My first memory in this life is of a moving. I am sitting in a
high chair, kept in by a stick placed through a hole in each arm.
I am surrounded by the utmost disarray. In front of me is an old
sponge-bath, crammed full of knick-knacks and drawing-room ornaments.
I stretch out my hands yearningly, acquisitively, and make signs of
wrenching from its offensive gaolerlike position the stick which bars
my way. My Grandmother coaxes me to keep it in, and uses the words she
is to use so often later on--words which will punctuate my daily life
in days to come:
"Don't 'ee do it, my dear. Sit 'ee still and give no trouble. Ye'll
tumble and hurt yourself, so leave the stick alone. Don't 'ee do it."
"If she don't, I'll take it out myself and lay it about her," comes
another voice, which is to punctuate as regularly and much more
raucously my early doings. And Aunt Jael shakes her fist, and lowers at
me.
Perhaps I don't really remember the trifling incident. Most likely I
only remember that I remember. It is a photograph of a photograph,
smudged by the fingers of Time. Yet I see as clearly as ever the
dark room in disarray, my Grandmother kind and coaxing, Aunt Jael
threatening and harsh. The memory is clearer because Time has not
blurred but rather sharpened it. I grew up the gauge of an unequal
battle between Grandmother and Great-Aunt. Moving-day is merely the
moment in which my infant intelligence first caught news of the
struggle.
At this time I must have been about three years old, for it was some
three years after my mother's death that we moved from the High Street,
at the time when--I think it was in 1852--the old North Gate was
removed, and our house pulled down. Our new house was Number Eight,
Bear Lawn. The Lawn was a biggish patch of grass with houses on both
sides. At the far end from the road it merged into a steep grassy bank,
crowned with poplars, which allowed no egress. At the near end a big
iron gate barred us off from the plebeian houses of Bear Street, to
which the Lawn mansions felt themselves notably superior.
The Lawn lay to the right of the street some little way out of the
town. In reality it was an old barrack-square, "converted." The houses
on each side of it were barracks put up during the French Revolutionary
Wars. When Boney was beaten and the soldiers sent away, an enterprising
builder turned the barracks into two terraces of houses, and sowed
the barrack-square with grass seed. Bear Lawn became one of the most
elegant quarters of Tawborough, a quiet preserve of genteel habitation;
though the houses never quite lost their barrack quality. They were too
square and bare and big to be truly genteel. And too roomy.
Number Eight was one of the squarest and barest.
It was gloomy. How far the aspect it will always bear in my mind may be
a reflection of the dark and unhappy days I spent there, and how far
it was real, I cannot ever say. It was a house of big empty corridors,
dark bare spaces, and an incommunicable dreariness that somehow stilled
you as you crossed the doorstep. There was none of the cosy warmth that
makes so many dark old houses a homely joy to the senses and a warm
fragrance for the memory. It had the silence in it that only large
empty spaces can create, did not seem inhabited, and smelt of coffins,
I used to think. Even in summer there was a suggestion of damp and cold
and bleakness, and always there was the silence which made me wait--and
listen.
Downstairs there were three big rooms: Aunt Jael's, the dining-room
and the kitchen. Aunt Jael's was the front one. The door was always
unlocked, yet the key was left on the outside of the door, and I
was forbidden to enter. Like Mrs. Bluebeard (of whom I had never
heard) or our first mother Eve (in the knowledge of whom I grew to
understanding), I felt that prohibition made perfect; and the forbidden
room attracted me beyond all others. I visited it usually in the
afternoon, when the thunder and trumpets of Aunt Jael's after-dinner
doze in the dining-room announced that the road was clear. The
blinds were always drawn, winter and summer alike; and the windows
closed. The room seemed filled with a dull yellowish kind of mist,
the ochre-coloured blind toning the darkness, and just permitting
you to see a yellowish carpet and dull yellowish furniture. A row
of dismal plants, standing in saucers on the floor, filled the bay
window. There was a great oak sideboard, stuffed with Aunt Jael's
preserves and pickles; though it was long before I had the courage
and the opportunity to ransack it thoroughly. The walls were covered
with spears and daggers, trophies of the Gospel in distant lands. In
a corner reposed the supreme trophy, a huge wooden god, sitting with
arms akimbo. His votaries (until salvation, in the person of Brother
Immanuel Greeber, had turned them from their ways) dwelt, I believe, in
the Society Islands; though he looked for all the world like a Buddha,
with his painless impenetrable eyes and his smile of changeless calm.
In his dark unwholesome corner he dominated the room. The yellow mist
was incense in his nostrils.
The middle room we called the dining-room, though Aunt Jael favoured
"back parlour." Here we lived and prayed and ate, and here a large part
of this story took place. The window overlooked our small backyard,
which being flanked by out-houses gave little light; so this room too
was dark, though not as dark as Aunt Jael's, since the blinds were
not usually drawn. It was more barely furnished. There was the table,
a chiffonier, a side-board, a bookcase, and two principal chairs: a
"gentleman's" armchair to the left of the fireplace, with two big
arms; and a "lady's," armless, to the right. One was comfortable, the
other was not. One was Aunt Jael's, the other was my Grandmother's.
There were four bedrooms on the first floor, and I must note their
strategic positions. Aunt Jael's was the first on the right, my own
the second; we were over the dining-room and surveyed the backyard.
My Grandmother's chamber, the first on the left, and the spare-room
beyond it overlooked the Lawn. At the half-landing above was Mrs.
Cheese's bedroom, while the top of the house consisted of an enormous
whitewashed attic, lighted by an unwashed skylight and suffused by a
cold bluish gloom that contrasted queerly with the foggy yellow of the
front room downstairs yet excelled it in silent cheerlessness. Here I
would spend hours, or whole days, either of my own free will, that I
might moon and mope to my heart's content, and talk aloud to myself
without fear of mocking audience; or perforce, banished by the frequent
judgment of Aunt Jael.
It was our moving into this house that supplies my first earthly
memory. My first important--dramatic, historic--remembrance must date
from several months later, when I was nearly four years old. The scene
was our evening reading of the Word. We were sitting in our usual
positions round the dining-room fire after supper.
To the left of the chimney-piece, in the big black horsehair chair--the
comfortable one, the one with sides and arms--sat my Great-Aunt Jael.
This was her permanent post. From this coign of vantage she issued
ukases, thundered commands, hurled anathemas and brandished her
sceptre--that thorned stick of whose grim and governmental qualities
I have the fullest knowledge of any soul (or body) on earth. She was
a short, stout, stocky, strong-looking woman, yet bent; when walking,
bent sometimes almost double. Leaning on her awful stick, she looked
the old witch she was. Peaky black cap surmounting beetling black brows
and bright black eyes, wrinkled swarthy skin, beaky nose, a hard mouth
whiskered like a man's, and a harder chin: feature for feature, she
was the witch of the picture-books. All her dresses, silk, serge or
bombazine, were black. On the night I speak of, an ordinary week-night,
she was dressed in her oldest serge. The great Holy Bible on her knees
might have been some unholy wizard's tome.
To the right of the chimney-piece sat my Grandmother. She resembled her
sister in feature; the character of the face was as different as is
heaven from hell. This indeed was the very quality of the difference,
and I had a fancy that they were the _same_ face, one given to God,
the other sold to Satan. My Grandmother had the same beaky nose and
nut-cracker face. Her mouth and chin were firm, but kind instead of
cruel. Her skin was milk-white instead of swarthy, her caps were of
white lace. Her eyes were as bright as my Great-Aunt's, but bright
with kindliness instead of menace. Her whole face spoke of goodwill to
others and perfect peace. It was a sweet old face. I love it still.
In the middle, facing the fire, sat Mrs. Cheese. She was a farmer's
daughter and widow from near South Molton; and looked it. She was
short, fat and ruddy; a few years younger than her mistresses, perhaps
at this time a woman of sixty.
I myself crouched on a little stool between Mrs. Cheese and Aunt Jael;
but nearer the latter, that I might be watched, and cuffed, with ease.
On this particular evening, my heart was hot with rage against Aunt
Jael, who had flogged me and locked me in the attic: I don't remember
what for. She ordered me more sternly than usual not to dare to move
my eyes from her face as she read the nightly portion from the Word
of God. To-night it was from her favourite Proverbs, the thirtieth
chapter: the words of Agur the son of Jakeh, _even_ the prophecy; the
words the man spake unto Ithiel, even unto Ithiel and Ucal.
Aunt Jael read, or rather declaimed the Word, in a harsh staccato
way; not without a certain power, especially in the dourer passages
of Proverbs or the dismaller in Job or Lamentations. In one of her
favourite Psalms, the eighteenth or the sixty-eighth, reeking with
battle and revenge, and bespattered with the blood of the enemies of
Jehovah, her voice would rise to a dark triumphal shout, terrible as
an army with banners. This evening I looked sullenly at the floor as
she boomed forth the words of Agur, determined _not_ to fix my eyes
on her face at any rate until Stick coaxed me. Suddenly my eyes were
transfixed to the floor. A gigantic cockroach was crawling about near
my feet. I wanted to cry out but managed to contain myself until,
behold, the creature crawled away from my left foot towards the leg
of Aunt Jael's chair, reached the chair leg, began to climb it with
resolution. I watched, half in fascination, half in fear. It reached
the level of the horsehair upholstery. Aunt Jael had reached verse
thirteen.
"Their eyelids are lifted up." She looked meaningly at me.
Fortunately my eyelids were by this time well lifted up, as the beetle
was now half way up the chair, approaching the awful place where Aunt
Jael's shoulder touched the upholstery. No--yes: it crawled on to the
arm, and mounted her sleeve right up to the shoulder. Righteous revenge
for her cruelty and harshness counselled silence. "Let her suffer," I
said to myself, "let the cockroach do his worst." Fear of interrupting
gave like counsel. On the other side spoke the prickings of conscience
and pity, and above all a wild desire to scream.
Aunt Jael read on, innocent of the unbidden guest upon her shoulder.
"The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the
way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a
maid--"
"Ay, and the way of a beetle with a Great-Aunt," I could have shouted.
The beast, after a moment's hesitation and survey, had now turned along
the shoulder to the neck. The warm hairy flesh of Aunt Jael's neck was
but six inches away.
"The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the
summer; The conies are but a feeble folk, yet they make their houses in
the rocks; The locusts have no King, yet go they forth all of them by
bands; The spider taketh hold with her hands--"
"Yes," I shrieked--in a moment shot through with terror, joy, relief;
suffused by a new beatific sense of speaking historic words--"and
the beetle taketh hold with his claws!" As I uttered the words the
insect crawled from her collar on to the very flesh of her neck. She
understood, with Spartan calm took hold of him, squashed him carefully
between her thumb and forefinger and threw him on the fire, where he
sizzled sickeningly.
"Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter, and the wringing of
the nose bringeth forth blood: so the forcing of wrath bringeth forth
strife."
There the chapter ended. She slammed the book and turned on me.
"You have forced wrath, Child. I shall bring forth strife."
And despite my Grandmother's entreaties, she led me from the room by
the nose, which she pulled unmercifully: though no blood was brought
forth. Out in the passage she gave me a cruel beating with the thorned
stick, till I screamed for mercy, and my Grandmother intervened.
"'Tis cruel, Jael. The child cried out about the beetle for _your_
sake."
"Sake or no sake, she cried out unseemly and irreverent. That's all I
look at."
I was sore in body and sorer in heart. I had screamed out to warn Aunt
Jael of the insect's approach, and now I was flogged for my pains. I
knew in my own heart that what Grandmother had pleaded was not in point
of fact quite true, I knew I had been secretly glad to see the creature
making for Aunt Jael's skin, and for this reason had kept silence for
so long. The physical instinct to scream had merely been stronger in
the end than my resolution to say nothing. In a dim sort of way I
realized this, and saw that my Grandmother's plea was unwarranted. But
I saw more clearly that the common-sense of the position was that I had
done Aunt Jael a good turn, and that the flogging was--in the light of
the facts as she (not the Lord or I) knew them--mean and undeserved.
I brooded revenge, as always. Aunt Jael's beatings were always more
or less cruel, always more or less unjust; this I knew with a child's
instinct, distorted and exaggerated no doubt by wretchedness and pride.
So always I planned revenge, which sooner or later brought on the next
flogging.
This time, however, my revenge was undetected. Next morning I came
downstairs just as Mrs. Cheese was beginning to lay the table for
breakfast. There were two separate sets of everything--breakfast-ware,
dinner-services, tea-things, plate, knives and forks, even
cruets--Grandmother's and Aunt Jael's, which the latter insisted on
keeping rigorously separate. So, every day for breakfast or tea there
would be two cups and saucers and plates with the gold pattern for
my Grandmother and me, and one solitary cup and saucer and plate of
Willow-pattern for my Great-Aunt. She had her own tea-pot too, a great
fluted thing in old silver-plate, which could have held tea for a
dozen; but never a taste of tea was poured forth from it for any one
else, save on occasions so rare that I can number them on the fingers
of my hand. So there was no mistaking the utensil with which, in which,
from which, or out of which Aunt Jael would partake of nourishment. I
was wandering round the table when I noticed, at first with fright,
then, when I ascertained that it was dead, with interest and purpose,
a large beetle much the same as its fumigated brother of the night
before, lying on its back, claws heavenward. A divine idea possessed
me. I picked it up, squashed it between my thumb and forefinger in
the true Aunt Jaelian manner, and smeared the loathsome substance all
over my Great-Aunt's teaspoon and the inside of her cup. It was an
act of genius, that rare thing: the Revenge Perfect. "With the beetle
hast thou slain," I said solemnly out loud, "by the beetle shalt thou
perish."
"Perish" was a poetic flight, as Aunt Jael entirely failed to notice
the mess in her cup, which she filled with tea from her exclusive
pot, or the mess on her spoon, with which she stirred lustily. She
drank three cupfuls, and belched as blandly as usual. Now I saw the
imperfection of my revenge perfect. In idea and execution it had been
superb, and to see her guzzling down the embeetled tea was very sweet.
But she did not _know_ she was drinking it--this was the eternal thorn
that mars the everlasting rose. I had, however, the compensation of
safety. All through breakfast, I looked meek and forgiving. Aunt Jael
relented.
"Here, child, have a drink of tea out of my cup; 'twill do 'ee more
good than the milk-and-water stuff your Grandma always gives 'ee."
"No, thank you, Aunt," I replied. And I triumphed in my heart.
Fate was about to triumph over me. Beetle had led to beating, and I
had used beetle (with tea-cup) for revenge. Now Fate used tea-cup for
triumph. It befell at tea-time, I think the same day. My arm was on the
table-cloth, and, before I knew what I was doing, it (and Fate) had
swept Aunt Jael's own old blue exclusive willow-pattern cup on to the
floor, where it lay in a thousand avenging fragments. A brutal cuff
full in the face changed fear and remorse into rage.
"Careless little slut!" she shouted. "What are 'ee biding there for
staring like a half-daft sheep?--Say you're sorry, say you're sorry."
"I was sorry," I faltered, "but I'm not now."
This was the first brave thing I ever did, so brave that I hold my
breath now to think of it. I shrank from some monstrous blow.
No blow came; partly because my Grandmother looked warningly ready
to interfere, partly because my Great-Aunt had decided on another
punishment, the only one I feared worse than blows.
"Oh, not sorry, eh, careless little slut?--"
"Stop it, Jael, I tell 'ee," broke in my Grandmother. "The child must
try to be more careful and handy, and she's to say she's sorry, but--"
"Say she's sorry?" echoed Aunt Jael. "But she's just said she's not.
'I'm not sorry _now_' quoth she! Not sorry, not sorry, young huzzy,
do 'ee know where Not-sorry goes? Do 'ee? I'll tell 'ee: straight to
Hell. Obstinacy in sin is the worst sin, and its reward is Hell. Hell,
child, where your body will be scorched with flames and racked with
awful torments. Devils will twist and twease your flesh, and 'twill be
for ever too. You've done a wrong thing, and your nasty proud soul is
too wicked to say you're sorry. You spurn the chance of repentance,
the free offer of God A'mighty, made through me His servant. You shall
suffer eternal punishment."
I quailed. At four the fear of that word had fallen on my soul. She
knew it: the beady eyes gleamed.
"No hope, no escape. Flames, pains, coals of fire, coals of fire!
Ha, ha, ha!" (Here she cackled.) "Not sorry, eh? Very like you'll be
sorry then, when you look across the gulf and see all your dear ones
in Abraham's bosom. No hope of ever joining them. Torture for all
eternity. Have you thought what the word Eternity means, child? You're
young in your sins as yet, but you know that well enough, ha, ha, ha!"
(She chuckled again, three hard little cackling noises they always
were, cruel enough.) "It means that you will suffer the torments of the
lake of fire that is burning with brimstone, not for a mere thousand
thousand years, but for ever and ever and ever--"
I was less than four years old, and I could bear it no longer. I flew
to my Grandmother's arm for safety, sobbing brokenly, half-wild for
fear.
Aunt Jael leaned back, content, pleased with the success of her
punishment, and sure of heaven. Though if there be the Hell she raved
of, it is for such as her.
My Grandmother comforted me. She was torn, I suppose, between two
feelings. Her faith told her that what her sister said was true, her
heart that it was cruel. I felt somehow even then that this was the
nature of my Grandmother's struggle. The good heart turns away from
cruelty, even when it speaks with all the authority of true religion,
and so my Grandmother always turned away. She compromised: said
nothing to Aunt Jael, while she comforted me; while soothing the
victim, did not scold the scolder.
"Don't cry my dearie, and don't 'ee be frightened. Nought can harm 'ee.
Your good aunt is right. 'Tis true that Hell is terrible, 'tis true
that you're a sinful child, and 'tis true that you'll be going to the
cruel place, if you have no sorrow and repentance in your heart. You
broke your Aunt's fine cup; run to her now, tell her you're sorry. Only
then can you be saved from the wrath of Jehovah, freed by repentance,
cleansed by love of Christ. And even as Hell is awful, so is Heaven
good. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, the things which God hath
prepared for them that love Him. Run to your Aunt. Say: 'I'm sorry,
Aunt.'"
I hesitated. Like my Grandmother's, my four-year-old heart found it had
to decide between two calls. The call of fear was, "Say you're sorry,
and escape surely from Hell." The call of hate was "Why? She is a bad
cruel woman; and you're not sorry at all, you're glad you've smashed
her evil cup."
"Besides," added the Tempter, "as you're not sorry, it would be lying
to say you are."
I hung doubtfully. At length I pouted, "I don't want to."
"But true repentance," said my Grandmother, "means doing things you
don't want to."
I said nothing.
"Mary, child--" my Grandmother paused a moment, "there is a bright
angel in heaven who wants you to give way--your dear mother. I seem to
hear her speaking to me now, and telling me so."
It is hard for me to explain the power that word had over me from my
earliest days. I had a dear angelic vision of kind eyes and two white
shining wings. I would shut my eyes in bed at night and see her.
Sometimes she seemed to come very near, sometimes she would seem to
bend over me and kiss me. Now, as my Grandmother finished speaking, I
seemed to see her near. I ran across the room to the old arm-chair.
"I'm sorry, Great-Aunt," I said.