Next morning Grandmother and I sallied forth. It was a bright spring
day, with a high wind blowing. We went down Bear Street and along
Boutport Street to where it joins the High Street; and just beyond, on
the far side of the road, saw the old ivy-coloured house whose door was
to be my portal of worldly understanding.
My future instructresses, the Misses Glory and Salvation Clinker,
were our only regular visitors at Bear Lawn. They were third cousins
of a sort, though a social grade or two lower than ourselves, I
apprehended,--more Devonshirey, "commoner" than we. Tuesday after
Tuesday they came to our house for a long-established weekly afternoon
of tea and godly discoursing. Glory was a tall, thin, bony old woman,
with a bleary far-away stare. She wore a faded black serge dress,
whereon the only ornaments were dribble-marks in front, which spread
fan-wise from her chin to her waist; and a tiny black bonnet, tied
round her chin sometimes by a ribbon, oftener by a piece of string,
at one whimsical period by a strip of carefully-prepared bacon-rind.
She spoke little, chiefly of Death and the New Jerusalem, though
a perpetual clicking noise--represented most nearly by er-er-er,
and variously explained--always kept you aware of her presence.
"_Life_," ran her favourite aphorism, "_is but one long prercession
o' deathbeds_." She was quite mad, very gentle, wrapped in gloom, and
beatifically happy. Er-er-er-er was unbroken and continuous. You could
have used her for a metronome.
Salvation was a saner, a coarser type: a noisy, aggressive woman,
whose chief subject of conversation was herself; a pious shrew with
a big appetite and a nagging tongue. She always ate an enormous tea,
though Aunt Jael, of whom alone in the world she was frightened, would
sometimes keep her hunger roughly in check. Glory, on the other hand,
always brought special provisions of her own, and at tea-time made
her own exclusive preparations. First she went into the far corner,
where she had deposited a net-bag full of parcels. From this she
abstracted a saucepan, a little spirit-lamp, a box of rusks shaped
like half moons, a bottle of goat's milk, a porringer and a great
wooden spoon. She put the lamp on the floor, lighted it, boiled the
milk in the little saucepan, threw in six or eight of the rusks and
stirred with the wooden spoon until she produced a steaming mush. She
didn't eat this, nor yet did she drink it; neither word describes the
fearful and wonderful fashion in which she imbibed, absorbed, inhaled,
appropriated it. Of every spoonful she managed to acquire perhaps a
quarter; the other three-quarters strolled gently down her chin. As she
was short-sighted, and as when she ate she ignored her food and looked
steadily ahead at the glories of the New Jerusalem, she often missed
the spoon altogether. The noise she made was notable. Hence Aunt Jael
always refused to allow her to eat at our table, and consigned her to
"Glory's corner."
Though I saw the Clinkers in our house Tuesday after Tuesday, I had
never yet beheld them in their own. My eyes fastened on the brass door
plate:
The Misses Clinker
ELEMENTARY EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT
For the Daughters
of Gentlemen.
The top line was in elegant copy-book writing.
"Look, Grandmother," I cried, "Misses is spelt wrong. Why do they put
M-i-_f_-s-e-s? It's silly." I resented the absurd "s". My faith in the
infallibility of the twin Gamaliels at whose feet I was to sit was
dashed on their very doorstep. Could the blind lead the blind?
"Why, 'tis often written that way," rejoined my Grandmother, "'tis an
old way of writing a double S. You've plenty to learn, you see."
If the first line was offensive to common-sense, the remainder of the
notice challenged mere truth. Elementary you could not gainsay, but
Educational Establishment for a description of that frowsy den and
those two ignorant old maids was florid rather than faithful, while
Gentlemen as a term to connote the male parents of the clientèle
was--even in the most dim and democratic sense of that unpopular
word--just false. Finally, there were sons as well as daughters: some
three or four of the fifteen pupils who comprised the school.
Salvation opened the door, grinning an aggressive welcome, but we were
officially received by Glory. "Welcome! Welcome to this place!" she
cried impressively. I saw that the sisters' rôles were here reversed.
Glory was as unkempt as ever, the "black" serge she wore shades greener
than her Tuesday afternoon one, and quite four inches higher one side
than the other. As next-worldly and bleary-eyed as in our house, her
part here was the part of a Principal: Principal of an Educational
Establishment for the Daughters (yea and Sons) of Gentlemen. Salvation,
screech she never so loudly, was in this schoolroom but second fiddle.
* * * * * * *
The schoolroom was an old-fashioned kitchen. The day's dinner was
cooked before our eyes on a spit before the fire; the pupils acted as
turnspits. The room was low, smoke-begrimed and dingy; the windows
opaque with dirt. On the filthy walls were a print of the Duke of
Wellington (?), all nose and sternness, an old Map of the World on
Mercator's Projection with the possessions of the Spanish crown yellow,
and the possessions of the British crown red, and many framed texts
worked in white and blue wool. One huge text, worked in many colours,
stood over the doorway: A ROD FOR THE FOOL'S BACK. Prov: xxvi. v. 3.
There were two classes, on different sides of the room. I was put
with the younger. They were all new faces, except one or two that I
had seen the day before at the Room. They were, indeed, the first
children I had ever spoken to. In grown-up parlance the pupils would
have been dubbed lower-middle class, though Marcus Browning, whom I
knew by sight because he lived in the Lawn in a house just opposite
ours, was as middle-middle class as Aunt Jael and my Grandmother. I
felt these distinctions perfectly, and regarded one Susan Durgles, a
lank untidily-dressed fluffy-haired child of seven or eight, and the
leading spirit in our class, with that feeling of quiet disdain which
the sureness of higher caste can alone bestow: her father was a mere
cobbler in Green Lane, and while I looked at her as though I knew it,
she looked back lovingly as though she knew I did. Between Susan and
myself sat a pale thin child, Seth Baker, who had St. Vitus' dance. I
had never seen anything of the sort before, and stared more through
curiosity than pity as his slate and slate-pencil shook in his hand.
The first lesson was Rithmetick with Miss Glory called (vulgarly) by
Miss Salvation Figurin'. With her best far-away look Miss Glory peered
forth into eternity: "If eggs be twenty-eight a shilling" (they _were_
in those days, at any rate in Spring) "how many be you agwain to get
for, er-er-er-one poun' three shillin' and vourpence ha' penny?"
Up shot the grimy hand of little Seth Baker. "Please'm, please'm,"
appealingly. He was always first and always right, but the rest of us
were not suffered to dodge the labour of calculation, as Miss Glory
would oftenest ignore Seth and drop on weaker members of the flock,
myself or Susan Durgles.
"Now then, Susan Durgles. 'Ee heard the question. How many
then-er-er-er-er-er-?"
"Please'm, I-er-er-er-er-er-don't know."
This shameless mockery was allowed to go unpunished. My mind strove to
picture Aunt Jael coping with a like impertinence. I imagined the black
wrath, the awful hand upon my shoulder. With what new weapon would she
scourge me? Scorpions, perhaps, if obtainable.
During our mental arithmetic lesson, the advanced students at the
other end of the room were receiving combined instruction from the
deputy-principal in crochet-work and carikter-formation. Miss Salvation
was shouting technical advice of the stitch, slip, three treble, four
chain, and draw-through-the-first-loop-on-the-hook order, together with
more general instructions how to earn the joys of heaven and eschew the
fires of hell.
After a while the sisters changed places, and my efforts were
transferred from high finance to handwriting, called (whimsically) by
Miss Glory, Penmanship. Miss Salvation distributed dirty dog-eared copy
books. I was set to work on the last page, the Z page, of an otherwise
completed and wholly filthy book, to reproduce fourteen times in
zealous copper-plate: "Zeal of Thy House hath eaten me up." Meanwhile
Miss Salvation transferred to us her godly bawling as to the way we
should, or chiefly, shouldn't go: interlarding this with fragments of
more specialized holy information, which being entirely useless I have
never forgotten; e. g., which was the longest verse in the Word of God,
and which was the shortest; the number of books in the Old Testament,
and in the New; that "straightway" was the private and particular word
of St. Mark, while "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
prophet" was the chosen cliché of St. Matthew.
Miss Glory took turn with us again for the third lesson: Reading. Our
book was of course _The_ Book. One mouldy old Bible was passed round,
and we read in turn from its brown-spotted and damp-smelling pages. I
think it was my first or second day that it fell to my turn to read
from the eighteenth chapter of the Book of Genesis, where the Lord
appeared unto Abraham in the plains of Mamre, and Abraham said unto
the Lord concerning the destruction of Sodom, Wilt thou also destroy
the righteous with the wicked? I knew the passage well, and read with
relish and excitement the diminuendo Peradventures.
"Good, my child, good. Your readin' is a credit to your dear Grannie
and your dear Great-Aunt. You read it fine, as to the manner born."
For the first time in my life the enchanting incense of praise filled
my nostrils. I flushed, and while others read of Lot at the gate of
Sodom and what-not else, I ceased to listen. My heart was beating
to this refrain: You read it fine--as to the manner born. So I was
good for something, for all Aunt Jael's daily blows and curses, my
Grandmother's nightly She-is-weak-Lord-and-sinful petitions. I read
fine!
The first day Mrs. Cheese called for me; but afterwards I was
entrusted to Marcus Browning as escort. He was two years older: "a
good child, not like some I could name" (Aunt Jael), "Born of Saints"
(Grandmother), and possessed of the more fleshly merit of also living
on the Lawn. We spoke little together.
The event I remember best of my first days at the Elementary
Educational Establishment was a fight. Susan Durgles was for ever
making fun of poor little Seth Baker's affliction. One day when Miss
Glory and Miss Salvation were both out of the room Susan went a little
too far.
"Look to 'im, look to 'im!" she mocked. "He looks like wan o' thase yer
weather-cocks what wag and wobble about on the church steeple. Goes
like this, do he? Ha, ha. Can't help hisself, can't he, palaverin' li'l
wretch?" She flapped her hands in Seth's walrus way, and nodded her
head convulsively in mocking imitation of poor little St. Vitus.
He was a meek child, but this time he could stand it no longer. "Dirty
cobbler's lass!" he cried, and banged Susan full in the face with his
small clenched fist. A regular fight began. My sympathies were wholly
pro-Seth. Was not Susan the sneerer, the tormenter, the tyrant, the
Aunt Jael, and Seth the harried one, the oppressed one, the victim, the
_me_?
Seth punched and lunged and butted with his head. Susan slapped and
shoved and scratched. The boy kicked in payment for the scratching,
and the girl tore at his hair to get even for the kicks. Fair play and
fair-weather methods went by the board. Rules are for the ring; when
ultimate things are at stake, a child's sneer at her schoolfellow's
deformity to be repaid, a nation's existence to be lost or won in war,
then red tooth and claw tear the paper conventions of sport asunder,
and each side fights to win. Miss Glory returned to witness a bleeding
and bedraggled pair still scuffling savagely. Not one of the rest of us
had dared or wished to intervene. Very properly Miss Glory decided that
we were the guiltier ones, and while the two principals amid tears of
gradual forgiveness were hustled away to soap and water, we lookers-on
had to stand up on our forms for one solemn hour with our hands behind
our backs while Miss Glory preached us a sermon; the text being Matthew
five, nine.
A brighter feature of school-life was the frequent sweetmeats brought,
passed round and devoured. There were chocolate drops, sticks of
Spanish, peppermint humbugs, jujubes, lollipops and toffees. I had
never tasted such dainties before.
"Wude 'ee like a sweetie?" asked Susan Durgles one day.
"Yes please," said I.
"Quite sure, are 'ee?"
"Yes please. Please give me one."
"Nit likely, nit likely," she sneered.
"But why?" I flushed, not understanding.
"Why? And a very gude raison fer why. 'Cause 'ee gobble up other volks'
sweeties fast enough, but you'm not so slippy about bringin' any of yer
own fer _me_ to eat, are 'ee? Nit likely."
I felt as though she had struck me in the face. All the other children
were looking and listening. It was not that I ever had any sweets of
my own which I consumed in greed and secret, it was not that I had any
money, or hope of money, for buying any. The sting of Susan's words lay
in this: that I ought to have seen and pondered on the fact that while
I took all that was offered me I offered nothing in return. I was in
the wrong, and therefore all the angrier.
"You wait!" I cried. My tone was not too confident, for in a second's
rapid survey I could not see the how or the wherewithal of obtaining
sweets to fling at Susan. It must however have been confident enough to
inspire her with a lively sense of joys to come.
"I didn't mean nort. Only my li'l joke. Have a lollipop--or two."
On the way home I left Marcus Browning in silence, and evolved plans.
Suppose I were to ask Aunt Jael to give me a penny! My heart beat
at the thought. I rehearsed to myself my opening "Please Aunt Jael"
a score of times. Such rehearsings, inspired by my timidity, served
always to increase it. Then I remembered a bottle of acid-drops in the
medicine cupboard in the bedroom. Dare I beg a few? Or _take_ a few?
suggested the Tempter, take being His pretty word for steal. This was
the easier plan, but I shunned its dishonesty. I would ask her _first_.
Or ask even for the penny, I decided, if at the moment I found courage
enough.
All the way through dinner I put off making my appeal. Several times
I moistened my lips and came to the very brink, where the glimpsed
precipice of Aunt Jael's wrath drove me back. Yet brave the precipice I
must, or tumble into the abyss of Susan's scorn on the morrow.
At last I blundered in, heart beating and face flushed: "Please may I
have a penny?"
"A penny?"
"To buy some sweets."
"Highty-tighty! Don't you get enough to eat here? Never heard of such a
thing. Your Grandmother and I never had pence for sweetmeats and such
trash. Be off with you."
"But--"
"No buts here." The thorned stick stamped the floor. Grandmother
concurred.
Fair means had failed. I would try foul. By her meanness she had forced
me to help myself to her acid-drops. My guilt be on her head.
I waited until she was well away into her after-dinner doze, and
Grandmother safely closeted for her afternoon's study of the Word. Then
I stole softly up to Aunt Jael's bedroom. Her physic-cupboard was on
the far side of the bed. It had a sliding door; inside there were four
shelves, the bottom shelf dedicated to Aunt Jael's night-needs. At
every watch she fed. Once or twice I had slept with her, and discovered
that though she had rusks and beef-tea just before getting into bed
(soon after a heavy supper) and rusks and a cup of green tea while she
was dressing (just before a heavy breakfast), yet she got out of bed
twice during the night to brew herself a potion and chew old crusts or
gingerbread-nuts or rusks. The bottom shelf was complete with every
accessory of these four bedroom feasts: spirit lamp, matches, saucepan,
cups; green tea, Ceylon tea, beef-tea, meat extract, herbs of divers
properties and powers; gin, cowslip wine, elderberry wine, brandy; with
many tins devoted to gingerbreads, half-moon rusks (bought at the same
baker's as Miss Glory's), seed-cake, Abernethy biscuits, and old crusts
rebaked in the oven. The upper shelves bristled with medicine bottles
and jars. These were grouped methodically according to the ills they
combated. There was a cough-and-colds corner. For burns scalds and
chaps, bruises weals and wens, there was poor-man's-friend, a great
jar of goose grease, and a small white pot of mixed whitening, most
drastic of all; often my Grandmother used it on my body after a bad
beating, fitly borrowing Aunt Jael's whiting to ease the marks of Aunt
Jael's stick. The particular galaxy of bottles from which Grandmother
had oftenest to beg and borrow for me consisted of various telling
encouragements and exhortations to those like myself whose mills ground
slowly and withal exceedingly small. Castor oil, Epsom salts, senna
pods, fennel seeds and roots of jalep: I knew them all. It was to King
Senna I answered swiftliest (five pods to be soaked in a tumbler of
water for a few hours, and drunk last thing before retiring to bed); to
replenish this jar meant frequent visits to the druggist's, for which
my Grandmother paid. To pods she added prayers. Whenever the last thing
before retiring chanced to be the tepid tumblerful, the last thing but
one was always a supplication to Heaven to speed the parting dose. "O
Lord," pleaded my Grandmother on her knees, "Bless the means! Bless the
means, Lord; and if it be Thy will grant her relief!" But Aunt Jael
relied on worldly remedies exclusively. Her medicine cupboard was her
shield and buckler, and like the cupboard in the front room downstairs,
ministered to her pride of possession also. And the night-life made
possible by that festive bottom shelf! O 'twas a Prince of Cupboards, a
vineyard planted with bottles.
Today I had eyes for one bottle only. I reached it down, and regarded
the precious objects which would confound the sneers of Susan. Thief!
said a voice within, as I tipped the bottle up and curved my other hand
to receive.
Susan's sneers! urged the Tempter. How just they are, and how they
wound you! I hung doubtfully; the acid-drops' fate and my own trembled
in the balance. I remembered how Aunt Jael counted everything. For
a certainty every acid drop was counted; she would miss the meanest
couple, and then the sequel! No, I dare not.
The moment my indecision was over, I was braver. Once I had decided
I dare not eat any, I dared to reflect how pleasant they _would have
been_ to eat. It was the bravery of cowardice, that valour that is
the better part of discretion. I smelt the bottle's mouth long and
longingly. Suddenly the fair odour inspired in me a new idea. I would
just suck the drops, and then put them back. They were of the shiny
sort, which judicious sucking would hardly change; not your dangerous
powdery acid drops, which merest touch of the tongue transforms. I set
to sucking as evenly as possible, so that none would look smaller than
the rest. They were delicious, and I enjoyed recompense for my noble
decision not to steal. Suddenly my heart stood still. The door-handle
turned. To fling the bottle into its place in the cupboard, and slide
the cupboard door to, was the work of a fevered moment. Aunt Jael
entered. She must surely have seen. My guilt was clear, for all the
look of meekness I sought to wear. She had her suspicions too of
what the guilt was: she seized my arm and ducked her nose down to my
mouth to confirm them. Acid-drops have a tell-tale odour, unique,
unmistakable. My smell bewrayed me. Out of my own mouth I stood
convicted.
"I thought as much,"--even for her the words came grimly--"how many
have you stolen?"
"None, Aunt Jael."
There coursed through my veins the perverse exultant delight of her
who utters a great white lie. Not for anything would I have told a
downright falsehood. Here was an answer true as Truth herself--sucking
is not stealing--yet by the look (and smell) of things plainly false.
Aunt Jael darkened.
"I-have-not-stolen-one. I-have-not-eaten-one," I repeated, noddingly.
"Liar, black little liar!" she shouted. "The rope-end at last; you'll
taste it now."
She rummaged under the bed. As she barred the egress by the foot of the
bedstead, I scrambled over the bed, gained the door, and fled to the
attic. She was after me at once, wielding the famous weapon, a good
yard of stout old ship's rope, a relic of Grandfather Lee or maybe
Great-Grandfather Vickary. In the middle of the attic stood a large
elliptical table. Round and round it she chased me. It was a defiance I
had never shown before. She was appalled. I was appalled. Defiance was
a quality she never encountered, and now for meek miserable little me
to show it! Her features were a livid blue-black. She lashed out with
the rope frequently; I dodged and ducked. The attic was wide enough
for me to elude her reach. In a corner I should have had no chance;
so Knight of the Round Table was the part I played. Once the rope
grazed my shoulder. After ten minutes perhaps, the part of slasher at
emptiness had become so undignified that Aunt Jael suddenly stopped. A
ruse? A minute's rest before a last wild spring for victory? No; for
she could hardly breathe. Then she gave me a long cruel stare, eyes
saying _I Will Repay_: for all my defiance I cowered. She went out,
slammed the door behind her, and stumped heavily down the uncarpeted
attic-stairs.
The heat of battle over, my spirits sank. Why had I defied her? There
was no ultimate escape. For every gesture of defiance, every moment
of that round-the-table chase, she would repay me a hundredfold. Yet
what else could I have done? If I had owned up to _stealing_ her sweets
and thus (perhaps) incurred a lesser wrath, I should have owned up to
something I had not done. I should have lied. I had told the truth
instead, and my only reward was a clear conscience. (I was staring, as
so often, at the great blue picture on the wall, whose deep violet blue
seemed to be toned down by the cold grey-blue of the room; an old print
of some tropical sea with a volcano belching forth fire, smoke and lava
in the background,--the Caribbean Sea perhaps, with one of the Mexican
craters, or the Mediterranean with Vesuvius; a gaudy gorgeous thing
such as sailors buy on their travels.)
I waited over an hour before risking a descent. When I turned the
half-landing by Mrs. Cheese's bedroom door, I sprang back. There
beneath me, sitting on the stairs, her feet on the main landing just
outside her bedroom door, was Aunt Jael. A small table was drawn up to
the foot of the stairs. A good tea was spread thereon; she was eating
and drinking heartily. I spied the rope by her side; she heard my
footsteps above her, and her hand closed on it. I went back. She meant
grim business. Still, she could not stay there all night. I sat down
outside the attic door and listened. Mrs. Cheese cleared away her tea
things, grumbling; Grandmother came up to her, gently remonstrating.
She stayed on. Darkness set in. I heard her stamp the floor for Mrs.
Cheese to bring her supper. After all, she might stay there for the
night: knowing her will to be not weaker than mine, I put my self in
her place, and I felt almost sure she would. I was hungry, and there
would be no escape. Escape I must. How? My first plan was that Mrs.
Cheese--Aunt Jael would have to get up to let her pass, I reflected,
since either one of them was as broad as the attic staircase--should
bring me something to eat when she came upstairs to bed. Then I could
survive till the morrow, sleep on the attic floor, and confound Aunt
Jael. I would show her who had the stronger will. The weak point of
this notion was that I could not shout instructions to Mrs. Cheese to
bring me something to eat, nor rely on her doing it unprompted. A more
desperate plan suggested itself, and before I had time to shrink back,
I put it into action.
I slid down the banisters and took a flying vault safely over Aunt
Jael's head and the little supper table in front of her. If there had
been a big open space beyond, all might have been well. Unfortunately
the banister that surrounded the sort of well in which you saw the
ground floor began only a yard beyond Aunt Jael's door; my flying feet
knocked against it, and I fell; I was hurt badly, and could not get
up. In a second Aunt Jael was up, and at me with the rope, savagely.
She saw I was in pain and helpless, so lammed the more brutally. I
screamed. Grandmother came running upstairs, and with a strength and
daring she rarely used wrenched the rope from her sister's hands.
I limped downstairs.
"Before you eat, child, confess your lie, and apologize to your aunt
for telling it." Grandmother was unwontedly stern.
"What lie?" I did not flinch.
"Smell her! Smell her!" shouted Aunt Jael.
"Mary, in all her life your mother told not one single lie."
"It's not a lie," feebly. "I swear it," pitiably.
At last Grandmother succeeded where Aunt Jael had failed (this was a
little sub-triumph in my defeat). I told the true version and for all
the Tempter's hints I knew that my Grandmother was right that evening
when in our bedside prayer she pleaded, "Forgive her, Lord; in her
heart she lied!"
Next day, I learnt from Mrs. Cheese that the bottle of acid drops had
been flung by Aunt Jael into the ashpit. I rescued it, and pocketed the
contents, which were stuck together like a coarse hard sponge, emerald
bright. There were thirty-seven in all. By the distribution of this
lordly largesse I rose high in the esteem of the school. A pocket full
of acid drops: my position was assured. None doubted their virginity,
all consumed them with zest. Thus did I triumph over Susan Durgles, who
sucked humbly; humblier, had she known that another had sucked before
her.
* * * * * * *
School took but a small place in my life. The music-lessons I began
to take at home were much more to me: for piano-playing was a worldly
luxury some generous whim of Aunt Jael's supplied. Her reward was her
own loud announcement, whenever topics even remotely musical were
mentioned, "_I_ pay for the child's music." These lessons, and a
very occasional dress and hat--once a pair of mittens--were all she
contributed to my upkeep in all those years. I am glad it was never
more. She had no call to do it, she often explained. Well and good:
I had no call to be beholden to her. All my expenses, nothing heavy,
but heavy enough for a light purse, were borne by my Grandmother: and
thus at the end of their lives, Aunt Jael had three times as much to
bequeath as her sister. Grandmother accepted five pounds a year from
my great-uncle John on my behalf, refusing his offer of more, and
taking nothing of what my father's relatives had proposed from the
beginning. Yet she would have laughed, and the mirthless Saints would
have laughed, if you had called her proud. Meanwhile, because of these
music lessons, Aunt Jael cried her generosity from the house-tops. I
little cared: I was grateful. I could soon play all the simpler tunes
in Hoyle's Anthems.
My life was still entirely spent in the Bear Lawn household; I was
never allowed to see anything of the other schoolchildren, Saints or
no Saints, beyond school hours. None ever crossed our threshold, nor
I theirs. I watched the daily struggle between the two old women,
Grandmother and Great-aunt. I read the Word. I prayed, and I lived wild
lives within myself. I was for ever visualizing, thinking out dramas
in which I and those I knew would figure, living in a self-fashioned
self-fancied future, deciding on lines of conduct in innumerable
situations I invented. At this time my imaginings did not run, as with
megalomaniac little boys, to ambitious futures for myself: great
sounding deeds done before admiring multitudes. My castle building was
conditioned by the narrow humble life I knew. The stuff of my dreams
was my own hates and loves.
At this early time my surest emotions were I think three: hate of my
tyrant aunt; longing for some one to love and some one to love me; fear
of eternity and hell. I would play with these terrible ideas sometimes
with the cheerfulness natural to six-years-old, more often with the
despondency more natural to myself. Hate achieved no triumph of hate
even, would eat itself out miserably and everlastingly in my visions as
hate always. Longing was never appeased; love would never come to me.
Fear was justified of her child.
A cheerful vision I conjured up was Aunt Jael on bended knee before me,
making a hoarse and humble appeal to be forgiven for her wrong-doings,
to be shriven of her many sins. I revelled in the delightful picture.
How I dealt with it depended on my mood. If it was soon after a beating
(a real-life beating) my conduct would be just, stern, inexorable. "Go
to, thou vixen, thy judgment awaits thee!"; and I would deliver her
over to the tormentors. If beatings of late had been few or frail,
and a sentimental rather than revengeful mood held me, then I would
act with a high Olympian generosity, imagination's sweetest revenge,
and lifting her gently to her feet would say "Thy sins are forgiven
thee--Go, and sin no more!"
I often tried to create an imaginary person to love, some one I could
embrace and be embraced by. Once I got as far as picturing a face for
perfect loving, but I found that it was the spirit, the soul, the
person who gave you love, and my perfect face (a dark young girl's)
though I named it Ruth Isabel, remained a face and a name only. There
was no real Ruth Isabel behind the face; so she faded away. I had one
success, one consolation. By a hard effort--closed eyes, clenched fists
and fervid prayer to God--I could sometimes picture my dead mother so
vividly, that I could literally feel and return her embraces. She was
clad always in white; her face was warm, and glowed. "Kiss me, Mary," I
could make the vision say, though whensoever I put out my hungry arms
to draw her closer to my breast, the vision fled.
Of my chief fears, hell and eternity, the first was always terrible--I
pictured it in all the luxurious completeness of horror Brother Brawn
described--yet I had this comfort: I believed in the Lord, and He
could save me. But save me for what? He rescued me from hell to grant
me eternity in heaven, and from His boon there was none to rescue me.
_Eternal life!_ Once my brain attempted to grapple with everlastingness
and to think out the full frightful meaning of _living for ever_, I
sickened with fear. There was no escape: ever: anywhere. A terror,
unanswerable, unpitying, controlled me. One way out of it, one mad
child's trick to cheat Infinity was to convince myself I had never been
born. "You're not real!" I would say to myself, "You're only dreaming
you're alive. You're a dream of God's. You have never really lived, so
you can never really die. So you escape eternity. You cannot live for
ever, if you are not alive at all!"
This belief I helped by staring into my own eyes in the glass, my face
close up to its reflection. After a minute or two, a tense expectancy
would seize me. I was elated, exhilarated.
"Mary, what are you, who are you?" I cried to the face in the mirror.
My own voice sounded strange and far away, belonged to some one else,
proved that _I_ had no voice, that there was no real me, that I was
Another's dream.
"What are you? What are you?"
The exhilaration and the expectancy grew. I was on the brink of solving
the mystery of all life: my child's mind would find what the universe
was, what _I_ was.... The exaltation was almost more than I could bear.
I kissed wildly the reflection of my own mouth in the mirror. Suddenly,
imperceptibly, elusively, the great hope vanished. There was a swift
reaction in my mind and body, and I half swooned away on to a chair.
In other moods my picturings were completely black. I saw my future as
an unbroken series of savage triumphs for Aunt Jael. She discovered
new and horrible beatings. I should be left quite alone with her:
Grandmother would die. She would flog me from morn till night, always
brutally, always unjustly. Or I would think of love as a thing I should
never, never know. I pictured myself a lonely old woman, loved by none,
loving none. Or, if I thought of hell, I doubted my salvation, and
suffered in imagination all its pains. Or, with eternity, the fiction
that I was not alive failed me dismally. I pictured myself sitting for
ever on a throne near God, bearded and omnipotent. A billion years
rolled away, I was still no nearer the end, no nearer escape from my
soul, from life, from me. Sometimes I shrieked. My cries rent heaven.
God motioned the golden harps to cease and consigned me to the torments
of hell. I was borne downwards at incredible speed by two bright angels
who, as we got lower and lower, took on the shape of devils. They cast
me shrieking into the lake of fire and brimstone. Sometimes in heaven I
could keep my agony mute. This was no better. Amid the angels' psalmody
there rang in my heart like a beaten bell: _For ever, for ever, for
ever!_--taunting me into a supreme feverish effort to think _For ever_
out. Then came the last moment, the crisis of hypnotized fear, as my
finite mind flung itself against the iron door of the Infinite. The
struggle lasted but a few seconds, or I should have gone mad. Then the
warm back-rush of physical relief as the blood poured back into my
brain.
I came to believe there were two persons in myself, two distinct souls
in my body. It was my way of accounting for the two strangely different
manners of thought I experienced. I thought and felt things in an
ordinary, conscious, methodical way--the self-argumentative, cunning,
careful little girl that most often I was. At other times, ideas,
promptings, wishes, beliefs came to me in quite different fashion--or
not so much to me as from within me, from some inner source of my
being. They coursed through my blood and stormed my brain; they were
blind, warm, intuitive; supernatural, sudden. There is no one word
in my vocabulary, still less was there in those seven-year-old days,
to define or explain this distinction. It was no matter of Reason
with Common-sense on the one hand, and Conscience or Instinct on the
other. Conscience--"God knocking at your heart's door," Grandmother
called it--is a very incomplete description; at most it could apply
only to the good promptings of the other Self. For the reverse reason
Instinct will not suffice. It was no question of two modes of thought
or feeling, but of two persons inhabiting my body. The Mary Lee every
one saw and knew was the two of them taken together. I called them Me
and the Other Me. I felt the difference between them in a physical way.
With the more usual self, my blood flowed gently, my pulse was normal.
The other self marched through my flesh like an army with banners; the
hand of this more mysterious me literally knocked at my heart; she came
from some deep inmost place and vanished as swiftly as she came. She
went; my pulse flagged.
My loneliness too encouraged the sociable idea that there were two
people inside me--Two's company, one's none! In bed or blue attic,
duologues were better than monologues: but as a rule I could not
arrange these, because Other Me blew where she listed; I could never
fix her for a talk as I chose. She came with some sudden word or
warning, prompting or precept--and was gone. When I was bent on some
moment's peccadillo, she--he?--would come, whisper "It is wrong"; for
one moment the whispering voice was my voice, the voice of another Me,
a new person and soul whose being seemed to flood my veins. She fled,
and I was alone again. The way I tried to formulate the experience
was this: One is my normal human sinful Self, is Me, Mary; Two is the
Spirit of God possessing me, the movement in me of the divine, the
indwelling spirit, the Holy Ghost made manifest in my flesh. I saw it
all as a special privilege, a new proof that the Lord had set me apart.
Sometimes the two selves battled for mastery. I thought that one thing
was the right course to follow, and felt that another was. I knew it
was the _feeling_ I ought to obey, though sometimes I was not positive
of its divine, Other Me, Apostolic quality. In such cases my plan was
to count thirty-seven--aloud as a rule--and if at the end of my count
the impulse was still in me, I obeyed it. The test itself was of course
of _Other_ origin. "In cases of doubt, count thirty-seven" came to me
one day with a warm lilt of authority I did not question. I adopted it
as my sacred number for all emergencies. When Aunt Jael was flogging
me--I remember well how it helped me in that rope-end beating after I
had sucked the sweets--I would shut my eyes and see if I could count
thirty-seven between each stroke. Success depended on my rate--and
hers; in any case the mere endeavour seemed to lessen the pain.
Note, too, that there were thirty-seven acid drops in the fatal bottle,
and that my favourite psalm, number 137, was on page 537 of my old
Bible:--Heavenly proofs of the pure metal of my golden number.
(Note: This chapter in my notes fills exactly 37 pages!-M. L.)