At the end of January she was seven years old. Something was bound to
happen when you were seven.
She was moved out of Mamma's room to sleep by herself on the top floor in
the night nursery. And the day nursery was turned into the boys'
schoolroom.
When you were little and slept in the cot behind the curtain Mamma would
sometimes come and read you to sleep with the bits you wanted: "The Lord
is my Shepherd," and "Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden
bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain or the wheel
broken at the cistern," and "the city had no need of the sun, neither of
the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the
Lamb is the light thereof."
When you were frightened she taught you to say, "He that dwelleth in the
secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the
Almighty.... He shall cover thee with His feathers and under His wings
shalt thou trust.... Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night."
And you were allowed to have a night-light.
Now it was all different. You went to bed half an hour later, while Mamma
was dressing for dinner, and when she came to tuck you up the bell rang
and she had to run downstairs, quick, so as not to keep Papa waiting. You
hung on to her neck and untucked yourself, and she always got away before
you could kiss her seven times. And there was no night-light. You had to
read the Bible in the morning, and it always had to be the bits Mamma
wanted, out of Genesis and the Gospel of St. John.
You had to learn about the one God and the three Persons. The one God was
the nice, clever, happy God who made Mamma and Mark and Jenny and the sun
and Sarah and the kittens. He was the God you really believed in.
At night when you lay on your back in the dark you thought about being
born and about arithmetic and God. The sacred number three went into
eighteen sixty-nine and didn't come out again; so did seven. She liked
numbers that fitted like that with no loose ends left over. Mr. Sippett
said there were things you could do with the loose ends of numbers to
make them fit. That was fractions. Supposing there was somewhere in the
world a number that simply wouldn't fit? Mr. Sippett said there was no
such number. But queer things happened. You were seven years old, yet you
had had eight birthdays. There was the day you were born, January the
twenty-fourth, eighteen sixty-three, at five o'clock in the morning. When
you were born you weren't any age at all, not a minute old, not a second,
not half a second. But there was eighteen sixty-two and there was January
the twenty-third and the minute just before you were born. You couldn't
really tell when the twenty-third ended and the twenty-fourth began;
because when you counted sixty minutes for the hour and sixty seconds for
the minute, there was still the half second and the half of that, and so
on for ever and ever.
You couldn't tell when you were really born. And nobody could tell you
what being born was. Perhaps nobody knew. Jenny said being born was just
being born. Sarah's grandchildren were born in the garden under the wall
where the jasmine grew. Roddy shouted at the back door, and when you ran
to look he stretched out his arms across the doorway and wouldn't let you
through. Roddy was excited and frightened; and Mamma said he had been
very good because he stood across the door.
There was being born and there was dying. If you died this minute there
would be the minute after. Then, if you were good, your soul was in
Heaven and your body was cold and stiff like Miss Thompson's mother. And
there was Lazarus. "He hath been in the grave four days and by this time
he stinketh." That was dreadfully frightening; but they had to say it to
show that Lazarus was really dead. That was how you could tell.
"'Lord, if thou hadst been here our brother had not died.'"
That was beautiful. When you thought of it you wanted to cry.
Supposing Mamma died? Supposing Mark died? Or Dank or Roddy? Or even
Uncle Victor? Even Papa?
They couldn't. Jesus wouldn't let them.
When you were frightened in the big dark room you thought about God and
Jesus and the Holy Ghost. They didn't leave you alone a single minute.
God and Jesus stood beside the bed, and Jesus kept God in a good temper,
and the Holy Ghost flew about the room and perched on the top of the
linen cupboard, and bowed and bowed, and said, "Rook-ke-heroo-oo!
Rook-ke-keroo-oo!"
And there was the parroquet.
Mark had given her the stuffed parroquet on her birthday, and Mamma had
given her the Bible and the two grey china vases to make up, with a bird
painted on each. A black bird with a red beak and red legs. She had set
them up on the chimney-piece under the picture of the Holy Family. She
put the Bible in the middle and the parroquet on the top of the Bible and
the vases one on each side.
She worshipped them, because of Mamma and Mark.
She said to herself: "God won't like _that_, but I can't help it. The
kind, clever God won't mind a bit. He's much too busy making things. And
it's not as if they were graven images."