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 her justice, 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.
"_Such_ a 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 of Laurie 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 they decided
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-professional _raconteuse_. 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 not seem
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 morning she 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 than _some_ as 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 gentle
_détraquée_ and 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 is _no_
hope."
The husband certainly had none, though his spouse, dreamily quoting
Luke-one-thirteen, declared that _she_ had, 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 had passed 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 and Grandmother'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 magical by 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 with _some 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.