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fared no better than I did; and thin and pale she looked. Robert riled
me most. It was natural for Uncle Simeon to be mean, greedy, vile.
In Robert I felt it was wrong; like Methodies, he knew better. Kind
brown eyes were all very well, but a poor set-off to a greedy little
belly. One morning therefore when in the middle of breakfast, just as
he was beginning his poached egg, Robert said he felt sick, I neither
felt sorry nor pretended to. Justice at last! I hoped he would be very,
very sick. Uncle Simeon followed him out, fawning.
"Look here child, eat this," said Aunt Martha passing me Robert's
poached egg, "'twill do you good." Kindly but fearfully: her usual
struggle. She declined to share it with me, so I accepted. I was just
munching the last delicious yellow mouthful, when Robert came
back, looking still pale, but better. He saw what had happened, and
flushed crimson. He saw what I thought of him and flushed deeper.
That afternoon, when I was in my bedroom putting on my hat, there
was a timid knocking. He walked in. I hardened my heart.
"I'm sorry about breakfast, Mary," he faltered. I knew his heart was
beating fast.
"Breakfast? What do you mean, Master Robert?"
"You know. The egg. I'm sorry—"
"Of course you are. Sorry I ate it."
He flushed. I developed a meticulous interest in a pincushion.
"No; sorry to see you eating it so hungrily. You know that's what I
meant. Now I know it's all lies when he says eggs are bad for you
and that you don't like them and you refuse them when he offers
them and that you mustn't eat much of anything. It's all a lie,
because he doesn't want you to eat things, because he hates you or
because he's mean. I always thought it funny you never had nice
things. I asked him three times and he said you were always taking
medicine, and the doctor said you must eat very little and always
very plain. You must have thought me horrid."
"I did. I'm sorry. Oh, the liar, the mean wretch, he dare tell you all
that? Look here, we've begun now, haven't we, so I'm going to tell
you what I know of him; everything. First you must answer a
question. Do you just not like Uncle, or do you really hate him, hate
him like this?" I clenched my fists and ground my teeth together.
"Yes, now I do; he's never done anything to me, but I've liked him a
bit less every day I've been here. Now I hate him, like you do."
"Well, I'll tell you, he's a mean, cruel, wicked man. He beats and
cuffs and pinches me when you're not looking. He canes me till I
bleed. He starves me so as to make as much money as he can out
of what my Grandmother pays him. The first morning I came I said
No, when he offered me one miserable spoonful of his egg. I've
never touched one since, and he's told you all this about my not
liking eggs at all. I do take medicine, but it's because I'm ill and
don't get enough to eat. He's mean and he hates me, that's why he
starves me: one as much as the other. He's nice to you because
you're rich and important and have friends and relations. Do they
pay a lot of money for you?"
"I don't know."
"They must do or you wouldn't get so much to eat. Oh, the beast,
he's always talking as though he was so good and then he starves
me and gives me sneakish blows in the dark. He praises the Lord
with his lips and he's got the devil in his heart. He flatters with his
tongue, but his inward part is very wickedness—"
I stopped short, fancying I heard a noise outside, and looked out
into the passage. There he was, skulking as usual, making pretence
to rummage in a cupboard just outside the door.
"What are you doing, Uncle?" I asked weakly, very weakly.
"What are you doing, one asks."
"I just—opened the door...."
"Ah," he said, slipping away.
"Has he heard?" asked Robert fearfully.
"Every word. I don't care. He knows the truth now; he can't treat me
worse than he has done. I hate him. Everything is hateful. All the
world is against me always; 'tis all beating and starving and
meanness and misery; and nobody loves me. I wish I'd never been
born, I do, I do." I broke down and sat on the bed, sobbing bitterly.
"Don't, Mary," huskily, "everybody doesn't hate you, I don't." He sat
beside me and put his arm on my shoulder.
That was the beginning of happiness.
I cried more than ever, but they were other tears.
"Don't cry, Mary, don't cry, please. I like you. Tell me you know I do.
I'm going to do something, I'm going to help you somehow. I'll
never touch another egg unless you do too, and if he stops mine, I'll
write to Uncle Vivian and tell him why. I shall ask Uncle Vivian to let
me go somewhere else as soon as I can; but you must get away
first, you must ask your Grandmother to have you back with her
right away. Mary dear, don't cry."
He was on the border line himself. He screwed a dirty little
handkerchief into his eyes. The other arm was still on my shoulder.
He was crying too. Then I comforted him, and found it a joy greater
even than being comforted.
"We must go now," I said, getting up. "Come on, Master Robert,"
smiling; smiling being a thing I achieved perhaps once a year.
"No, and don't say Robert either. Say Robbie. Uncle Vivian and all
the people I like call me that."
There were two pairs of red eyes at the tea table that night, and one
pair of steel blue ones which observed them. From that moment, the
political situation of No. 1 the Quay was entirely transformed. In the
field of domestic economy there was a more striking change still.
Next morning, I almost reeled when a boiled egg was set before me,
though as the porridge was cut down by nearly half, my Uncle spiced
his defeat with triumph. Openly he treated me no worse, though he
gave me a savage kick in the hall that night. I knew he was saving
up for something dreadful. Once the mood of passion and defiance
had passed away, I was more afraid of him than ever. He hated
Robbie now, while striving not to show it. Robbie showed his feelings
sometimes and was openly surly. The short-lived Albert-Mary entente
collapsed once for all, shattered by the Mary-Robert alliance.
The new friendship caused a veritable revolution in all my ideas.
Now, whenever I was brooding or thinking away in my usual bitter
fashion, I would say to myself, "Think of it, quickly, quickly," and I
would feel again his hand on my shoulder; he would comfort me and
I him. I re-lived it over and over again. It was the first purely happy
vision I had ever conjured up. To Robbie it meant much less. I
decided he was a nice little boy, kind and decent-hearted; he had
been sorry to see me unhappy and he had been glad to comfort me.
It was an impulse; not more. He liked me, he pitied me, but the
whole thing meant very little to him.
One day a letter came from his Uncle Vivian.
He came to me joyfully. "Hurrah! Hurrah! I shall be going away
soon. I'm ever so glad."
"In every way?" with a sneer; hungrily.
He flushed crimson, as we do when any one surprises us in
thoughtless egotism; when another lays bare to us a selfishness we
were too selfish to have seen. Or else it was the cruel injustice of
what I said, or both: the good reason and the bad.
"You know I didn't mean that. When I get to Uncle Vivian I'll tell him
to write to your Grandmother and tell her all about it and have you
taken away. She'd listen to my uncle. But wait, you must get away
from here before that. It would be dreadful if you were here alone
for a bit between my going and the time you'd be able to get away,
if we waited for Uncle Vivian to write—"
"He'd kill me if he dared. Can't you write to Uncle Vivian now, so
that he could write to my Grandmother at once? I can't write. Uncle
Simeon reads all my letters to her."
"A letter of mine mightn't reach Uncle Vivian. The last time he wrote
to me was from Paris in France; he said he was going further south
for Christmas, that's somewhere much further away, and said I need
not write again as he would be back for the New Year. We're quite
near Christmas now, so it's too late. I'll tell you my plan. Now, the
day I go away, Mr. Greeber is sure to be at the railway station to see
me off. The minute we've left the house you must be dressed and
ready to run away and walk back to Tawborough; your Grandmother
couldn't be angry if you told her all about him. Then Uncle Vivian will
write as soon as I see him, and you won't have been alone with Mr.
Greeber in the house for a minute."
"'Tisn't Grandmother, 'tis Aunt Jael. And suppose only Uncle Simeon
goes with you to the station to see you off. What about Albert and
Aunt Martha? Besides, he'll make me come too. He'd do it to please
you, knowing you'd like it, though out of spite he'd want me not to,
because he knows I'd like to. It all depends whether he wants to be
nice to you more than to be nasty to me. Nice to you, I think, most
of the two, because he can be nasty enough to me the second
you're gone."
"You could say you felt sick."
"That's a lie. Besides, that might make him want to make me come
all the more, if he thought it would pain me or make me feel worse
to come. I don't tell lies, if he does. Unless of course, I really felt
sick. I could take something and make myself sick, and then 'twould
be true. But then Aunt Martha would say she'd stay with me while
the rest of you went to the railway station. No, the best thing is to
pretend very much I'd like to come, which of course I would, and
then he won't let me. You might pretend to quarrel with me the last
day; that would help. The real trouble is Aunt Jael; she'd get into a
frightful rage and send me back; and when I came back, 'twould be
a hundred times worse. He'd kill me."
"You said your Aunt Jael hated Mr. Greeber. If she knew he'd like it,
are you sure she'd send you back; when she knew too that you'd
run away for fear of your life? I'm sure she wouldn't do that."
"You don't know her. No, my plan is this: to write a letter somehow
to Grandmother, who'd talk to Aunt Jael and sort of prepare her for
my running away. I'll write it in bed tonight, it's the only place I can
where he's not watching me; and we'll post it tomorrow afternoon,
sometime on the walk when Albert isn't looking. I'll tell my
Grandmother about the canings, and how he half starves me. Aunt
Jael hates him so much that I think there's a chance. Then I needn't
run away at all. Grandmother would come to fetch me herself."
The letter was duly written that night. I jumped out of bed and hid it
in the bottom of my chest of drawers, in a far corner of the drawer
between two white cotton Chemises. It would be safe there till the
next afternoon. After dinner next day I came up to put on my hat
and to get the letter. I put my hand in the corner underneath the
Chemises. The letter was not there! I pulled the top chemise right
out. There the letter was after all, but at the other end of the
chemise. It had been moved. The garment was only eighteen or
twenty inches long, but I remembered perfectly I had put the letter
at the outside-end of the drawer and now it was right at the other
end of the chemise, near the middle of the drawer. Yet there was my
handwriting, there was the envelope: no one had tampered with it.
It must be my over-suspicious mind. Aunt Martha had been tidying
my clothes, or putting the clean washing away and so had moved
the letter without seeing anything.... We posted it that afternoon. In
a couple of days came my Grandmother's reply.
The first sentence made my heart sick. "Your uncle writes me—tells
me he has destroyed an untruthful letter, full of untruthful
complaints that you had written me without his knowledge—how
grieved he and your Aunt Martha are—how they do everything to
make you happy—your Aunt Jael is grievously annoyed—your loving
Grandmother is disappointed—Always come to me, my dear, for
help, but don't give way to discontent so easily. Reflect always what
your dear mother had to put up with. Take up thy cross and walk!"
This letter Uncle Simeon never asked to see, but he had had one for
himself from my Grandmother by the same post. He said nothing,
but looked at me from time to time with malicious triumph, meaning
"Revenge is near; it will be sweet. Wait till this fine young friend of
yours is out of the way. One has a whip, you remember, ha, ha, one
has a whip!"
A few days later Robbie had a letter from his Uncle Vivian
announcing his return to England for December 30th and arranging
for Robbie to leave Torribridge on New Year's Eve, now only three
weeks away.
New Year's Eve then was the day, and though I did eventually fly
from Torribridge to Tawborough within a few hours of the time we
fixed, it befell very differently from anything we had planned or
foreseen.
Heaven was dark; yet the clouds at last had begun to break. For
always, eternally, I could re-make the moments that had been, and
live and cry and laugh and love it over again.
I pretended his arm was round me each night as I fell asleep.
CHAPTER XVII: CHRISTMAS NIGHT
"What do you do for Christmas?" asked Robbie a day or two later.
"It's only a week tomorrow."
"What do you mean—do for Christmas?"
"Why, people coming to stay, and a party perhaps. You know."
"What do you mean? The only party we ever had was on Aunt Jael's
seventieth birthday and that's in August."
"It must be different at your house from anywhere else. People have
a jolly sort of time, a lot of people in the house and that kind of
thing."
"There was something about it in Westward Ho! the book he stole
from me and burned just before you came. It said something about
'happy sports and mummers' plays,' and cakes and ale and some
word like flapdragons. It's what worldly people do, I suppose, and
sinners, but not us; I've never heard of it with the Saints."
Robbie was too wise to attack priggery-piety in the open. "I don't
know about all that. You do talk funnily; your Grandmother seems to
be different from other people. You must know all the special things
you do at Christmas, all the special things you eat—"
"I don't. What are they?"
"Oh, roast goose and turkey and plum-pudding and mince pies.
Then for tea the big Christmas cake, crammed with raisins and
covered with almond paste and icing sugar with crystallized fruit on
top and those little green bits like candied peel—not really candied
peel, it's some name I forget, anyway it's nice. If you're a little boy
you're allowed to stay in the dining-room all the same and eat all the
walnuts and dates you want and drink a little port or madeira! What
do you have for Christmas dinner?"
"Hash," I replied enviously, "and a roly-poly pudding with no jam, or
hardly any, for afterwards."
Incredulity seemed to struggle with pity in his mind.
"I'm sorry. It sounds so funny. I didn't know there were people like
that. The villagers are just the same. Mrs. Richards down at the Blue
Dragon makes the biggest Christmas cake I've ever seen, lovely
bluey-looking icing with preserved cherries in it, those big red ones,
and almond paste an inch thick. Everywhere it's the great day in the
year for feasting."
"Why?" I asked. "Why should Christmas Day be the great day for
feasting? It's the day Jesus was born; why should that make people
guzzle? A funny way of keeping His birthday, eating and drinking. I
know what it is, it's what the Papists do: eat all day. That's it, it's
Popish." My voice rose combatively in the good cause of plain and
Protestant living, hash and heaven.
Weakly or wisely, he skirted the theological issue. "Don't be silly.
Besides it's not only what you eat yourself. At Christmas time you
always give a lot away to the poor people. Uncle Vivian gives heaps
of logs and firewood and coal all round the village, and gives geese
to the tenants and heaps of other things; giving things away is a
good enough way of keeping Christmas, isn't it? There are presents.
You get presents, don't you?"
"Never."
Here I was wrong, for on Christmas morning a parcel came
addressed to Miss Mary Lee. It was the first I had ever received,
except some new winter underclothes Grandma had sent me from
Tawborough, and I undid it eagerly. Inside was a box of colours. I
found from a little note inside the cover of the box that Great-Uncle
John had sent me this in addition to his usual half-sovereign. This
made me ponder. I had heard vaguely of his half-sovereign at long
intervals of time, but had never thought of it in the light of a
Christmas present. I had never seen or touched it; it was "put by" or
otherwise dimly dealt with by Grandmother and Aunt Jael.
This box of colours was the finest thing I had yet possessed. No
doubt the art of mixing paint was then in its infancy, and this box
provided me with but a few of the simplest colours; no doubt a mere
half crown box of today is superior both in number of colours and
quality of paint. No doubt, but ignorance was bliss; no such odious
comparisons came to cloud my joy. I had never seen a paint box
before except through a shop window; and now I had one in my
own hands and was gloating with all the joy of proprietorship over
the twelve little pans before me and the high adventurous names
with which each was labelled.
Gamboge, yellow-ochre; cobalt, Prussian blue; green-bice, Hooker's
green; carmine, crimson-lake; raw-sienna, burnt-sienna; sepia and
ivory black. There was also a mysterious little tube tucked away in a
niche at one end and labelled Chinese white, the contents of which
oozed out when pressed, like a white tape-worm. These names were
a delight. Carmine: the colour which Brother Quappleworthy painted
his sins in discourse. Crimson-lake: which called up a vision of a
great sea of Precious Blood with wave-crests of scarlet-foam.
Robbie had several presents: a box of soldiers, a picture book, some
sweetmeats and money.
"That's much less than usual," he said, not too kindly. "I expect
there's more waiting for me at Uncle Vivian's."
Albert was bare and giftless, for his half sovereign from Great-Uncle
John meant no more to him than to me, being instantly put (or not
put) into "the bank" by Uncle Simeon. He was naturally jealous,
envied Robbie's wealth and luck, cursed his father's meanness in
giving him nothing, reviled Uncle John for sending me the paint-box
as well as the half sovereign, and to himself no corresponding extra.
All this well distributed hostility he could vent on me alone. The
means of his vengeance should be my solitary ewe-lamb. He waited
his opportunity.
Robbie went out to dinner, invited by some friends of his uncle's. So
Uncle Simeon brought a cane in to dinner, lodged it on the edge of
the table, and allowed me to taste it now and then. I espied neither
goose nor turkey, cakes nor ale, port nor madeira; though there was
a much better pudding than usual, a suet one made in a basin with
sultanas and citron peel which bore—alas!—an awful and edible
likeness to the genuine popish article. After dinner Aunt Martha, who
said she had a headache, retired to her bedroom to lie down, and
later on Uncle Simeon went out, his big Bible under one arm and his
big umbrella under the other, to expound the former to a bedridden
old female Saint he visited twice a week, a second cousin of Brother
Atonement Gelder's.
Albert and I were left alone together in the dining-room. It was
perhaps not more than three o'clock, but it was a cold, dark day and
the room was already dusk. Uncle Simeon was hardly out of the
house before Albert came up to the table at which I was just settling
down to begin using my treasure, snatched the box away, dipped
the biggest brush into my cup of water and began roughly digging it
into the pans of colour. Then he splashed water over all the pans
and made great wasteful daubs on the palette.
"Don't, Albert," I pleaded, "please don't."
"I shall, I shall—ugh" (his usual grunt), "nothing will happen to me if
I do. It's no good your whining, I'm going to spoil it, out of spite!
because I want to! Try sneaking to father if you dare. Ha, ha, I know
what you told Robert Grove about father, nasty little sneaks and liars
both of you. Father's on my side now, so you won't get much by
going to him; and if you did I'd bang you afterwards."
He took up the cup and poured water into the box, smearing all the
colours together with the brush. The little brute was ruining my
treasure before my eyes. Appeal was useless, so I made a deft
attempt to snatch. For reply he struck me heavily with his fist over
the ear. I screamed out half in pain, half in rage, and made another
snatch. This time, throwing the box on to the ground, he struck me
on the shoulder with the full force of his fist and sent me flying. I fell
down, half stunned for a moment, when another voice broke into
the room.
"You beast, you brute," I heard—and saw Robbie, back sooner than
we expected. He slammed the door behind him, went straight across
the room to Albert, and tried to seize his arm.
"Here, you leave me alone. She hit me first, when I wanted to use
her filthy paint box, and the mean cat said I shouldn't, and started
snatching and scratching so I had to push her away."
"Oh, you liar!" I cried.
"Then she banged her paint box on the floor in her rage, and came
for me again, then I punched her, and serve her right."
"'Tis all lies, lies, lies."
"Believe her, do you?" sneered Albert, lowering at Robbie, "she's a
nice one to believe. Do you know what her father did? I do; ugh,
ugh, she's a nice one like he was. Look here, just keep your hands
off me."
Albert struck a first blow and the two boys were soon fighting like
savages. My head was still aching from the two blows that Albert
had given me; I forgot them and everything else in the excitement
of the struggle. Blows on head, face and shoulders were exchanged.
With every stout one Albert received I exulted; every one of Albert's
that hurt Robbie hurt me too. Albert was sturdy and strong and even
broader than Robbie; on the whole he was getting the best of it; I
felt sick and apprehensive. I prayed fervently to God for Robbie to
win, promising lordly penances and impossible virtues in return. I
would give all my life and health to comforting the heathen if Robbie
might win. I would be burnt or eaten alive—if Robbie might win. I
employed all the magic I knew, and counted frenzied thirty-sevens
between each blow—for luck to Robbie. Prayer is not always
answered by return, and Albert's right fist now landed a heavy blow
on Robbie's left ear, which nearly felled him; he tottered and paled.
So did I as I resolved to intervene. I would fight till I fainted—to
prevent Robbie being beaten. I clenched my teeth and hovered
awkwardly nearer, wondering how to get in my first blow (or scratch)
—when Robbie recovered suddenly and crashed with his fist
between Albert's eyes. Now it was the latter's turn to stagger. My
spirits rose. Now Albert picked himself up again. Both were battered.
Robbie had a bleeding ear (to match my own), Albert a black eye
and broken nose. The fight went on. Robbie began to get the upper
hand; I could see the loser's look on Albert's face. "Robbie will win!
Robbie will win!" said Instinct exulting. I thought for a moment of
that tame fixture, Susan Durgles versus Seth Baker, when my main
emotion was mere pity for Seth: water to the wine of joy now
coursing through my veins as I watched Robbie pound Albert more
victoriously every moment. Albert was now desperate, came closer,
tried to grip Robbie and push him to the ground. For a moment prize
fight turned to wrestling bout.
The harmony of a choir, singing carols on the Quay outside, fell
suddenly on our ears. It may have been the Parish Church choir, or a
glee party from the Wesleyan Chapel: sinners, in any case, as Miss
Glory would have said. They were singing a carol with a friendly
wave-like tune, merry, yet sad too, as Christmas songs should be: It
came upon the midnight clear—though I did not know the words.
The tune revived the fighting. The boys got free from each other's
grip; blows were resumed. The end came at last with a swift, terrific
stroke on Albert's shoulder, which knocked him flat. In a second
Robbie was kneeling on his body and had pinioned his arms. The
victim scowled, the victor showed modest pride, the spectator
exulted like a savage.
"There now," said Robbie, "that's what you get for striking a girl.
Worse another time. Say you're sorry you hit Mary. Say you were a
brute."
Albert scowled, growled, made efforts to get free, failed.
"No good, you'll stay here till you say it; 'I'm sorry I hit Mary and I
was a brute.'"
Albert wriggled again, perceived that all endeavours would be
fruitless, and surrendered. "Well, then, you great bully. Sorry—hit—
Mary—and—was—brute. There you are, now let me go."
"Not until you've made one more promise, 'I'll never hit Mary
again.'"
For some reason Albert obeyed with alacrity this time. "I'll never
strike Mary again."
Robbie released him, and walked towards the door saying shyly to
me: "Come to my bedroom, and help bathe my face; it's awful."
I followed him upstairs. Just as we reached the landing Albert came
out and shouted. "Ugh, you nasty beasts. I promised I'd never strike
Mary again and I won't—never want to see her ugly face again—but
I'll see that father does all right. This very night too, as soon as ever
he comes in. He'll make you cringe and bleed; he'll make the flesh
fly. You too, you bully, you overdressed flashy big—"
We went into Robbie's bedroom and stopped to hear no more.
"It's not much good," said Robbie, smiling mournfully, as he washed
the blood from his ears and face, "because I shall get hurt much
more when Mr. Greeber comes in. That beast downstairs is sure to
set him on. I think he would dare to flog me this time, because he'd
be able to say to Uncle Vivian that I'd half killed Albert."
"Yes, he'd say 'one felt it one's painful duty after young Master
Robert's brutal attack on one's own dear son,' and that you had
really hurt Albert. Which you have," I concluded with satisfaction.
"Still, it'll be nothing to what he'll do to you if he gets you alone; so
you must get away the same day as me; or sooner would be best."
"No, sooner wouldn't do, because then he'd flog you worse; he'd be
sure to know you'd helped me get away."
"Yes, my first plan is best; while they're at the station seeing me off
you must run away to Tawborough or take the coach, because we've
enough money for that now. Here's the half-sovereign, my present,
you know; the half-crown mightn't be enough and I've nothing in
between—"
The door, opening softly, cut him short. Uncle Simeon, very pale and
slimy and cat-like—himself at his worst—was followed by Albert, also
at his worst, with an ugly black eye and an uglier leer.
"No, father," he whined, "not one; both. Flog 'em both, father, both
of 'em."
Albert's disappointed whine seemed to mean that his father might
not dare to touch Robbie. I was glad for Robbie's sake; what my
own fate would be I hardly dared to think. I shrank from him into
the seat of the window sill. He took a long coil of cord out of his
pocket, and came towards—not me—but Robbie. What, would you
dare? Was Robbie, after all, the victim, and I, if only for the
moment, the one to escape? I must do myself the justice of noting
that for once in my life at any rate I was sorry to bear the easier
part: I would gladly have chosen to take the beating for Robbie,
would bravely have played the Royal Prince's whipping-girl. He
bound Robbie with the cord hand and foot to the bedpost, his own
bedpost of course; for it all took place in his bedroom, where Uncle
Simeon had surprised us. Uncle Simeon went out of the room for a
moment, leaving Albert to watch us.
There was two minutes absolute silence. The three children looked
at each other. We waited.
He came back, in his right hand the long heralded whip; a kind of
cat-o'-nine-tails for domestic use, with five tails only instead of nine;
these were made of cord, with three knots each at intervals, and
were fastened to a piece of thick rope, which Uncle Simeon wielded.
An evil-looking thing.
Robbie did not wince. He would not while I was by. But I lost all
control of myself, and, for the first time, burst out openly against
Uncle Simeon. I flew up to him, and with fierce feebleness clutched
his wrist.
"Don't you dare touch him," I cried, in a treble shriek. "I dare you to
whip him. You cruel, horrible man."
"Cruel horrible man," he sneered. "Bah! A fine one you are to call
one that; you, your father's daughter every inch of you. Cruel
horrible man, forsooth!—Go and call him that, your own dear, kind,
loving father who drove your dear mother into an early grave and
mocked her when she was lying there; a heartless whoremongering
beast who spent all the time he spared from stews and brothels in
hounding her to death with his cruelties; unfit to untie the shoe of a
humble Christian like oneself, frail and sinful though one doubtless
is. You're like him, body and soul. Come, loose hold!"
The vile words stung me for a moment, but when he wrenched my
hand from his wrist, scratching at it savagely with his nails, I cried
with redoubled fury: "Don't you dare to whip him, don't you dare."
"Whip him? Whip him?" he purred with bland enquiry, "Who can be
meant by 'him'? Not Master Robert surely? One would not dream of
punishing one whose only sin is to be led into evil paths by another.
One must tie him up, to be sure, lest he should be led into the evil
path of interfering with a certain little duty one owes to one's Lord,
one's little son, and one's own poor self. Quick, off with your blouse
and skirt!"
He gnashed his teeth. Even at that moment it fascinated me to
watch how curiously the muscles under his cheek twitched when he
was on cruelty bent. There must be a cruelty muscle.
I stood before him in vest and petticoat, pale and limp with fright, a
pitiable, cowering object: the sort of rabbit the serpent loves. I had
felt and seen hard blows that same day; now too Aunt Jael's
masterpieces flitted in dour procession through my mind: the rope
end, the day I sucked the acid drops, the three blows of the thorned
stick after Robinson Crewjoe, the great flogging with the butt end of
her stick when I said that Proverbs was the nastiest book in the
Bible. These were as nothing to what was coming now. I lifted my
eyes and for one second looked into his. I shall never again, please
God, see a look so cruel, so craven, so cad-like. There was spite in
it, and hate, and fear. Yet his fear was as nothing to mine.
Whip in hand he came towards me to catch hold. There could be no
hope. Aunt Martha was not to be seen; in any case what could she
have done? Albert was kneeling hopefully on the bed, Robbie's bed,
to get a better view of the sport. Robbie was bound hand and foot,
looking hate at Uncle Simeon; wretchedness, sympathy and
encouragement at me. His lips were tight together so that he should
not cry. Here was Simeon Greeber approaching me. He looked like
the devil; the idea seized me, he was the devil, the Personal Devil
himself; now I knew. But here lay hope: through the devil's enemy,
the Lord God Almighty. Moved by an insane impulse, I went down on
my knees on the bare floor.
"Oh, God," I cried, "save me from him, now, somehow! Save me,
and if it be Thy will, strike him dead!"
I was cut rudely short. He clutched my shoulder, his claw striking
cold and damp through my vest, and pulled me roughly to my feet.
"My Lord, my Lord, how she blasphemes! One will avenge it, Lord,
one will avenge." He dragged me into the middle of the room.
In that moment a strange thing happened. The sudden sweetness of
an old Christmas hymn smote our ears. It was the carollers again:
they must have moved up the Quay, for now they were singing just
outside the house:
For an instant he was unnerved, but for an instant only, and with