.

"You are cold," I said (truth ready to my hand for use). "Come and lie under the coverlet." The first word over, it was easier.

"It must be hurting you horribly," he said. He stood by the bedside in a last moment of hesitation.

"Come," I repeated. He climbed on the bed beside me. "Yes, it hurts badly. Robbie, come nearer."

Then he put his arms round me; I was half out of the bedclothes; but we were warm together under the coverlet. His curly head touched mine, his soft boyish cheek gently rubbed against my own. This was what he had come to do. This was what I had waited to know.

Here was love again. It was true. It was sweet beyond belief.

That is many years ago. Since then I have known many glorious things. I say still that this moment, when he placed his boyish arms around me, was the holiest and happiest of my life.

I was crying new tears, not of hate nor misery, but joy.Love opens the floodgates; and I was surrounded with love, bathed in it; love in heaven and love on earth; angel mother and human boy. The two little night-gowned bodies lay close together, the two children's hearts beat. In one there was affectionate pity, in the other a wild joy; in both the high happiness of love. This is a joy so pure, that when older we can never know it again. We kissed each other again and again; eagerly, tenderly, wildly. The pent-up passion of my bitter heart poured forth; I strained him tenderly in my arms, he strained me in his. We were happy, far too happy to speak. His eyes were bright and tender, his dear face transfigured. We forgot everything, except that we loved each other.

The church clock sounded midnight.

Robbie broke the silence nervously. "I must go—soon. We shall have to say good-bye, shan't we? It mayn't be safe much longer. Don't forget you must escape from the attic somehow; break the door open or anything. Find out from Mrs. Greeber exactly when I'm going. I thought of your going tonight when I was still here to help you, but you can't; he has bolted all the doors and locked them and taken away the keys. He knew we might try. Oh, how I'll flog him when I grow up."

"He'll be old then, and yellower and wrinkled instead of smooth."

"I don't care. I'll flog him all the same.... Get a screw-driver or something and hide it when you are up in the attic. Then when we're at the station you must break the lock and fly. I'll leave the money under your bedroom carpet in the corner next to the door, let's say four inches in—"

There was a sound; Robbie started up. "Oh, that's only the floor creaking. Still, it's late."

"Don't go, Robbie."

"You know I don't want to, but I'll have to. When I'm older I'm not going to forget. We mayn't meet for years and years, but we shall see each other again somewhere, I know we shall. We must try to remember each other ever so clearly. Isn't there anything we can do to make it seem we're near together when we're really far apart?"

"I know. Every year exactly at this minute, a few minutes after midnight on Christmas night, we'll think hard of eachother, shut our eyes, clench our fists, and think terribly hard. Then it will seem that we're really right by each other; you'll believe I'm in the room with you, and I'll believe you are. I shall wait till just after midnight, then try to think of nothing else in all the world but you. I shall think of you now as you are this minute—kiss me, it will be better to remember by—yes, hard, like that—and then I'll pray 'God, oh God, make Robbie be with me.' He will help it to happen. People who are away from you can be with you like that, even dead people. My mother came tonight. I saw her and she spoke to me. I called out knowing she would come, and she came. You will too. But you must believe with all your heart that it's going to happen; then it will. I shall think you are with me; then you will be. Of course I shall think of you other times, every day I expect, and always when I'm not happy, but only Christmas night in this special way. It's too special to do often. Will you too? Remember, every Christmas night, just after midnight, when you're lying in bed, however far away you are, and every year, always, think with all your soul of me and of our being together just as we are tonight. Then we shall be together again really, so that we shall always know one another whatever happens; always love each other, always be able to kiss. Promise, will you try?"

"Yes, Mary," he whispered.

For another few minutes we lay quietly in each other's arms. We were together that night perhaps one hour in all; an hour in which my whole soul changed. At last he had to go. Though he only whispered, I could hear that the whisper was husky. His little body trembled in my arms.

"Good-night, Mary."

"Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear." I hugged him harder than ever to me. I would not let him go.

Then the good-bye kiss, sweetest of all, too sad for tears. His soft boy's lips brushed mine; it seemed too that they touched the tendrils of my heart and made it blossom like the garden of lilies you read of in Solomon's Song. A spirit of loveliness filled me. He got up; now it was last good-bye. I saw his face for a moment in the beam of moonlight that came slantwise through my window. For many years that vision was the chief treasure I had: a little boy in a long whitenightgown, a head of tousled curls, a bright face flushed with joy and tears, radiant with my embrace, radiant with love for me.

"Good-night, Mary, good-night. I'll never forget you; I'll always love you."

"Good-night, Robbie."

I awoke next morning to see Aunt Martha standing by my bedside.

"You're to get up at once. Your uncle says you are to spend a week in the attic for your naughtiness, so get up and dress quickly. I'll come back to take you in a few minutes. Your uncle says you're to go before breakfast, now, at once, so that you can speak to nobody."

Robbie had heard aright.

I was still very sore; my nightgown stuck to me here and there with dry blood, and hurt me as I tore it off. I dressed, and was ready when Aunt Martha returned. In the grey of a damp winter dawn I followed her upstairs. No one else was stirring. The unused, airless smell of the attic seemed more unpleasant than usual in the cold: an atmosphere at once frozen and stuffy. A mattress had been put on the floor; there were no bedclothes or coverlets. The room was bare except for a few boxes and old picture frames in one corner, the rusty old fender that always stood end upwards against the wall, and one rickety backless old chair.

"Here's a cloak to wrap round you in the night. Your uncle said I wasn't to leave one." She went away.

All day I was left alone. Twice Aunt Martha came up with a bowl of gruel and a dry crust, but (evidently under orders) she said nothing. It was so cold that the cloak could not prevent my getting numbed. I lay huddled up on the mattress all through the day, thinking, thinking, thinking.... Now that the first glow of the Wonder Night had passed away, there came a reaction, and I was gnawing away once more at all my bitter memories and hates. Pain, too, was governing me; my aching body was half numbed with cold, especially my legs and feet, which the cloak was not long enough to cover, huddle as I might. I kept my soul warm—and body too to some degree—by hugging to me the loves that now were mine. I lived the time spent with my mother and with Robbie over andover and over again: every gesture, every kindness, every kiss. For all my unhappiness and physical misery I could never again be so blankly, harbourlessly miserable as before. In my darkest moments I now knew that there were places of comfort to which I could fly.

I wondered what was going on in the house downstairs. It was night-time now; tomorrow morning Robbie would be going and I should be alone with Uncle Simeon. Escape I must. I climbed on to the rickety old chair and opened the skylight window. I looked out and observed that the skylight was of a level piece with the sloping roof. I could see nothing beyond the edge of the roof; the sense of the great drop beyond that edge came to me, and as I pictured myself falling, I shuddered. That way there was no escape.

Then, for one second, as I looked down the sloping roof, came a sudden notion to throw myself over. It was a physical impulse only, and passed as quickly as it came. It would have stayed longer had I been the least bit tempted. But I could never see the sense of suicide. I saw no good in killing myself, because I believed in immortality. By killing myself I should only be ensuring an Eternity in hell instead of an Eternity in heaven. The little boy in one of the new novels makes away with himself because he believes that there is nothing beyond death, and that by killing himself in this world he has killed his soul for ever. If I had believed that I too might have been tempted. But my creed was in immortality, from which there is no escape. Nor had I the physical courage which suicide requires. And it would steal my chance of meeting my mother in the next world and Robbie in this.

I lay down on my mattress, seeking vainly, like a mouse in a trap, some new way of escape. During the first night in that cold dreary attic I slept hardly at all. The rats frightened me; I could not sleep for fear they would crawl over my face once it was still. Surely Robbie would send some sign, some message. None came. Later I must have slept; for again it was Aunt Martha who woke me when she came to bring my "breakfast." She was startled to see how starved with cold I was, and came back with a big warm blanket. It was a brave thing for her to do.

"Robert Grove is going, isn't he?" I asked casually, steadying my voice.

"Your Uncle thought he was going today, but it has been put off till next Tuesday, New Year's Day, when his uncle returns from abroad. Till then your uncle says you must stay here."

There I stayed. Four walls, locked door, and precipitous roof baffled all my notions of escape. The best thing I could think of was a rush for the door when Aunt Martha came with my food; but I saw this would not be much good. She would raise the alarm, and he would catch me before I could get clear of the house.

Five days passed, long, cold and wretched; though with the big blanket, and the forbidden extras Aunt Martha contrived sometimes to convey me with my meals, I managed to keep alive, and kept, in my fashion of health, reasonably well. No message came from Robbie. No doubt Uncle Simeon was watching him day and night. But still—.

I was not sure of the passage of time, but I reckoned one night that it was New Year's Eve. The last night, and still no message. Tomorrow he was going: this time for certain, and for ever; I should be left alone with my tormentor. Half in terror (of Uncle Simeon when he should get me alone), half in hope (of a sign from Robbie), I lay awake through the whole of that night. It struck midnight. The bells rang out; merrily, mockingly. It was New Year's night as I had thought. All over the town people, even Saints, were wishing each other a Happy New Year. The bells were still. I lay awake waiting for something to happen, for I knew it would. All the night-time sounds of an old house were around me. Boards creaked, roof shook, rats scampered. Sometimes I was startled by a metallic sound as a rat scampered over the tin plate on which Aunt Martha brought my bread.

There—that was a new sound! That tapping noise at the door was never a rat. It seemed low down just where a rat might scratch, but that was the rap of human knuckles, faint but unmistakable. Who? Why? I crawled out of the blanket, lay down on the bare boards and whispered under the door.

"Robbie, is that you, Robbie?"

There was no reply except the stealthy sound of somethingbeing pushed under the door. I saw a white thing that looked like a small envelope. I touched it and felt inside the paper a hard round thing. It was the half-sovereign he had promised me.

"Robbie, Robbie, thank you! Are you there? Robbie, Robbie."

There was no reply. I heard cautious footsteps, with a long interval between each, going down the creaky old stairs. How I wished he had whispered one word, one word. He had thought I was asleep and had not dared to speak loud enough to wake me. Never mind, it was better that the last thing was Christmas Night's perfect good-bye.

I clutched the envelope and mourned the weary hours of waiting until I could read it, for I had no candle. I kept my eyes staring wide open to prevent myself falling asleep. I could feel that there was a letter as well as money inside the envelope. I knew it would help me; I was impatient to know how. So much did it raise my hopes, that I fell to thinking of the coach-ride to Tawborough, of what Grandmother would say and how Aunt Jael would receive me.

As I stared through the darkness I became gradually aware of a ray of light along the ceiling. It did not come from the skylight, for there was no moon; and it ran horizontally along the ceiling, not down into the room. I got up and climbed on to the chair to investigate. Then I guessed. I had often noticed in a corner in the top of the wall (the corner farthest from the door) a little wooden door a foot or more square; it did not exactly fit the space in the wall and there was a thin aperture between the bottom of this little door and where the wall began. It was through this slit, not more than half an inch wide, that the strip of light came. I pulled at the handle and the little door opened.

Ten yards or so away, on a level with my eyes, I saw a square patch of brightness. In a flash, I understood; the light from which it came was in Uncle Simeon's attic. There was a hole in the corner of the top of the wall there too, the selfsame square space I had seen when peeping through the keyhole. What the holes were for I did not know; most likely to ventilate the room in between. The space mystery which had so often puzzled me was now explained. Therewas, in between the two attics which I knew, mine and Uncle Simeon's, another intermediate garret twice as large as either.

Instantly, I formed the resolution of squeezing my way through the hole, traversing the long dark attic in between, clambering up the other aperture through which the ray of light was streaming, and seeing—just what I was too excited to guess, except that I knew thathewas there. The hole was about eighteen inches square; it was a tight squeeze, but thanks to his dieting I managed it. Clambering down the other side was awkward work; I held on to the wall part of the hole to prepare for a jump. I knew it was a longish drop; there was no convenient chair on this side, and as I had left my slippers behind so as to make as little noise as possible, I hoped the ground was not too hard. My feet alighted unevenly; the left foot on the corner of a beam stuck edgeways, the right on the level of the floor, which was of course lower by the width of the beam. I hurt my toe badly. The ray of light was only sufficient to show up very dimly the big garret in which I now stood; I could make out that the floor was traversed by long beams laid edgeways, parallel with the front of the house and thus leading from my attic to his. Along one of these I walked; for although it was awkwardly narrow, it was better for my stockinged feet than the floor, which I made out to be strewn with pieces of wood, stone and plaster. When I got to the other end I found that my objective was too high; my fingers only just reached the edge of the hole. By standing on tiptoe, however, and clutching for all I was worth I managed to lever myself up. Then I looked into the mysterious room.

What I saw was unforgettable. On a high cupboard flared a lamp, nearly on a level with the space through which I was looking. This explained how it was that the light carried right through to the corresponding hole in the wall of my attic. In the full glare of the lamp sat Simeon Greeber, leaning over a table covered with papers and documents, at which he peered. He gloated over them, fondled them, sometimes he laughed and breathed hard, and his eyes shone. Then he would stop, cock his head on one side for a moment, and listen anxiously. I watched him, fascinated. Round him, on the floor and the table, were many envelopes and papers. Thewall was some inches thick; to see as much as I could I peered further in, so far indeed that if he stood up and looked my way he could hardly fail to see me. I noticed the big green box I had observed from the key-hole months before; a heavy door on hinges stood wide open; inside were more papers. His face, in the moments when he lifted it up, was of a greenish yellow hue in the lamp-light; and his eyes shone.

In my interest I had forgotten the awkwardness of my posture; supported by my elbows and wrists on the wall part of the hole, with my feet hanging in mid-air, my toes perhaps barely touching the wall. Once I lost my hold, and clutched convulsively so as not to fall. He heard the noise, lifted his face from the pile in which he was wallowing, and looked round anxiously. I had scared him.

"No, no, it can't be, it can't be," he whispered, endeavouring to assure himself of something.

He returned to his love. Now he rubbed his face sideways against the papers, gently, like a friendly cat against your leg.

I resolved to make a noise deliberately, keeping myself far enough back not to be seen, and to listen to what he might say.

In silence, at night, alone, a sigh is the most awful noise that can strike the human ear. I waited till his face was lifted again for a moment, held myself far enough back so as not to be seen easily, while still seeing him, and uttered a long-drawn agonized sigh. He started up with a cry. His cowardly face was a livid green.

"Brother, brother"—it was a terrified whine—"twelve years ago, twelve years ago."

"Twelve years ago, twelve years ago," echoed the watching whisperer.

He gave a horrible frightened cry, something between a beast's whine and howl, dropped on his knees, clasped his hands, turned his terrified eyes upward, and broke into delirious prayer. His face streamed with sweat.

"Oh, God, God, visit not Thy servant thus. 'Twas all done for Thee, all for Thee, Thou knowest. The gold is all Thine. For Thy name's sake, Oh Lord, pity Thy faithful, humble servant.He, Lord, was a sinner, it was meet that he should go, and that one of Thine own people should hold his wealth.He was spending all in sin; it was one's duty, Lord, one's duty. It was Thou who guidedst one's hand that night, and was he not dying already from the illness with which Thou hadst stricken him? For Thy sake, oh Lord, it was done. Thou knowest it. Not the meanest penny has been spent on worldly pleasures nor evil ways nor self, as he, oh Lord, would have spent it. Thou knowest, Thou knowest; the meetings, the missionaries, the work in Thy vineyard amongst Thy people; all that has been spent has been spent in Thy service, and when Thou callest me to Thee, all will be left for Thy work on earth below. All, oh Lord, all. Thou knowest, Thou knowest. Grant then that he trouble me not thus, grant—"

"Twelve years ago, twelve years ago," I whispered, more boldly, tasting dear revenge, anxious to see to what length of terror and blasphemy this snivelling Thing could go.

I overshot my mark; I whispered a little too loud. He looked quickly up to the hole in the wall, and though I shrank back like a flash, for a fraction of a second our eyes met.

Then he rushed for the door.

I dropped myself down and ran for dear life back across the beamed room to my attic. Feverishly I reviewed the position. He had quite certainly seen me and was now rushing to my attic to cut off my retreat. I sped across, sprang up to the aperture, squeezed my way wildly through, calculating all the while, as the quarry does, the number of seconds it will take the huntsman to finish him. He would have to fly down the stairs from his attic, along the landing, and up the stairs to mine. Thank God, he had to fetch the key, which I knew was kept somewhere downstairs. This delay saved me. I just had time to squeeze through, shut the little door, drop on to the chair, move the chair from beneath, fly to my mattress, and throw the cape around me, before I heard the key turning.

He came in stealthily and stood listening for a second near the door. Then he struck a match and lighted the candle he held in his hand. I dropped my eyelids so that I could just see him, and affected as far as I could a quiet and regular breathing. He looked first at me, then round the room, evidently baffled. If he had found my mattress empty, if I had not flown back on the wings of terror, he would have had the pleasure of trapping me like a rat in the dark roof-room, therelief of a natural explanation of the strange whisperings, and at last a genuine excuse for beating me sick. But here I was, sleeping peacefully. I could feel him looking at me with intense hate. He hated me almost as much for bringing him here on a fool's errand as if he had thought I was really guilty. He bent down and peered more closely at my face. Instinctively my hand was clasped against my heart.

The door opened and Aunt Martha came in, shivering slightly in her nightdress.

"You here, Simeon? I thought I heard the child cry out."

"So did oneself. One came to see if anything were the matter; but she sleeps calmly enough." The lie saved him.

"Come, Martha, my dear," he said, as he closed the door, "one will deal with her tomorrow."

There, however, he was wrong.

The sights of the past half hour had of course excited me beyond measure, but I already reflected that they could be put to use; a very handy lever to turn Aunt Jael's wrath from me to him. Once again,howwas I to get to Aunt Jael? I reckoned that hours must still pass before it was light enough for me to read Robbie's letter. I got up again from the mattress to sit on the chair and await the dawn. My feet crunched against something; it was a box of matches Uncle Simeon must have dropped in his excitement. By striking these one after another I read:

Dear Dear Mary: Here is the money for the coach. I am going tomorrow morning. The door is bolted, it is no good that way, but I have found a way. You wait till eleven o'clock tomorrow morning, that will be the morning you find this, then get out by the little window in the roof, it is quite safe I have made sure. There is a drain pipe begins at the very top where the sloping part of the roof stops, you must climb down that, it gets you down into the back yard, and the back yard door is not locked, I've taken the key. Then take the coach or run or anything to Tawborough. Get away from here, that's all, you must. There isnodanger, it will be quite easy to climb down, you'll not hurt. I am always, always going to think of you and next Christmas we will meet properly like you said.Your lovingRobbie.P. S. Happy New Year.

Your lovingRobbie.

P. S. Happy New Year.

I kissed the letter.

There was no time to be lost. I wrapped Aunt Martha's caperound me and put on my shoes,—indoor slippers without a strap, poor enough footwear for an eight mile walk. I clambered on to the chair and lifted the heavy handle of the sky-light window. The damp air of a raw winter's night crept into the room.

How I ever got to the ground, I do not know. Somehow I slithered down the sloping roof till my feet touched the ledge Robbie had spoken of; somehow I found the drain pipe, and somehow I clambered down. The yard door was open as he had said, and I walked through it into the deathly silent street, breathing a sigh of intense relief that I remember to this day. I broke immediately into a run, that I might put between me and that accursed house as much distance with as small delay as possible; when I was halfway across the old bridge I looked back at it, dimly silhouetted against the winter's night.

"Good-bye Robbie!" I called.

I crossed the bridge and climbed the hill. Very soon I was foot-sore; the toe that had caught on the beam in the roof-room began to bleed, and my shoes kept slipping off. I was cold, hungry, sore, cramped and faint. The cold slow rain, somewhere between drizzle and sleet, beat upon my face. By all the tenets of melodrama my escape should have been through deep crisp snow with the valiant horned moon astride the sky. There was no moon, and sleet is crueller than snow. After a while, I lost one of my shoes, turned back, peered about for it, was unable to find it; kicked away the other and ran along in my stockinged feet. Both feet were soon bleeding. After a mile or so, when I could run no further, I trudged or rather hobbled along, keeping to the middle of the road, which was the easiest and least muddy part. At moments the temptation to sit down was almost irresistible; sleep more than half possessed me. I clenched my teeth and kept on, will power eking out what little physical force was left. I prayed continuously.

After perhaps three or four hours, though it seemed unending years, I saw ahead of me the first roofs of Tawborough. I limped through the wet silent streets of the town, up Bear Street on to the Lawn, and through our garden gate. I pulled the bell, and then with a wretchedness and weariness I couldnot resist now that my goal was reached, sank down upon the doorstep.

Immediately I must have fallen asleep, for it seemed that I awoke from far away to see my Grandmother in her red dressing-gown and funny nightcap standing before me.

"It's me—Mary. I've come back, Grandmother, because he would have killed me. I've walked all night, and I'm so tired."

I rose to my feet, and fainted in her arms. Then I remember no more.

I awoke to find myself in my Grandmother's bed. Evening was darkening the room. Uncle Simeon had already come—and gone.

Precisely what had taken place I was not told, but according to Mrs. Cheese neither my Grandmother nor my Great-Aunt had minced their words. Aunt Jael, particularly, must have been in awful form. Though I had not yet told my tale, my condition must have spoken for itself; and if Aunt Jael's sympathy for me was not alone sufficient to pitch her to the highest key of scorn, the sight of her old enemy made good the deficiency. Even for him he must have cringed and whined exceptionally, being quite in the dark as to how much I had told. Whether the flagellative heart of my Great-Aunt was filled with professional jealousy or whether the new rôle of Tender and Merciful appealed to her for the moment, all that is certain is this: that she drove Master Simeon Greeber with words and scorpions over the doorstep, adding that he was never required to cross it again. Nor did he. I was many years older when next we met: under what circumstances the sequel will shew.

When I regained my health, which under my Grandmother's care and feeding was speedily enough, I was surprised to find how little Grandmother and Aunt Jael pressed me for details of my life at Torribridge. This incuriousness puzzled me: chiefly by contrast with what my own interest would have been in their place. Details of other people's doings and sayings were to become one of the absorbing passions of my life: I was born with my mind at a keyhole. Hence Tuesday afternoons, when they could be diverted from godly generalities to piquant personalities were more welcome than of old; and now that I was occasionally allowed to speak a word at Clinkerian ceremonies, I became quite deft in sidetracking Miss Salvation down the pathways of scandal, where Aunt Jael, not too reluctantly, would sometimes follow her. Aunt Jael, to do herjustice, was not much of a gossip: she was too selfish, just as my Grandmother was too unselfish, too deeply absorbed in Aunt Jael ever to feel deep interest, even a scandal-mongering interest, in other people: while her suspicion that her own efforts were capable of similar sacrilegious discussion would not allow her to allow me to talk of Uncle Simeon's beatings and persecutions. She felt that however objectionable Uncle Simeon might be, she would not permit me—a child, a subject, a slave—to discuss him. Authority must be upheld, in whatever unpleasant quarters. In the Tacit Alliance and Trade Union for Cruelty to Children there must be no blacklegs.

My Grandmother was the most incurious woman I have ever known: partly because of her inherent good nature, which made her regard all chatter about others as unkindly; partly because of her religion, which enabled her to see, though I think to exaggerate, the unimportance of earthly things. To every question, every trouble, every accusation, every wrong, she would everlastingly reply: "What will it matter in a hundred years?" and then, "Anyhow, 'tis the Lord's will." With a character thus compounded of kindness, unworldliness and fatalism, Grandmother was never born to pry. It quite irritated me how little she asked me about my life at Uncle Simeon's. I had believed myself the centre of the universe, the victim of the cruellest wrongs in human story; and here was my Grandmother thinking it friendly and loving and sympathetic to say "Don't 'ee brood over it, my dear. Forget it all. 'Twill seem little in a hundred years from now!"

Apart however from this pique that my miseries should be denied the glory of posthumous fame, I was glad that I was left alone with the past eight months of my life. I could hide without subterfuge my friendship with Robbie. Naturally, and artfully, I mentioned him sometimes.

"Sucha nice little boy, Grandmother; he was really! We liked each other—ever so!"

Always my favourite form of insincerity: to tell the literal truth, while conveying by the context or my manner something much less—i. e. morally speaking, not the truth at all. I loved him; I told Grandmother I liked him. It was the truth, and a lie.

I also kept hidden in my own breast the chief events of New Year's Night.

* * * * * * *

Within a few weeks the eight months of Torribridge seemed infinitely far away: as though it were some one else's life I was contemplating from a distant mountain-peak. I have always found that the more complete my change of surroundings, the more distant does my previous life immediately become; until some sudden messenger from the earlier days brings it back with a vivid rush. I never lived again the present-moment horror, as it were, of that life with Uncle Simeon until one day, far ahead, when I realized with frightening suddenness, as I gazed at a certain face beside me, that those eyes, that smile, that gesture—were his.

I fell back almost insensibly into the old groove of Bear Lawn life: the bare empty-seeming silent house, the long days of loneliness and godliness, pinings and prayers, the two familiar black-clad figures in the old familiar horse-hair chairs, the harsh staccato jobations proceeding from one side of the fireplace, and the gentler but no less continual "Don't 'ee do it's!" from the other. Torribridge was soon a nightmare episode shot through with glad dreams more episodal still. This life in this house that had sheltered my first memories was, after all, my real life; was Life. It seemed as though I had never known any other; I often cannot remember whether certain things happened before or after Torribridge: my Bear Lawn life was all one.

Nevertheless a few notable changes marked my return.

First of all, I was received as a full member of the Lawn confraternity. Aunt Jael allowed me to go out and play: ay, with this selfsame famous tribe through whose frankness in grappling with fundamentals I had been disgraced and sent away.

"No filth, mind! No low talk. No abominations."

Nor were there. Filth, low talk and abominations had departed with Joseph Jones to his draper's apprenticeship in a big city—this was one of the large events of my absence—and what Bristol gained, Tawborough lost. Under the new rule ofLaurie Prideaux I heard no more of the talk to which my six weeks under Joe had been accustoming me. The change of chieftainship meant a change in the tone of the whole community. Joe bullied and sneered if you wouldn't use his words; Laurie thrashed Ted King for using them. One boy changed the moral outlook of a Lawn; a generation, a town, a world! Under Laurie's patronage I was received into full membership. Under which flag? After a moving discussion, in which arguments charged with the nicest theological insight jostled with mere vulgar prejudice against my clothes (this was the Tompkins girl, over-dressed and under-witted little cat that she was), it was decided that the Chapel League was best fitted to receive me to its nonconformist bosom. I could not help feeling it a come-down that a Saint should be classed, as it were officially, with mere Dissenters: it was, however, the lesser of two evils, for the Church of England, after all, was something worse than "mere."

I was never much good at the various games, tig, French cricket, rounders and the like, which occupied so large a part of Lawn life. The amorous ones—Kiss in the Ring and Shy Widow—I shunned altogether. I was too serious, or too sensitive, or high-minded, or morbid, to be able to regard touch as a plaything sentiment. Laurie and Marcus were nice boys, and I liked them, quite definitely; but I refused to respond when they "chose" me for their lady. In these games of sentiment and shy surrender, the challenge of choice must be accepted without flush or murmur: I could not, so refused to take part. Kissing was too precious a privilege. I cherished it for three people only: my Mother when I sought the gates of Heaven; myself when on my own lips in the looking-glass I tried to discover the mystery of this world; Robbie, when I needed Love.

I acquired, however, a certain position of my own in Lawn esteem: the teller of stories. My subject was Aunt Jael; her ways, words and deeds; her rods and ropes; her food and medicine cupboards, her winsome underclothing, awful wrath, and appetite diurnal and nocturnal. I told of the beetle and of the Great God; and of far beatings. The Lawn listened, admired and applauded; admitted in me something they did not possess; the power to interest and to amuse. Thus theydecided my fate for me, in showing me the thing in which I was different from and better than others; and Mary Lee, silent and morose by instinct, by upbringing and by environment, set up for life as an amateur-professionalraconteuse. That way lay success, and success is what we seek. In forcing myself to talk that I might bask in the amusement of the other children, I gradually lost some of the moodiness and glumness of my earlier days; later on in life, in still more favourable surroundings, I lost them altogether: that is, in the face I showed to the world. The simple need of status with the Lawn children drove me to do the one thing I could do: to talk, and so to discover my talent and overlay my original nature. Thus it is ambition that transforms character, rather than character ambition. Thus it was that Aunt Jael provided me with the capital for my new venture, and paid handsomely for all her oppressions. An eye for an eye, a Lawn laugh for every blow!

The Elementary Educational Establishment was now beneath my needs, so I was transferred from the Misses Clinker (who, while far above vile pecuniary jealousy, prophesied ill) to the seminary of the Misses Primp. The latter were Saints, obscure but regular at the Great Meeting, and socially above the ruck. "Reg'lar standoffish, wi' the pride ur the flesh in their 'earts," declared Miss Salvation, who saw clearly from her altitude far above vile pecuniary jealousy. They held their school in a bleak house with a big bare garden, to the north of the town, ten minutes or so from the Lawn. The curriculum embraced Arithmetic to the Rule of Three, Composition, Grammar, French, Literature (Sacred and Profane), Needlework (Plain and Fancy), Drawing (Freehand and Design); Botany and Brushwork; together with "a thorough grounding in the principles of Salvation."

Not to put too fine a point upon it, this last pretension was a lie. A Bible-reading, usually Kings or Chronicles, read with parrot-quickness round the class, one verse to each pupil; a long dry prayer offered up, with eyes gimletted not on heaven but on us, by Miss Prudence Primp; and a longer and still drier homily by Miss Obedience Primp, a gaunt old lady with a gigantic crinoline and a parched soul and throat—in a later, more worldly age, this allowance of heavenly fare may notseem so niggardly; to me, bred as it were in the imperial purple of Grace, the whole performance appeared perfunctory and tepid, and the Primpian acquaintance with the principles of salvation positively sketchy. My studies were remarkable only for their unevenness. The net result of my inequalities was that I occupied a steady middle-place in the weekly marks. I reflected with pride, however, that it was no ordinary middle-place, the result of humdrum averageness in everything: and I was vainer of being bad at my bad subjects than good at my good ones. Were they not stupid subjects in which a quite special unique set-apart Chosen little girl like myself would not stoop to shine? Tots indeed! Brushwork!

I do not recall many events in my school life. Those that recur to me are chiefly unpleasant; how some of the girls cribbed and copied and cheated and lied; how others giggled sickeningly at the word "boys," or mocked shamefully at their mothers and fathers. They were red-letter days when Cissie King, my Lawn enemy, had a fit, foamed at the mouth, went green in the face, was obdurate under basinsful of water, and only came round at the third dose of brandy; or when Miss Obedience quarrelled openly with Miss Prudence in front of the whole school, and cried "Leave me, woman!" Nor can I forget my first day, when Miss Obedience, as we were leaving after the morning school, asked two of the older girls who lived my way to accompany me home, and I overheard them say to each other "Not likely! We'll leave her at the school gate; wouldn't be seen with her, with her frock all darned and nasty common clothes and boots, would you? If anybody should think she belonged to us!" How my cheeks burned, how I hated and loathed those two giggling little snobs, and still more my own uncomely person and garments. How I brooded for days and gnawed at the shame. These are the real events of a child's life; they sound the depths of human passion: shame, jealousy and hate.

One other major event followed close upon my return. Wedding Bells! For five and forty years had Miss Salvation Clinker been pursuing Brother Brawn; now the long chase was ended, and the quarry at last secured. She was seventy-seven, he but seventy-one. How on a secret visit one morningshe broke the news to Grandmother, postponing vainly the Jaelian wrath to come; how later that wrath fell ("Bold woman of Proverbs seven-twelve, who lieth in wait at every corner," said Denouncer; "I shall do more thansomeas I know, and go to 'Eaven a wedded wife," answered Denounced, brazen in vanishing-maidenhood)—while scorn and pity were showered upon the victim; how Aunt Jael's ban went forth, and the banns despite it; how they became man and wife; how she had her Triumph, and dragged him through the streets of Tawborough in an open carriage ... this and much more I might portray.

The mild scandal in our Meeting was as nothing to the rage and horror in the Upper Room for Celibate Saints. At a solemn mass-meeting of the survivors, nigh half a dozen strong, Doctor Obadiah Tizzard decreed: that Glory Clinker, aider and abetter in evil, be then and thenceforward struck from the sacred roll and flung into outer darkness; that against Salvation, née Clinker, sinner of sinners, be pronounced the Major Excommunication.

The "Upper's" gain was our loss. Henceforward the Clinkers were always with us. (Nobody favoured Salvation with her new surname.) But the chief loser by her change of state was, alas, poor Brother Brawn. The sisters let the High Street Mansion, the aforetime E.E.E., and moved, inseparably, into the White House. There, sandwiched between a gentledétraquéeand a scolding shrew, our bleating leader found repentance, if no leisure more.

"I told 'ee so," said Aunt Jael. "'E've done it now. There isnohope."

The husband certainly had none, though his spouse, dreamily quoting Luke-one-thirteen, declared thatshehad, and the good sister-in-law er-er-er'd and plied her unsteady needle on swaddling-clothes, while muttering always to herself "John! Thou shalt call his name John!" ...

Neither school nor Lawn nor Clinkers, however, seemed anything but incidental to my life in the big house at Number Eight, always for me the first of external things. Here too there were changes.

Mrs. Cheese had come back. Servant after servant hadpassed away like that grass which in the morning groweth up and in the evening withereth away. Stability reigned in the kitchen once more. Relations with Aunt Jael partook of the nature of an armed truce. Both restrained themselves, Mrs. Cheese because she wanted to stay, Aunt Jael because she wanted her to; though the former was a bit too fond of making it clear that she had come back to us for my Grandmother's sake only, "and not to plaize zome others I cude mention." Despite her loyal affection for my Grandmother, the real person for whose sake she had come back was herself. At sixty she was too old to break with old habits, such as our kitchen and her routine therein, or with Aunt Jael, who was a habit also, if a bad one.

From this time Grandmother occupies a larger place in my memories than Aunt Jael. Why, I am somewhat puzzled to say; for their life, and my life with them, went on just as of old. Perhaps now that beatings became rarer, it was natural that she whose skill therein had been the terror of my earlier childhood should loom less large. Perhaps it was that Aunt Jael, my bad angel, appeared tame in her badness by the side of Uncle Simeon (but then should Grandmother, my good angel, have become faint in my affections besides Robbie; whereas I liked her better and thought of her more). Perhaps it was that Grandmother's gentler qualities would naturally have made less impression on a little child than Aunt Jael's harsh ones, or anybody's good qualities than anybody's bad ones. Further, I now saw more of Grandmother, as Aunt Jael developed the habit of confining herself to her bedroom for days at a stretch, only emerging on to the landing to rain curses over the banisters on Mrs. Cheese for a useless, shiftless idler, unfit to wait on a suffering bedridden old martyr, or on Grandmother for a selfish, ungrateful sister always absent from her elder's bed of pain; or (oftenest) on me.

With outdoor exercise and good food, which now for the first time I enjoyed together, I became healthier and I think happier. Though I still lived for my daydreams, I had less time on my hands.

What with dusting and bed-making and cooking, what with homework and meals and prayers and ceaseless reading of the Word in public and private, and Aunt Jael's andGrandmother's expositions, I found my days too full to yield the time I needed for thinking and talking to myself: for living. I got into the habit of stealing odd quarters-of-an-hour in the attic. Aunt Jael was on my scent in a moment. How I loathed her when a luxurious heart-to-heart talk between Mary and Myself was interrupted by her hoarse scolding voice.

"Child! Child! Now then. Down from the garret, now. No monkey tricks."

Perhaps as an attraction to hold me downstairs, the portals of the dining-room bookcase were at last thrown open to me. The wealth therein would have seemed meagre, perhaps, to worldlier spirits; to me, for whom all books save One (and one other) had always been closed, it was a gold mine. Of unequal yield. With some of the more desiccated devotional works I saw at once that I could make no headway. Such were Aunt Jael's beloved "Thoughts on the Apocalypse" and a row of funereally-bound tomes devoted to the exposition of prophecy. Laid sideways on the bottom shelf was that musty fusty giant, our celebrated copy of the "Trowsers Bible." I liked Matthew Henry's great Commentary in three huge black volumes, with the dates at the top of every page, from which I learnt that this world was made in the year B.C. 4004 (six thousand years ago: a brief poor moment lost in the facing-both-ways Eternity that haunted me), and that Christ was born four years Before Christ. Certain books demolishing the Darbyites or Close Brethren and their fellow-sinners at the other pole of Error pleased me by their hairsplitting arguments and vituperative abuse. Then there was "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners" by Master John Bunyan.

* * * * * * *

The record of this period of my life is perforce wearisome and undramatic. There are no events. More than ever my real life was inside me, was make-believe; that is, real. Change of residence was but a change of stage. The same comedy-tragedy—ME—was for ever on the boards. Not that the change of stage meant nothing. Houses, rooms, weathers, smells, all affected and were somehow a part of my thoughts. The two towns, I knew, were intimately mixed up with my feelings about all that had happened to me in them. Torribridge was the more romantic: little white town made magicalby the word-sorcery of Westward Ho! Quay that harboured brown-sailed ships from the Indies, memories of the Rose of Torribridge and that salmon-coloured hostelry called by her name; then Number One, house of gold and murder and mystery. Tawborough was more real. Graced by no Rose of Torridge, she held instead the rose of merchandise. The busy, countrified, unimaginably English character of her market and her streets seemed to make her more genuine, more actual—the right word eludes me—than Torribridge: Torribridge, that eight months' rainbow-circled nightmare, mere invention of Mr. Kingsley and Robbie and Uncle Simeon. Act Three was back in the first setting again; and here, in dining-room, in bed, in attic, the play went on. The principal character was Mary Lee. The audience was Mary Lee. I was player, producer, public all in one.

"Mary," I would say, as soon as I was alone. "Listen, I will tell you what I think."

"Yes, Mary; do!"

This sense of two selves, one of whom could confide in the other, was ever more vivid. Some one else inside me was pleased, surprised, angered, grieved; shared my sorrows and triumphs. Thus it was that in weeping for myself after some cruelty of Aunt Jael's or some more spiritual grief, I felt I was not selfish, because I was sharing trouble withsome one else, who lived in the same body. Such impressions are at once too rudimentary and too subtle to be well conveyed in words.

When I called out "Mary," and "I" answered "Yes" the reality of question and answer between two different, though curiously intimate persons, was physical, overwhelming.

Soon after my return to my Grandmother's this sense of dual personality began, in its most physical manifestations, to fade somewhat; in its more spiritual quality, to grow more intense: the first when I began my Diary, the second at the miraculous moment of my Baptism.

The notion came to me one warm autumn afternoon, as I was reading "Grace Abounding."

From the first page I struck up a living friendship with the Bedford tinker, though he had been in heaven for near two hundred years. I understood him as he talked aloud to himself and peered within to discover who and what was this John Bunyan inside him. I liked too—the more so as it was so new in print and from the mind of some-one-else—the careful detail with which he told of his earthly outward life: his descent, his lowly parentage, his school, his early days, though I could have wished for details of his Aunt Jaels and Uncle Simeons. These did not lack when he talked of his "inside" life, and told me (who knew) of his childhood's "fearful dreams" and "dreadful visions" and "thoughts of the fearful Torments of Hell fire," because of which "in the midst of my many Sports and Childish Vanities, amidst my vain Companions, I was often much cast down and afflicted." Why should not I tell a like story of my soul day by day, detail by detail?

The notion rolled through me like a tide. I closed the book, sprang up, shut my eyes, and walked round and round the room in my excitement. Today, this moment, I would begin. Then as I turned my mind to practical details—the book I should write it in, the hiding-place for the book—hesitations appeared. Wasn't it a bit funny? Did other people do it? Why, yes: John Bunyan was "other people" right enough, and a good Christian too. And I remembered that I had heard somewhere before of a man who wrote down the story of his life. In a few seconds I placed my man. Poor old Robinson Crewjoe.

I ran into the kitchen.

"Mrs. Cheese, you know Robinson Crewjoe you told me about, didn't you say you could read about it all in a book he'd written himself?"

"'E wrote it pon a bit buke 'e vound on the Wreck, so's 'e shidden virget it, I reckon, or so's ither volk cude rade it arterwards—"

"Yes, butwhendid he write it?"

"Ivry day, avore goin' to bed nights. Ivrythin' 'e'd been doin' that day. Leastways that's what my ol' Uncle Zam ollers did, who kep' a buke of the zame zort."

"What was it like? Please tell me about Uncle Sam's book."

"Wull, my Uncle Zam, over to Exmoor, was very aiddicayted he was, a turrable 'and vur raidin' and writin'. So long as 'twas a buke 'e'd love'n and spell over'n vur hours and as 'appy as a king, as the zayin' is, but 'e liked best writin' down in this lil buke uv 'is own—adairythey caals un. Why fer I don't knaw, 'cause tizzen much to do wi' the milk, so far as I can see, and I ain't blind neither. Wull, in this lil buke, and there was eight or nine uv them avore 'e died, 'e put down ivry blimmin' thing 'e did, 'tis true's I zit yer. Wull, when the funeral was over and all the cryin', 'is widder—my ol' Aunty Sary that was, bein' curyus like bein' a lil bit like you—thought she'd be findin' zummat tasty in these ol' dairies, and tuke it into 'er 'ead to try to rade all the eight bukesful, or mebbe 'twas nine. But 'er cud'n 'ardly du it, not bein' aiddicayted like 'im, and when 'er vound it tuke 'er 'alf the day to spell over 'alf wan page, 'er got 'erself into a turrable upset, an threw un all pon the vire, 'ollern' out 'Burn un all, burn un all, burn un all! Then 'er bangs out uv the rume. I was up vrom me zeat avore you cude say Bo, and rescued the bettermos' part uv them avore they was burnt. Aw my dear days, I niver did rade zuch stuff. 'E'd put 'pon they bukes ivry drimpy lil thing e'd done and zeen and zed they vorty years: 'ow many calves the ol' cow 'ad 'ad, how much butter an' crame 'e zold to Markit, all mixed up wi' stuff about the pixies 'e zaw, orthort'e zeed, top uv Exmoor o' nights; and a lot o' religyus writin,' for 'e was a gude Christyen for all 'is pixies and goblins, wi' plenty 'o sound stuff 'bout 'Eaven and 'Ell, and a middlin' gude dale about 'is sowl...."

These were valuable hints. My resolve was confirmed. Iwould follow in the footsteps of John Bunyan and Robinson Crewjoe and Uncle Zam.

That day, October the Twelfth 1860 (thirty-seven years ago come Tuesday), in the unused half of an old blue-covered exercise book, I began. With what a sense of pride, of importance, of creativeness, of high adventure, I scrawled in great flourishing capitals my heading:

THE LIFE OF MARY LEEWritten By Herself.

My opening sentence was this: "I was born at Tawborough on March the Second, 1848." I have put it also on the first page of this present record, which from now, my thirteenth year onwards, is but a matured, shortened and bowdlerized version of the diary, eked out—more often for atmosphere than detail—by memory. The keeping of the diary, however, weakened my memory; which, though of its old photographic accuracy in what it held, yet held far less. I did not need to remember things, I said to myself: I could always find them in the book. Certainly for the first few years, I could have found there everything that was worth reading, as well as everything that wasn't; in later years, alas, I have succumbed to the fatal habit of compact little paragraphs epitomizing whole weeks, and even months, as fatal as the Sundries habit in a household account-book. Indeed, despite the pathetic leniency we show towards the trivial when it is the trivial in our own life, I find the earlier pages of my diary tiresomely full; far too fond of "What we had for dinner" or "Aunt Jael's scripture at this evening's worship."

As I told my diary everything, it began to take the place of my other self, and it is in this sense that I mean that the feeling of dual personality was weakened. The self-to-self talks became fewer; the sense of a person telling and a person told was blurred. Unspoken notes in a grimy exercise book took their place; although at first, and always in exciting passages, I would talk aloud, and take down, so to say, from my own dictation.

This early diary is morbid, precocious, shrewd, petty, priggish, and comically, pitifully sincere. Religion looms large,with food a bad second. This is natural enough. John Bunyan's whole aim was A Brief Revelation of the Exceeding Mercy of God in Christ to his poor Servant, John Bunyan; Robinson Crewjoe was not the man to let slip any opportunity for a pious ejaculation, a moral reflection or a godly aside; while Uncle Zam, according to his niece, took a middlin' gude deal of interest in his "Sowl." These great exemplars helped to increase what would have been in any case a heavy disproportion of holy matter. This kind of thing is typical of the earlier years:—

Feb. 13.Woke still worried by the problems of Infinity in Time and Space, tho' less despairing and appalled than the day before. I pray,pray, PRAY; but all the time at the back of my soul, the fear is still there:—Eternity faces me tho' I dare not face Him, andWheremay my Eternity not be spent? Perhaps "One Day at a Time" is the only way. A wet day. Read Exodus this afternoon. Aunt Jael rough; so held forth to the Lawn children this evening. They aretooappreciative; roar with laughter at everything I say; it does me good, though this is set off by the harm done me by encouragement in self-esteem. But no, no, no—I have a good and great ideal for this Mary, that I must strive to fulfil; and petty ministerings to her (my) vanity must be quashed and that right sternly. Laurie Prideaux gave me some chocolate cream. He is an obliging, kind, childlike, good, conceited boy. Polony for supper.Sunday.Meeting. Bro. Quappleworthy on the Personal God. Saw Joe Jones, I think in Bear Street: must be on holiday from Bristol. Mrs. Cheese thought he was back. He did not see me; as he never looked towards or acknowledged me, I assumed did not. To Lord's Day School, two prayer-meetings, and Gospel-Service this evening.Veryweary.

Sunday.Meeting. Bro. Quappleworthy on the Personal God. Saw Joe Jones, I think in Bear Street: must be on holiday from Bristol. Mrs. Cheese thought he was back. He did not see me; as he never looked towards or acknowledged me, I assumed did not. To Lord's Day School, two prayer-meetings, and Gospel-Service this evening.Veryweary.

Like Uncle Zam on Aunt Sary, I indulged in a good deal of "plain-spaikin" on Aunt Jael. The diary thus became invested with a halo of danger. Suppose she found it in one of its many (and changing) hiding-places! She would beat me utterly, burn the diary, and mock cruelly at its contents. Yet it was from my Grandmother that I hid it with my most ardent cunning. She would neither beat, nor burn, nor mock, but I knew she would condemn it as "morbid" (the word is a later acquisition), and search me with her kind common-sense eyes; and I should be covered with shame. Not guilty shame, rather the shame a man feels when his naked soul is shown to the world; the shame I always felt when caught red-handedin one of my self-to-self declarations in the attic. What if other eyes should read this for instance?

1860. Sept. 25. There are three months just to Christmas.Then I shall kiss Robbie.

All through my life these books of revelation have dogged me with the daily fear that through themI should be found out; now that they have served their purpose in helping me to compile this more permanent record, I have decided, like Aunt Sary, to "burn un all." (Or nearly decided; it is hard for a woman to destroy memorials of the past.)

The precautions I took, beyond subtle hiding, were: prayer, magic, and the etching in red ink on each exercise-book-cover of this Device:—

PRIVATESHAME!ON WHOEVER MAY THINK EVEN OF READING THISBOOK.SHAME!

Whether in the worst of us, e. g. Aunt Jael, curiosity is not a stronger passion than fear, and whether therefore this curiosity-tempting cover might not do more harm than good, was a problem and a worry that continually assailed me.

In connection with the diary, I must speak of the Resolves or Resolutions I began to make. These were a result, on one side of my growing sense of sin (egotism, ambition, triumph, revenge, hate, greed, dirt, doubt), and on another side of an exactly opposite desire to realize my imagined ambitions by equipping myself to achieve them (wide knowledge, better health, nicer looks). They were written on half-sheets of note-paper, which I immediately put in an envelope. This was sealed and hidden in between the pages of that day in the diary on which the resolution was formed. The moment the least part of the current resolve was broken—I knew it always by heart—I had to break open the envelope and begin afresh. The old unkept resolve I placed in the page of the day on which it was broken. Thus an enveloped, sealed, still-in-action Resolve was kept with the day in which it was formed, adiscarded one on the day on which I fell. I usually began again on a day that would give me a clean start, such as the first of the month, or a magic date, or some special anniversary. Here is one that had a pretty long run:—

March 9th, 1861.My Mother died thirteen years ago today—Therefore from now onwards I DO RESOLVE:—I. EVERY DAYTo drink a glass of cold water before breakfast and} To helpat night (better than senna)} me beTo go for a walk} healthy} To helpTo brush my hair well} me beTo clean my teeth hard} prettyTo learn at least seven new verses of the Word by} To helpheart and revise seventeen old ones} me be} good} To helpTo tell the Lord everything in prayer} me be} HimII. NEVERTo steal oatmeal from the larder (as I did three times last week)To think dirty things (as I did last Wednesday when I laughed when Mrs. Cheese said Aunt Jael's drawers were like two red bladders).III. ALWAYSTo eat slowly (37 bites to each mouthful)To be like God would like.RESOLVED, with Mother's helpMary Lee.20 minutes past 6.March 9th, 1861.

March 9th, 1861.

My Mother died thirteen years ago today—Therefore from now onwards I DO RESOLVE:—

I. EVERY DAY

II. NEVER

To steal oatmeal from the larder (as I did three times last week)To think dirty things (as I did last Wednesday when I laughed when Mrs. Cheese said Aunt Jael's drawers were like two red bladders).

To steal oatmeal from the larder (as I did three times last week)

To think dirty things (as I did last Wednesday when I laughed when Mrs. Cheese said Aunt Jael's drawers were like two red bladders).

III. ALWAYS

To eat slowly (37 bites to each mouthful)To be like God would like.

To eat slowly (37 bites to each mouthful)

To be like God would like.

RESOLVED, with Mother's help

Mary Lee.

20 minutes past 6.March 9th, 1861.

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