Soon after this, somewhere about my tenth birthday, in the early spring
of 1858, an important relaxation in my rule of life was made. I was
allowed, under strict limitations, to go out on the Lawn for a certain
period every afternoon, and to mix with the children there.
In view of my Great-Aunt's principle, namely, to make my life as harsh
and pleasureless as possible, and of my Grandmother's steadfast prayers
and endeavours to keep me pure and unspotted from the world, this was a
big concession. The reason was my health. Grandmother saw that I never
got out of doors half enough, and that a couple of hours' play with
other children in the open air would be likely to make me brighter in
spirit and to bring colour to my cheeks. One Lord's Day, as we were
walking home from Breaking of Bread, I overheard Brother Browning: "If
you don't take care she will not be long for this world,"--nodding his
head sadly, sagely and surreptitiously in my direction. Anyway, the
amazing happened, and with stern negative injunctions from Aunt Jael
not to abuse the new privilege, nor to play "monkey tricks," for which
I should be well "warmed," and with more positive and more terrible
instructions from my Grandmother to use my opportunity among the other
children to "testify to my Lord," I was launched on the sea of secular
society, the world of the Great Unsaved.
Except for what little I saw of them at the Misses Clinkers' I had no
acquaintance with other children, nor any knowledge of their "play."
While in the obedient orbit of my own imagination, I was bold, none
bolder, in the situations I created, the climaxes I achieved, the high
astounding terms with which I threatened the attic walls; face to face
with flesh-and-blood children of my own age, I soon found I was shy
to a degree, until they were out of my sight, and I was alone again,
when they joined the ever-lengthening cast of my puppet show, and, like
everybody else, did as they were bid. Not that I was shy of grown-ups;
it was the fruit of my upbringing that I was at ease with any one but
my equals.
It was a horrible ordeal, that first afternoon, when I stepped through
our garden gate on to the Lawn. I walked unsteadily, not daring to look
towards the grass slope at the higher end, where all the Lawn children
were assembled in a group. "Waiting for you! Staring at you!" said
self-consciousness; and fear echoed. I flushed crimson. I was half sick
with shyness. It seemed to my imagination that every child was staring
at me with a hundred eyes--they knew, they knew! Marcus had heralded
the fact, had played Baptist to my coming--they were all assembled
here to stare, to flout, to mock. How I wished the earth would open
and swallow me up or that the Lord would carry me away in a great
cloud to Heaven. I dared not fly back into our garden: that way lay
eternal derision. Yet my legs would not carry me forward to the group
of children who stood there staring at me without mercy, without pity,
with the callous fixity of stars. I was filled with blind confusion,
and prayed feverishly for a miraculous escape.
Miracle, in the body of Marcus, saved me. He came forward from the
group.
"Hello, Mary Lee, we've been talking about you." (Of course they had.)
"I've told everybody you're allowed to play on the Lawn now, but we
don't know which League you ought to belong to."
"What do you mean? What's a League?"
"Well, all Lawn children are in two sides for games and everything.
Leagues means that. If your father and mother go to Church, you belong
to the Church League, if they go to Chapel, you belong to the Chapel
League."
"I see." Secular distinction based on religious ones was a principle I
understood.
"Yes, but you're not one or the other. Brethren aren't Church, are
they? And they aren't _really_ Chapel."
"You're a Brethren too."
"Not like you are. Mother goes to the Bible Christian Chapel, and
father really belongs there too, for all he goes to your meeting. So I
count as Chapel."
"What do Papists count as?"
"There aren't any. If there were any and if they were allowed to go
about, they'd be like you, neither one thing nor the other."
"Like me indeed! Papists like Brethren! Saints like sinners!"
"Not really, not like that; Brethren are more like Chapel, I know.
Besides _I_ want you to belong to our League, but--Joe Jones says
you're not to. There's a meeting about it tomorrow. All our rules and
sports and everything are decided at the meeting we have--not like
Brethren meetings--usually up at the top of the bank, near the big
poplar. Joe Jones sits on the wall, and he's our president. I'll let
you know what happens about you afterwards. Till then I don't think
you'd better play with us. _I_ don't mind, but the others say you'd
better not. If Joe Jones caught you! _I_ don't like Joe Jones,--don't
you ever whisper that, it's a terrible secret--but he doesn't like you,
and he's the top dog."
Joe Jones, topmost of dogs, Autocrat of the Lawn, pimpled despot
against whose evil pleasure little could prevail, was a good deal older
than the rest of the children, by whom he was obeyed and feared. From
what Marcus said his heavy hand was against me from the start. I knew
why. He lived next door to us at Number Six, with an invalid, widowed
mother (whom I had only seen once or twice in my life, as she was kept
indoors by some mysterious infirmity which some described as grief and
others drink) and his sister Lena, a big freckled flaxen girl about
a year younger than himself. We rarely saw any of the three, and our
household of course had nothing to do with theirs (Church of England,
strict). But one morning as I was walking up the Lawn path on my way
from school, Lena had called out to me over the privet hedge.
"Hello, you!"--and then something else, including a word I did not
know, though instinct told me it was bad. The obscenity of the
traditional filth words lies as much in their sound as in their
signification. She repeated the words several times, combining artistic
pleasure of mouthing the abomination with sheer joy of wickedness in
shocking me and staining my imagination.
I went straight indoors and appealed to the dictionary. No help there;
Lena Jones had wider verbal resources than Doctor Johnson. Grandmother
would be sure to know. I went to that dear blameless old soul with the
foul word on my lips.
"What does ---- mean?"
"Nothing good, my dear," she replied calmly, imperturbably, without
a trace of the flush that would have appeared in the cheeks of
ninety-nine parents out of a hundred. "Nothing good, my dear. Where did
you hear it?"
"Lena Jones--just now."
Grandmother walked out of the house and rang the next-door bell. What
passed between her and the grief- (or gin-) stricken Mrs. Jones I do
not know, but the results were, first, that Lena was sent away to a
boarding-school, where I have no doubt she added suitably to the virgin
vocabulary of her companions; second, that Joe, taking up the cudgels
for his sister's honour, became suddenly and most unfavourably aware of
my existence. He would threaten me if I passed him on my way to school,
when I would cower to Marcus for protection. Once he chased me with a
cricket bat. And now that at last I was near to gaining the status of
"one of the Lawn children," he was going to revenge himself by standing
in my way. With the Lawn community a word from Joe Jones could make or
mar. If he forbade the others to speak to me, they would not dare to;
if he ordered them to persecute or tease me, they would obey. He was
the typical bully ruling with the rod of fear by the right of size. He
was the typical plague-spot too, polluting the whole life of the little
community.
For the Lawn was, in the true sense, a community. The well-defined
bournes that were set to the oblong patch of greensward--the steep,
poplar-crowned grass bank at one end, surmounted by a wall over which
you looked down into a back lane and a stable some twenty feet below
you; at the opposite end that marched with the street the high brick
wall with one ceremonious gate in the middle for only egress to the
outside world; then the two rows of houses the full length of both
sides--gave to it a separate and self-contained character; the charm
and magical selfishness of an island. All the children who lived
in the Lawn houses played there, and played nowhere else. Though
divided into two mutually hostile leagues, they felt themselves to
be one blood and one people as against the strange world without the
gates. Of this community Joe Jones was the uncrowned King. Like the
early Teutonic monarchs he was limited in power by the folk-moot, or
primitive parliament of all his subjects. Questions of Lawn politics
were decided at democratic meetings under the poplars at the top of
the grass bank. There were equal suffrage, decisions by majorities,
and the feminine vote. Unfortunately Joe Jones had the casting vote,
and as there prevailed the show-of-hands instead of the secret ballot,
a look from his awful eye influenced a good many other votes as well.
In short, the Lawn, like all other democracies, was, as wise old
Aristotle saw, always near the verge of tyranny. At the tribal meetings
were discussed and decided sports and competitions, penalties and
punishments, ostracisms and taboos; unpopular proposals were consigned
to Limbo, unpopular persons to Coventry. In all doings that allowed of
"sides"--cricket, nuts-in-May, most ball games, tug of war, tick, Red
Indians, clumps (what were they, these mysteries?)--the two leagues,
Marcus told me, were arrayed in battle against each other.
The Church League was of course led by Joe Jones, seconded, until her
departure for wider spheres of maleficence, by his devoted sister Lena.
Then there were Kitty and Molly Prince, also fatherless. Their late
parent was a "Rural Dean," and they were thus our social élite (Mr.
Jones, Senior, had been a mere butcher;--nay, pork-butcher even, said
the slanderers, with a fine feeling for social shades). Kitty and Molly
were dull, stupid girls. Molly was as sallow as a dried apple; Kitty
lisped; they were always dressed in brown, with large brown velvet bows
in their hats. There was a dim George Smith; a loud-voiced Ted King,
Joe Jones' principal ally, with his two sisters Cissie and Trixie. I
hate them vaguely to this day, that silly giggling pair with their
silly giggling names. I do not forget or forgive that they wore nice
clothes, and mocked cruelly at mine. About this time, Aunt Jael had
my hair shorn--it was my one good feature, and Aunt Jael knew that I
knew it, and decreed that I must "mortify the flesh" accordingly--and
sent me out into a mocking world in school and Lawn, with my face
full of shame and my hair clipped to the head like a boy's. How those
King girls sneered and giggled, and how I loathed them. Finally there
was little John Blackmore, of whom it was whispered abroad that
"his father died before he was born." The import of this fact was
dimly apprehended, but Lawn opinion was unanimous in regarding it as
something unique and special, something sufficient to endow little
Johnny Blackmore with an air of quite exotic velvet-trousered mystery.
He was a gentle, dark-eyed, olive-skinned child, and the only member
of the Establishment party I could abide. He shared the fatherlessness
which was common to his League--the Kings were an exception--and
which probably accounted for their eminence in ill-behaviour. Another
coincidence was that all the members of the Church League, except
George Smith, lived on our side of the Lawn, i. e. the same side as my
Grandmother's house. In defiance of Number Eight, Fort of Plymouth,
halting-place for heaven, they called it "the Church side!"
The leader of the Chapel League was Laurie Prideaux, whose father kept
the big grocer's shop in High Street; a tall, pretty, picture-book
boy with golden curls, a Wesleyan Methodist, and I think the nicest
of all the Lawn children, with whom his influence was second to Joe
Jones' only, and for good instead of evil. The power of one was because
he was liked, of the other because he was feared: those two forms
of power that hold sway everywhere--Aunt Jael and Grandmother, Old
Testament God and New Testament Christ; fear and love. If there was
any weeping, Laurie was there to comfort it; any injustice, Laurie
would champion it. Against Joe Jones he was my rod and my staff. His
second-in-command was Marcus, Marcus who hovered on the marge between
Bible Christianhood, which qualified him for admission to the Lawn, and
Plymouth Brethrenism, which qualified him for admission to Heaven only.
He was a nice boy, Marcus, for all the uncertainty of his theological
position, and I remember him as one of the few bright faces of my
early life. The strength of Lawn Dissent lay in the unnumbered Boldero
family, a seething brood of Congregationalists, who lived over the way
in the corner house opposite Number Eight. Only five of them were of
appropriate age to possess present membership of the Lawn--Sam, Dora,
Daisy, Bill and Zoë--but on either side of the five stretched fading
vistas of babes and grown-ups. Dora was clever, Daisy good-natured,
fat, dull and bow-legged, Zoë fat only, Sam and Bill rough, stupid and
friendly. Finally there were Cyril and Eva Tompkins--twins; Baptists: a
spiteful couple who vied with the Kings in mocking me.
To sum up. On the whole, despite Joe Jones, the boys were kinder than
the girls; a first impression which life, in the lump, has borne out;
and on the whole, despite the Tompkinses, the Chapel League was the
nicer of the two; the brainier also, despite the Boldero boys, and
Johnny Blackmore, who was the shining intellect of the Establishment.
Though I have no longer the faintest hostility to the Anglican
Communion, I find inside me a dim ineradicable notion of some moral
superiority, some higher worth, however slight, which I concede to
the Nonconformists; and I trace it back to my first experience of the
two. If I bow my head in reverent humility before the Dissenters of
England, I know that the real reason is because Laurie and Marcus and
the happy Bolderos were such, while Joe and Lena and the Kings and the
Princes--Beware of Kings! Put not your trust in Princes!--were not.
Church League and Chapel League, and I could belong to neither! My
first feeling should have been sorrow that among that score of young
souls there was not one single sure inheritor of glory; I fear it was
pride instead; in my heart I rejoiced as the Pharisee, that I was not
as other children, and that in me alone had the light shined forth.
Yet at the same moment, parallel but contradictory, I found this
question in my heart: why am I not as other children? Why cannot I
mix with them as one of them, and belong to their Leagues and joys?
After all, my right to belong to the Church League was about as good
as Marcus' Chapel pretensions: had not Grandmother and Aunt Jael both
been Churchwomen once? Or again, if Marcus, who was at least half a
Saint, was allowed to belong to the Chapel League, then why not I, who
was only half a Saint more? I had for a moment a rebellious notion of
forming a new League of my own, a Saints' League, a Plymouth League,
a League of the Elect; but reflection soon showed me that one member
was barely enough. Could I convert others though? The notion warmed
my heart, the more luxuriously because though at root ambitious, it
seemed so virtuous and noble. Missionary zeal would further personal
ambition. In testifying to the Lord, I would raise up unto Him
followers who should be _my_ followers too; forming at one and the same
time the Lord's League and _my_ League. There burned together in me for
a queer exalted moment the red flame of ambition and the pure white
fire of faith; burning together in Mary as in Mahomet; as in the souls
of the great captains of religion. The fires died down; till there
burned within me just the candle flicker of this humble hope: that
the morrow's meeting would suffer me to join the Lawn at all, as the
lowliest novice in whichever League would take me.
Next day after tea, I watched from afar the deliberations of the
assembly that was handling my fate.
Some one shouted my name; I approached and appeared before the tribe.
On the wall that surmounted the mound of justice sat Joseph Jones,
surrounded by his earls and churls. I observed his pimples, his ginger
hair, his fish-like bulging eyes.
"Come here. Stand straight. Look at me."
I obeyed. He faced me. The tribe surrounded me.
"Your name?"
"Mary Lee."
"You're allowed now to come out and play on the Lawn?"
"Yes."
"You can't just play and do as you like, you know. There are Laws of
the Lawn. And there are two Leagues, and you must belong to one of
them."
This sounded encouraging; he was not going to stand in my way after all.
"I know," I said. "Which shall I belong to?"
"We'll see. Let me see, which are you, Church or Chapel?" He was too
dull to conceal the wolf in the sheep-like blandness of his voice.
Well, I would fight for my footing.
"Neither. You know that."
"Neither?" incredulously. "How do you mean?"
"I belong to the Brethren, the Saints. That's neither Church nor
Chapel."
"Well then, you can't belong to the Church League or the Chapel League,
can you, if you aren't either? Of course you can't. We're _sorry_, but
you can't belong to the Lawn at all. Still" (generously) "we'll let you
walk about." He dismissed me with a nod. I did not move.
"But--"
"Now shut up. No damned chatter. You should belong to a decent
religion."
"It is a decent religion," I cried. "Don't you talk so; it is my
Grandmother's. 'Tis as good as any of yours, and a lot better. And 'tis
not a good enough reason for keeping me out."
The Lord of the Lawn was not accustomed to being addressed thus. He
darkened--or rather flushed; gingerheads cannot darken.
"If you want another reason, 'tis because you are a dirty little
tell-tale sneak."
"Hear, hear! Sneak, Sneak!" Chorus of Kings and Princes.
"I'm _not_ a sneak. I'm _not_ a sneak, and I don't want to belong to
your miserable Lawn. I'm a Saint anyway, and better than you churches
and chapels."
I turned and moved away. "Saint, Saint, look at the Saint! The sneaking
Saint, the saintly sneak. The Brethering kid. Plymouth Brethering, good
old Plymouth Rocks. Three cheers for the Plymouth Rocks!" Church and
Dissent mingled in this hostile chorus that pursued me to our gate.
"Look at the corduroy skirt, he, he, he!--just like workman's
trousers," was the last thing I heard. My cheeks burned with rage and
shame.
I ran up to the attic to sob and mope in peace. I was Hagar once again,
turned out into the wilderness alone. Every child's hand was against
me. I sobbed away, until at last the luxury of extreme grief brought
its comfort. Mine was the chief sorrow under the heavens, it was unique
in its injustice; I was the unhappiest little girl in all the world. I
regained a measure of happiness.
After this experience, I went out on to the Lawn as little as possible;
which achieved the result of Aunt Jael driving me there.
I could take no part in games, but after a while I became a kind of
furtive hanger-on in the outskirts at the frequent "Meetings" of the
Lawn, at which the division into Leagues did not usually persist.
I only dared approach the company when Joe Jones was absent, which,
however, inclined to be more and more usual as he became absorbed in
gay adult adventures in the world outside the Lawn gates. The moment
Joe was gone, and Laurie Prideaux had stepped without question into
the shoes of leadership, the bullies who, under Joe's encouraging eye,
would have driven me off, were silent and left me alone, obeying with
slavish care the whim of the new Autocrat. So I stood away, just a
little outside the ring of children, and listened.
Under Laurie's influence, the meetings were more concerned with affairs
of universal moment and abstract truth than with the intrigues and
vendettas so dear to Joseph Jones. Is the moon bigger than the sun?
How far away are the stars? Does it really hurt the jelly-fish like
the big yellow ones you see at Ilfracombe and Croyde, if you cut them
in two with your spade? Do fish feel pain? Is the donkey the same as
an ass, or is ass the female of donkey? What is the earliest date
in the year you can have raspberries in the garden, or thrush's--or
black-bird's--or cuckoo's eggs out in the country? What is the farthest
a cricket-ball has ever been thrown? and will there be a war between
England and the French Empire? With any insoluble question, i. e. a
question to which nobody brought an answer which the meeting regarded
as final, the procedure adopted was for every one present to refer it
to his or her father or mother, and to report the result at the next
meeting. Much valuable information was gleaned by this means. The final
decision was by a majority of votes. Then if five parents said the moon
was bigger than the sun, and only four that the sun was bigger than the
moon, then the moon _was_ bigger than the sun. Voting was by parents.
Thus the Bolderos counted as one vote only; which was not unjust, for
the brood, who were inclined, under Dora's orders, to stand or fall
together, would otherwise have swamped the meetings; as indeed they
frequently did when the question was not one which had been referred
back to parental omniscience.
One day the supreme problem was raised. Joe Jones was not present, but
perhaps he had inspired the discussion. It came breathlessly, with
the swift tornado-strength of great ideas. Every one of us knew at
once that we were face to face with something bigger than we had ever
encountered before. Into our camp of innocence it fell like a bursting
bombshell, scattering wonder in all directions. Of the innocence I feel
pretty sure; I do not believe a single child knew.
"They are _born_, of course," said one, sagely.
"Yes; but _how_?"
"Storks bring them," said little Ethel Prideaux. "On my panorama, there
is a picture of a big white stork carrying a baby in its beak, and it
puts it down the chimney."
"Where does it get it?" objected Marcus. "Besides storks are only in
Holland and places abroad; there aren't any left in England, and there
are babies in England just the same."
"I think it has something to do with gooseberry bushes," said Trixie
King. "I overheard my Auntie saying so."
"Well, we have nothing but flowers in our garden," said Billy Boldero,
"and there are twelve in our family, and no gooseberry bushes."
"It is neither storks nor gooseberries," said Dora Boldero, aged
thirteen, importantly. "These are only fairy tales for children. The
real reason" (she lowered her voice impressively) "is this. Doctors
bring them. Whenever we have a baby born" (at least an annual event
in the Boldero ménage) "the doctor comes. He always brings with him a
Black Bag. _That's it!_" (Sensation.)
Marcus was the first to recover. Even Black Bag was inadequate as First
Cause.
"Yes, but where does he get the baby first, before he puts it in the
bag to bring? He must get it somewhere."
"From the gooseberry bush, of course," said Trixie King, in a bold
effort to recover her position. "I expect there is a special garden
behind doctors' houses where they grow."
"But if there isn't?" objected Marcus pitilessly. "Doctor Le Mesurier
has no garden at all, neither has Doctor Hale."
"No," said Laurie Prideaux. "And I don't believe the Black Bag story
one bit. Because if it were that, the doctor could take the bag
anywhere, and give whoever he liked a baby, just whenever he liked. And
he can't, I know. Anybody can't have a baby just when they like. Mother
says Mrs. Pile at Number Three has wanted one for years. Besides, any
one can't have one. Only mothers have babies."
"_And_ fathers," said some one.
"Fathers and mothers together; there must be both. At least there
always _is_ both."
"Except--" We all looked awkwardly at Johnny Blackmore, the posthumous
one. He flushed slightly under his olive skin.
"No, I had a father too; he _was_ my father, though he died before I
was born."
"Well, if your father can die before you are born, what makes him
your father? What does 'being your father' mean?" We were getting to
fundamentals.
"Can a mother die too before her baby is born?"
Nobody could answer this. Somehow it _seemed_ more improbable. Besides,
we had no motherless counterpart of Johnny Blackmore to support the
notion.
"Whether they die or whether they don't," said Laurie, summing up, "all
that we've found out so far is that there must be a father and there
must be a mother; a gentleman and a lady, that is, who are married.
They must be married."
"No, they needn't be," I cried eagerly. "Sister Lucy Fry at our Meeting
is not married, and she has a baby four months old!"
The sensational character of my information allowed my first utterance
in a Lawn assembly to pass unreproved. There was an impressed silence.
Everybody waited for more.
"It is not often, I don't think," I went on. "It was a mistake of some
kind, and a sin too. Much prayer was offered up, and Aunt Jael nearly
had her turned out of fellowship. It is _wrong_ to have a baby if you
are not married. Wrong, but not impossible."
"That's important," said Marcus, "but we've really found nothing out.
How are they made? What makes them come?"
"The Lord," said I, sententiously. This was a falling off.
"I know. But _how_?"
Marcus was final. "This is a thing that has got to be asked at home.
Tomorrow evening at half-past-five you will all report what you have
found out. It is a thing we ought to know. We shall have to have
children ourselves one day."
"I don't like to athk," simpered Kitty Prince. "Mother'd not like me to
I'm thure."
Perhaps she really knew, though more likely vague instinct coloured her
reluctance.
It was a reluctance I did not share. The meeting was about to disperse,
and I was resolving in my mind the words I should use when asking my
Grandmother, wondering what her answer might be, when "There's Joe
coming in at the gate," was shouted, "let's ask him."
We crowded round him as he approached.
"Well, what is it, kids?" he said, in his royal cocksure way.
Laurie told him. He smiled: an evil important smile.
"And nobody knows anything," concluded Laurie.
"Don't they?" leered Joe, looking around to see that all the Lawn
children were listening, and no one else. "Don't they. _I_ know."
He told us. He told us with a detail that left no room for doubt and a
foulness that smote our cheeks with shame.
"It is not true." I kept whispering to myself. My cheeks burned, and I
was shaking all over. Against myself, I believed him. It was horrible
enough to be true.
He gave us fatherhood as it appeared to him. When he came to the
mother's sacrifice of pain, and desecrated it with filthy leering
words, I could bear it no longer, and eluding all attempts to stop me,
I fled wildly into the house, and upstairs to my Grandmother.
She looked up from the Word, surprised in her calm fashion.
"What is it, my dear?"
I told her. "O Grandmother, it is not as cruel as that, is it? It is
not true? Tell me it is not true!"
"It is true, my dear."
"And does it hurt like that?"
"Yes, my dear."
"Why--why isn't there some easier way? So horrible the first part, and
then so cruel. It is wrong."
"It's the Lord's will, my dear. It always has been and always will be.
Meanwhile, you are not to go on the Lawn again till I have spoken to
your Aunt. I must seek the Lord's guidance. Leave me to lay it before
Him."
The look on Aunt Jael's face at supper-time soon banished the far
terrors of motherhood: Grandmother had clearly told her all. It
was unjust, of course: it was no crime on my part to have heard
something--and something true--to which I could not help listening,
which I had not sought to hear, and which terrified me now that I had
heard it. It was unjust that she was angry. But there 'twas.
All through supper she said nothing. I feared to receive her wrath, yet
I could not bear that visit should be delayed till the morrow, which
would mean a sleepless night of visualizing. As we rose from our knees
after evening worship, Aunt Jael turned a grim eye on me and spoke.
"I shall write to Simeon Greeber tomorrow."