One of Joan's earliest recollections was the picture of herself standing
before the high cheval glass in her mother's dressing-room. Her clothes
lay scattered far and wide, falling where she had flung them; not a shred
of any kind of covering was left to her. She must have been very small,
for she could remember looking up and seeing high above her head the two
brass knobs by which the glass was fastened to its frame. Suddenly, out
of the upper portion of the glass, there looked a scared red face. It
hovered there a moment, and over it in swift succession there passed the
expressions, first of petrified amazement, secondly of shocked
indignation, and thirdly of righteous wrath. And then it swooped down
upon her, and the image in the glass became a confusion of small naked
arms and legs mingled with green cotton gloves and purple bonnet strings.
"You young imp of Satan!" demanded Mrs. Munday--her feelings of outraged
virtue exaggerating perhaps her real sentiments. "What are you doing?"
"Go away. I'se looking at myself," had explained Joan, struggling
furiously to regain the glass.
"But where are your clothes?" was Mrs. Munday's wonder.
"I'se tooked them off," explained Joan. A piece of information that
really, all things considered, seemed unnecessary.
"But can't you see yourself, you wicked child, without stripping yourself
as naked as you were born?"
"No," maintained Joan stoutly. "I hate clothes." As a matter of fact
she didn't, even in those early days. On the contrary, one of her
favourite amusements was "dressing up." This sudden overmastering desire
to arrive at the truth about herself had been a new conceit.
"I wanted to see myself. Clothes ain't me," was all she would or could
vouchsafe; and Mrs. Munday had shook her head, and had freely confessed
that there were things beyond her and that Joan was one of them; and had
succeeded, partly by force, partly by persuasion, in restoring to Joan
once more the semblance of a Christian child.
It was Mrs. Munday, poor soul, who all unconsciously had planted the
seeds of disbelief in Joan's mind. Mrs. Munday's God, from Joan's point
of view, was a most objectionable personage. He talked a lot--or rather
Mrs. Munday talked for Him--about His love for little children. But it
seemed He only loved them when they were good. Joan was under no
delusions about herself. If those were His terms, well, then, so far as
she could see, He wasn't going to be of much use to her. Besides, if He
hated naughty children, why did He make them naughty? At a moderate
estimate quite half Joan's wickedness, so it seemed to Joan, came to her
unbidden. Take for example that self-examination before the cheval
glass. The idea had come into her mind. It had never occurred to her
that it was wicked. If, as Mrs. Munday explained, it was the Devil that
had whispered it to her, then what did God mean by allowing the Devil to
go about persuading little girls to do indecent things? God could do
everything. Why didn't He smash the Devil? It seemed to Joan a mean
trick, look at it how you would. Fancy leaving a little girl to fight
the Devil all by herself. And then get angry because the Devil won! Joan
came to cordially dislike Mrs. Munday's God.
Looking back it was easy enough to smile, but the agony of many nights
when she had lain awake for hours battling with her childish terrors had
left a burning sense of anger in Joan's heart. Poor mazed, bewildered
Mrs. Munday, preaching the eternal damnation of the wicked--who had loved
her, who had only thought to do her duty, the blame was not hers. But
that a religion capable of inflicting such suffering upon the innocent
should still be preached; maintained by the State! That its educated
followers no longer believed in a physical Hell, that its more advanced
clergy had entered into a conspiracy of silence on the subject was no
answer. The great mass of the people were not educated. Official
Christendom in every country still preached the everlasting torture of
the majority of the human race as a well thought out part of the
Creator's scheme. No leader had been bold enough to come forward and
denounce it as an insult to his God. As one grew older, kindly mother
Nature, ever seeking to ease the self-inflicted burdens of her foolish
brood, gave one forgetfulness, insensibility. The condemned criminal
puts the thought of the gallows away from him as long as may be: eats,
and sleeps and even jokes. Man's soul grows pachydermoid. But the
children! Their sensitive brains exposed to every cruel breath. No
philosophic doubt permitted to them. No learned disputation on the
relationship between the literal and the allegorical for the easing of
their frenzied fears. How many million tiny white-faced figures
scattered over Christian Europe and America, stared out each night into a
vision of black horror; how many million tiny hands clutched wildly at
the bedclothes. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children,
if they had done their duty, would have prosecuted before now the
Archbishop of Canterbury.
Of course she would go to Hell. As a special kindness some generous
relative had, on Joan's seventh birthday, given her an edition of Dante's
"Inferno," with illustrations by Dore. From it she was able to form some
notion of what her eternity was likely to be. And God all the while up
in His Heaven, surrounded by that glorious band of praise-trumpeting
angels, watching her out of the corner of His eye. Her courage saved her
from despair. Defiance came to her aid. Let Him send her to Hell! She
was not going to pray to Him and make up to Him. He was a wicked God.
Yes, He was: a cruel, wicked God. And one night she told Him so to His
face.
It had been a pretty crowded day, even for so busy a sinner as little
Joan. It was springtime, and they had gone into the country for her
mother's health. Maybe it was the season: a stirring of the human sap,
conducing to that feeling of being "too big for one's boots," as the
saying is. A dangerous period of the year. Indeed, on the principle
that prevention is better than cure, Mrs. Munday had made it a custom
during April and May to administer to Joan a cooling mixture; but on this
occasion had unfortunately come away without it. Joan, dressed for use
rather than show, and without either shoes or stockings, had stolen
stealthily downstairs: something seemed to be calling to her.
Silently--"like a thief in the night," to adopt Mrs. Munday's
metaphor--had slipped the heavy bolts; had joined the thousand creatures
of the wood--had danced and leapt and shouted; had behaved, in short,
more as if she had been a Pagan nymph than a happy English child. She
had regained the house unnoticed, as she thought, the Devil, no doubt,
assisting her; and had hidden her wet clothes in the bottom of a mighty
chest. Deceitfulness in her heart, she had greeted Mrs. Munday in sleepy
tones from beneath the sheets; and before breakfast, assailed by
suspicious questions, had told a deliberate lie. Later in the morning,
during an argument with an active young pig who was willing enough to
play at Red Riding Hood so far as eating things out of a basket was
concerned, but who would not wear a night-cap, she had used a wicked
word. In the afternoon she "might have killed" the farmer's only son and
heir. They had had a row. In one of those sad lapses from the higher
Christian standards into which Satan was always egging her, she had
pushed him; and he had tumbled head over heels into the horse-pond. The
reason, that instead of lying there and drowning he had got up and walked
back to the house howling fit to wake the Seven Sleepers, was that God,
watching over little children, had arranged for the incident taking place
on that side of the pond where it was shallow. Had the scrimmage
occurred on the opposite bank, beneath which the water was much deeper,
Joan in all probability would have had murder on her soul. It seemed to
Joan that if God, all-powerful and all-foreseeing, had been so careful in
selecting the site, He might with equal ease have prevented the row from
ever taking place. Why couldn't the little beast have been guided back
from school through the orchard, much the shorter way, instead of being
brought round by the yard, so as to come upon her at a moment when she
was feeling a bit short-tempered, to put it mildly? And why had God
allowed him to call her "Carrots"? That Joan should have "put it" this
way, instead of going down on her knees and thanking the Lord for having
saved her from a crime, was proof of her inborn evil disposition. In the
evening was reached the culminating point. Just before going to bed she
had murdered old George the cowman. For all practical purposes she might
just as well have been successful in drowning William Augustus earlier in
the day. It seemed to be one of those things that had to be. Mr.
Hornflower still lived, it was true, but that was not Joan's fault. Joan,
standing in white night-gown beside her bed, everything around her
breathing of innocence and virtue: the spotless bedclothes, the chintz
curtains, the white hyacinths upon the window-ledge, Joan's Bible, a
present from Aunt Susan; her prayer-book, handsomely bound in calf, a
present from Grandpapa, upon their little table; Mrs. Munday in evening
black and cameo brooch (pale red with tomb and weeping willow in white
relief) sacred to the memory of the departed Mr. Munday--Joan standing
there erect, with pale, passionate face, defying all these aids to
righteousness, had deliberately wished Mr. Hornflower dead. Old George
Hornflower it was who, unseen by her, had passed her that morning in the
wood. Grumpy old George it was who had overheard the wicked word with
which she had cursed the pig; who had met William Augustus on his
emergence from the pond. To Mr. George Hornflower, the humble instrument
in the hands of Providence, helping her towards possible salvation, she
ought to have been grateful. And instead of that she had flung into the
agonized face of Mrs. Munday these awful words:
"I wish he was dead!"
"He who in his heart--" there was verse and chapter for it. Joan was a
murderess. Just as well, so far as Joan was concerned, might she have
taken a carving-knife and stabbed Deacon Hornflower to the heart.
Joan's prayers that night, to the accompaniment of Mrs. Munday's sobs,
had a hopeless air of unreality about them. Mrs. Munday's kiss was cold.
How long Joan lay and tossed upon her little bed she could not tell.
Somewhere about the middle of the night, or so it seemed to her, the
frenzy seized her. Flinging the bedclothes away she rose to her feet. It
is difficult to stand upon a spring mattress, but Joan kept her balance.
Of course He was there in the room with her. God was everywhere, spying
upon her. She could distinctly hear His measured breathing. Face to
face with Him, she told Him what she thought of Him. She told Him He was
a cruel, wicked God.
There are no Victoria Crosses for sinners, or surely little Joan that
night would have earned it. It was not lack of imagination that helped
her courage. God and she alone, in the darkness. He with all the forces
of the Universe behind Him. He armed with His eternal pains and
penalties, and eight-year-old Joan: the creature that He had made in His
Own Image that He could torture and destroy. Hell yawned beneath her,
but it had to be said. Somebody ought to tell Him.
"You are a wicked God," Joan told Him. "Yes, You are. A cruel, wicked
God."
And then that she might not see the walls of the room open before her,
hear the wild laughter of the thousand devils that were coming to bear
her off, she threw herself down, her face hidden in the pillow, and
clenched her hands and waited.
And suddenly there burst a song. It was like nothing Joan had ever heard
before. So clear and loud and near that all the night seemed filled with
harmony. It sank into a tender yearning cry throbbing with passionate
desire, and then it rose again in thrilling ecstasy: a song of hope, of
victory.
Joan, trembling, stole from her bed and drew aside the blind. There was
nothing to be seen but the stars and the dim shape of the hills. But
still that song, filling the air with its wild, triumphant melody.
Years afterwards, listening to the overture to _Tannhauser_, there came
back to her the memory of that night. Ever through the mad Satanic
discords she could hear, now faint, now conquering, the Pilgrims' onward
march. So through the jangled discords of the world one heard the Song
of Life. Through the dim aeons of man's savage infancy; through the
centuries of bloodshed and of horror; through the dark ages of tyranny
and superstition; through wrong, through cruelty, through hate; heedless
of doom, heedless of death, still the nightingale's song: "I love you. I
love you. I love you. We will build a nest. We will rear our brood. I
love you. I love you. Life shall not die."
Joan crept back into bed. A new wonder had come to her. And from that
night Joan's belief in Mrs. Munday's God began to fade, circumstances
helping.
Firstly there was the great event of going to school. She was glad to
get away from home, a massive, stiffly furnished house in a wealthy
suburb of Liverpool. Her mother, since she could remember, had been an
invalid, rarely leaving her bedroom till the afternoon. Her father, the
owner of large engineering works, she only saw, as a rule, at
dinner-time, when she would come down to dessert. It had been different
when she was very young, before her mother had been taken ill. Then she
had been more with them both. She had dim recollections of her father
playing with her, pretending to be a bear and growling at her from behind
the sofa. And then he would seize and hug her and they would both laugh,
while he tossed her into the air and caught her. He had looked so big
and handsome. All through her childhood there had been the desire to
recreate those days, to spring into the air and catch her arms about his
neck. She could have loved him dearly if he had only let her. Once,
seeking explanation, she had opened her heart a little to Mrs. Munday. It
was disappointment, Mrs. Munday thought, that she had not been a boy; and
with that Joan had to content herself. Maybe also her mother's illness
had helped to sadden him. Or perhaps it was mere temperament, as she
argued to herself later, for which they were both responsible. Those
little tricks of coaxing, of tenderness, of wilfulness, by means of which
other girls wriggled their way so successfully into a warm nest of cosy
affection: she had never been able to employ them. Beneath her
self-confidence was a shyness, an immovable reserve that had always
prevented her from expressing her emotions. She had inherited it,
doubtless enough, from him. Perhaps one day, between them, they would
break down the barrier, the strength of which seemed to lie in its very
flimsiness, its impalpability.
And then during college vacations, returning home with growing notions
and views of her own, she had found herself so often in antagonism with
him. His fierce puritanism, so opposed to all her enthusiasms. Arguing
with him, she might almost have been listening to one of his Cromwellian
ancestors risen from the dead. There had been disputes between him and
his work-people, and Joan had taken the side of the men. He had not been
angry with her, but coldly contemptuous. And yet, in spite of it all, if
he had only made a sign! She wanted to fling herself crying into his
arms and shake him--make him listen to her wisdom, sitting on his knee
with her hands clasped round his neck. He was not really intolerant and
stupid. That had been proved by his letting her go to a Church of
England school. Her mother had expressed no wish. It was he who had
selected it.
Of her mother she had always stood somewhat in fear, never knowing when
the mood of passionate affection would give place to a chill aversion
that seemed almost like hate. Perhaps it had been good for her, so she
told herself in after years, her lonely, unguided childhood. It had
forced her to think and act for herself. At school she reaped the
benefit. Self-reliant, confident, original, leadership was granted to
her as a natural prerogative. Nature had helped her. Nowhere does a
young girl rule more supremely by reason of her beauty than among her
fellows. Joan soon grew accustomed to having her boots put on and taken
off for her; all her needs of service anticipated by eager slaves,
contending with one another for the privilege. By giving a command, by
bestowing a few moments of her conversation, it was within her power to
make some small adoring girl absurdly happy for the rest of the day;
while her displeasure would result in tears, in fawning pleadings for
forgiveness. The homage did not spoil her. Rather it helped to develop
her. She accepted it from the beginning as in the order of things. Power
had been given to her. It was her duty to see to it that she did not use
it capriciously, for her own gratification. No conscientious youthful
queen could have been more careful in the distribution of her
favours--that they should be for the encouragement of the deserving, the
reward of virtue; more sparing of her frowns, reserving them for the
rectification of error.
At Girton it was more by force of will, of brain, that she had to make
her position. There was more competition. Joan welcomed it, as giving
more zest to life. But even there her beauty was by no means a
negligible quantity. Clever, brilliant young women, accustomed to sweep
aside all opposition with a blaze of rhetoric, found themselves to their
irritation sitting in front of her silent, not so much listening to her
as looking at her. It puzzled them for a time. Because a girl's
features are classical and her colouring attractive, surely that has
nothing to do with the value of her political views? Until one of them
discovered by chance that it has.
"Well, what does Beauty think about it?" this one had asked, laughing.
She had arrived at the end of a discussion just as Joan was leaving the
room. And then she gave a long low whistle, feeling that she had
stumbled upon the explanation. Beauty, that mysterious force that from
the date of creation has ruled the world, what does It think? Dumb,
passive, as a rule, exercising its influence unconsciously. But if it
should become intelligent, active! A Philosopher has dreamed of the vast
influence that could be exercised by a dozen sincere men acting in unity.
Suppose a dozen of the most beautiful women in the world could form
themselves into a league! Joan found them late in the evening still
discussing it.
Her mother died suddenly during her last term, and Joan hurried back to
attend the funeral. Her father was out when she reached home. Joan
changed her travel-dusty clothes, and then went into the room where her
mother lay, and closed the door. She must have been a beautiful woman.
Now that the fret and the restlessness had left her it had come back to
her. The passionate eyes were closed. Joan kissed the marble lids, and
drawing a chair to the bedside, sat down. It grieved her that she had
never loved her mother--not as one ought to love one's mother,
unquestioningly, unreasoningly, as a natural instinct. For a moment a
strange thought came to her, and swiftly, almost guiltily, she stole
across, and drawing back a corner of the blind, examined closely her own
features in the glass, comparing them with the face of the dead woman,
thus called upon to be a silent witness for or against the living. Joan
drew a sigh of relief and let fall the blind. There could be no
misreading the evidence. Death had smoothed away the lines, given back
youth. It was almost uncanny, the likeness between them. It might have
been her drowned sister lying there. And they had never known one
another. Had this also been temperament again, keeping them apart? Why
did it imprison us each one as in a moving cell, so that we never could
stretch out our arms to one another, except when at rare intervals Love
or Death would unlock for a while the key? Impossible that two beings
should have been so alike in feature without being more or less alike in
thought and feeling. Whose fault had it been? Surely her own; she was
so hideously calculating. Even Mrs. Munday, because the old lady had
been fond of her and had shown it, had been of more service to her, more
a companion, had been nearer to her than her own mother. In self-excuse
she recalled the two or three occasions when she had tried to win her
mother. But fate seemed to have decreed that their moods should never
correspond. Her mother's sudden fierce outbursts of love, when she would
be jealous, exacting, almost cruel, had frightened her when she was a
child, and later on had bored her. Other daughters would have shown
patience, unselfishness, but she had always been so self-centred. Why
had she never fallen in love like other girls? There had been a boy at
Brighton when she was at school there--quite a nice boy, who had written
her wildly extravagant love-letters. It must have cost him half his
pocket-money to get them smuggled in to her. Why had she only been
amused at them? They might have been beautiful if only one had read them
with sympathy. One day he had caught her alone on the Downs. Evidently
he had made it his business to hang about every day waiting for some such
chance. He had gone down on his knees and kissed her feet, and had been
so abject, so pitiful that she had given him some flowers she was
wearing. And he had sworn to dedicate the rest of his life to being
worthy of her condescension. Poor lad! She wondered--for the first time
since that afternoon--what had become of him. There had been others; a
third cousin who still wrote to her from Egypt, sending her presents that
perhaps he could ill afford, and whom she answered about once a year. And
promising young men she had met at Cambridge, ready, she felt
instinctively, to fall down and worship her. And all the use she had had
for them was to convert them to her views--a task so easy as to be quite
uninteresting--with a vague idea that they might come in handy in the
future, when she might need help in shaping that world of the future.
Only once had she ever thought of marriage. And that was in favour of a
middle-aged, rheumatic widower with three children, a professor of
chemistry, very learned and justly famous. For about a month she had
thought herself in love. She pictured herself devoting her life to him,
rubbing his poor left shoulder where it seemed he suffered most, and
brushing his picturesque hair, inclined to grey. Fortunately his eldest
daughter was a young woman of resource, or the poor gentleman, naturally
carried off his feet by this adoration of youth and beauty, might have
made an ass of himself. But apart from this one episode she had reached
the age of twenty-three heart-whole.
She rose and replaced the chair. And suddenly a wave of pity passed over
her for the dead woman, who had always seemed so lonely in the great
stiffly-furnished house, and the tears came.
She was glad she had been able to cry. She had always hated herself for
her lack of tears; it was so unwomanly. Even as a child she had rarely
cried.
Her father had always been very tender, very patient towards her mother,
but she had not expected to find him so changed. He had aged and his
shoulders drooped. She had been afraid that he would want her to stay
with him and take charge of the house. It had worried her considerably.
It would be so difficult to refuse, and yet she would have to. But when
he never broached the subject she was hurt. He had questioned her about
her plans the day after the funeral, and had seemed only anxious to
assist them. She proposed continuing at Cambridge till the end of the
term. She had taken her degree the year before. After that, she would
go to London and commence her work.
"Let me know what allowance you would like me to make you, when you have
thought it out. Things are not what they were at the works, but there
will always be enough to keep you in comfort," he had told her. She had
fixed it there and then at two hundred a year. She would not take more,
and that only until she was in a position to keep herself.
"I want to prove to myself," she explained, "that I am capable of earning
my own living. I am going down into the market-place. If I'm no good,
if I can't take care of even one poor woman, I'll come back and ask you
to keep me." She was sitting on the arm of his chair, and laughing, she
drew his head towards her and pressed it against her. "If I succeed, if
I am strong enough to fight the world for myself and win, that will mean
I am strong enough and clever enough to help others."
"I am only at the end of a journey when you need me," he had answered,
and they had kissed. And next morning she returned to her own life.