“No, Miss,” he said, “ What’s done can’t be undone. ’Tis too late to make amends once the breath be out o’ the body. That’s where do lie the responsibility of bringing children into the world. You’m got to mind their everlasting salvation, and if the parents don’t mind it, the children won’t be worthy of it. The sins of the fathers be visited on the children, no mistake about it. That’s God’s law, and you can’t alter it.”
“But your daughter wasn’t to blame,” said Agatha, aghast. “Living so far way as they do, there wasn’t a clergyman within reach to christen the baby.”
“They could ’ave done it themselves, and they did ought to ’ave done it. Why, even a woman be allowed to do that in case of need. I can mind the nurse as nursed my mother, she christened my little brother, ’twas the last my mother had, just afore he died. Did it in the teacup, and ‘Innocent’ was the name she gave him. The only one I ever knew called by that name, and he were gone within the hour. But he were a Christian, as much as you or me, and that’s what my daughter should ’ave seen to. It means eternal life or else everlasting damnation.”
Agatha went into the house. Her theology was unable to refute Hunt’s arguments, though her heart indignantly rejected them. And yet, perhaps he was right. At any rate, no one could take any risks in face of such an appalling possibility.
And, as ever, she was thinking only of Clarissa, who also had never been baptized. But had she an immortal soul at all? Could there be within her—wisp of the imagination as she was—anything which could ever inherit eternal life?
She could not find ease of mind by consulting Mr. Burns, for she was afraid he might ask questions which would be as difficult to answer as those of the policeman, and she could not face that, but neither could she face the possibility that her sinful neglect might send Clarissa to everlasting punishment. And then there came the thought that even if Clarissa were as yet without a soul, who could say that the act of baptism might not be the new birth through which one would be given to her, and with it, the gift of immortality.
Agatha saw that, like the nurse of old Hunt’s mother, she must baptize the child herself.
She waited till Sunday came, a day when the house was very still and quiet, and all the servants gone for their afternoon walk. Then she called Clarissa, and dressed her in the dress she had worn when she first appeared: it was the only white dress she had. She took the little girl by the hand, and led her into the study, shutting the door behind them. The room was less used than any in the house. After Mr. Bodenham’s death, it had been more or less shut up. The blinds were kept permanently lowered, so that the carpet should not be faded by the sun, and when Agatha, as a child, had sometimes softly opened the door and looked into the room, its perpetual twilight, and the long rows of old books lining the walls, had made her feel she was looking into another world, and not only into another room. It had grown to have the sacredness which clothes the objects that have been treasured by the dead.
Clarissa had brought an occasional movement of life into the study, for she used to run into it to find books, but she and Agatha never sat there, and now when they entered the room together, she felt awed, knowing that here was something beyond her comprehension. They stood together beneath a large framed photograph of the Sistine Madonna, and Agatha put her arm around the child, and bending over her, she told her that the time had come for her baptism, when she would be made a child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven. Her voice trembled, for she was profoundly moved, and she was also very nervous over what she was about to do. But it was a fervour of love which shook her, and which, while it shook her, gave her the power to surmount her agitation. Before her mind there stood the picture of that little baby, denied a Christian burial, and perhaps enduring endless punishment for the sins of its parents. Clarissa was solemnized—thrilled—impressed. She stood very still, holding her breath and closing her eyes, while Agatha read from her Prayer Book the words of the Service for the Private Baptism of Infants. She held in her hand a shell, which legend said had been picked up on the shore of the Sea of Galilee by Mrs. Bodenham’s godfather, and when she reached the words of Baptism, she poured a stream of water from the shell on to Clarissa’s forehead. It rushed over her, falling down her cheeks, and dripping from her hair, her eyelashes, her nose, and her chin. The sudden cool shock made her gasp. She quivered and turned pale. There was a vibration, as though some new life had indeed entered the room, and for a few moments Agatha held her clasped in a wonderful stillness. Then she kissed the little face, and felt the fresh cool water on her lips.
That kiss of Agatha’s brought Clarissa back to earth.
“Let me do it now,” she said. “ I want to christen you, too.”
And she was disappointed, and rather unconvinced, when told that this was something which could only happen once in a life.
But Agatha was marvellously light of heart when they went into the garden together. A weight was lifted off her: she felt confident and safe.
“Shall I have a Christening Cup, like the one you have got in the plate cupboard?” Clarissa asked.
Agatha said she should have a cup, or a knife and fork, or a Bible, or any other present she chose, as a memorial of her baptism.
Clarissa skipped about, thinking what she would choose, and Agatha sat, completely at peace, her hands lying idly in her lap, watching the child, and listening to her intermittent talk. For a few minutes Clarissa was out of sight, playing near the gate into the road, and then she reappeared, running very fast, and with her face aflame.
“I know what I want for a christening present,” she called, as soon as she was near enough to speak. “God has sent it here this very day.”
Agatha went to meet her.
“Come to the gate quickly, quickly,” Clarissa was saying. “There is a poor little monkey outside. It’s very ill, and I’m afraid it’s going to die. The boy is too poor to keep it warm, and I want to buy it from him.”
“But Clarissa, we can’t have a monkey.”
Agatha was frightened of all animals, dogs, bulls, and mice, and a monkey was outside her range altogether.
Clarissa had taken her hand, and was hurrying her along. She was talking very fast, and she really did not hear what Agatha said. She was sure that God had sent the monkey to them, so that she should, on the very day of her baptism, do a good deed and save its life. It was better than any other christening present, because it was alive, and it must have come because she was now a Christian and must help God to take care even of the little sparrows which fell out of their nests.
Agatha thought that a sparrow and a monkey were two very different things, and yet she did not like to repress Clarissa’s zeal. It seemed to prove that those minutes in the library had indeed given her something which she had not possessed before, something which must be cherished and developed, and because she was convinced of this, Agatha had to consent to buy the monkey from the boy with the organ who was standing at the gate.
It certainly looked a most miserable little thing, lying in the boy’s arms, with its crinkled whitish – eyelids almost covering its eyes, and with its long-fingered hands doubled up like the wings of a sleeping bat. Agatha thought there was no doubt that it would die very soon.
But it didn’t. Clarissa saw to that. She wrapped it in warm flannel; she fed it with hot milk; she carried it in her arms all day, and, in spite of Agatha’s protests, she insisted on its sleeping with her in her own bed that night.
Far from dying, it recovered very quickly, and by the next evening it was so lively that no prayers of Clarissa’s could vanquish Agatha’s disgust and persuade her to let it sleep with Clarissa, in their joint bedroom, for another night. It was given a warm basket with a rug and a cushion in the back kitchen, and fastened by a chain to the leg of the table, so that it could not run more than a few feet.
Clarissa decided that the monkey’s name should be Poppet, and she was deeply wounded when Agatha refused to have a Baptism Servi
ce in the study for it, like Clarissa’s own. On this point, Agatha was firm. Such a thing would be a profane parody of what had meant so much to her.
Poppet attached no more meaning to the syllables of its name than to any other sound. It never came when it was called, and this was a grief to Clarissa, while Agatha minded more that it so often came without being called. It was a whirlwind in her sedate house, breaking her china ornaments, spilling the milk and the ink, and tearing the silk hangings with which the piano and the mantelpiece were prettily-draped. It was dirty, too, and the servants detested it. It knew no law and obeyed no authority. Agatha hated its hideous, miserable, grinning human face, which seemed to her to degrade the race of man, dragging it down toward its own apish level.
And she was very frightened of the monkey, too, when it ran across the room on all fours, dragging its lead behind it with a rattling noise on the floor, and sometimes, when it was angry, it chattered and hissed and showed its teeth in a very wild way. Yet Agatha was touched and charmed when she saw Clarissa carrying the monkey about, holding it tenderly as if it was a baby, and playing with it as other little girls play with dolls. But when Clarissa’s attitude was most exquisite, bending caressingly down, with her head a little on one side, and a bewitching smile on her face, suddenly Agatha would see beside this charming picture the horrible face of the monkey looking up at the little girl, like a diabolical caricature.
The six months of Poppet’s life in Miss Bodenham’s house were therefore far from pleasant ones, and when the monkey succumbed to an attack of pneumonia soon after the cold weather began, Agatha felt greatly relieved. It seemed disloyal to Clarissa, who was heartbroken and cried terribly, though she was somewhat comforted by arranging a very ceremonious funeral, when Poppet’s coffin was followed by a procession of inwardly joyous mourners, in the shape of Agatha, old Hunt, Reggie, and the indoor servants. A tombstone was placed over the grave, with these two lines inscribed on it:—
POPPET A PET
Clarissa, persisted in thinking that this was a poem, or at any rate a very good rhyme.
They returned to life alone together. Agatha feared that Clarissa would mope without her pet, and would miss the monkey which she had carried in her arms wherever she went throughout the past few months. But the memory seemed to pass completely from her. She never spoke of Poppet, although she loved gathering wild flowers on her daily walks and making them into wreaths which she laid on the monkey’s grave. This seemed to be an end in itself, having no connection with Poppet; and when Mrs. Burns warned Agatha that she feared Clarissa was in danger of becoming morbid, Agatha well knew that there was no danger of that. Clarissa lived in the present; she did not recall the past.
To the outside observer, their lives appeared very dull. They saw nobody except the Burns family, with whom they sometimes went to tea, while it became a rule that Kitty should come and play with Clarissa every Saturday afternoon.
When autumn came, they returned to the hotel at Brighton for a fortnight of sea air; but they made no new acquaintances, and never spoke to the other guests.
But as they walked together, they were full of animated talk, absorbed in each other, regardless of the world about them. People often wondered what they could find to talk about—that solitary woman and child. No one guessed the stirring adventures through which they lived in the acting games which filled their days. There they were in a boundless world, full of people of their own choosing.
Chapter Eight
It was the sixth of June—Agatha’s birthday, and Clarissa had always said it was hers too. If she had been, as she thought, eleven years old when she first appeared, she was now seventeen.
So to-day she had done up her hair for the first time, and Agatha’s present to her was a turquoise ring, an ornament which she was now considered old enough to wear. They sat in the garden after breakfast, and looked at it on her finger, feeling that it marked an epoch.
A motor stopped at the gate. This was unusual. They had no motoring acquaintances, and and neither of them had ever driven in any motor except the taxi which took them to and from the station at Brighton when they went there each year. This was not really surprising. It was only a mile and a half to the little country town where they and the other village people did their shopping, and it was a very-pleasant walk there, across the fields. If Agatha ever wanted to drive, she naturally supported the village cab, as her mother had always done, and as time passed it grew to look more and more as if it needed her support.
Still, motors played a large part in their lives. In the games they played together, they possessed a very comfortable motor of their own, in which they went on imaginary tours, not only into every part of England, but in France and Italy as well. They had an old chauffeur who was a great character, an obstinate man who liked to have his own way, but was nevertheless a most loyal and faithful servant. He taught Clarissa to drive, and she became a skilled and daring driver.
Still, an actual motor-car was something quite outside their usual experience, and when the car stopped, they neither of them expected that it could mean a visitor. The gate clicked. Kitty Burns ran up the drive.
Her cousin David had arrived last night in a motor, and he was taking her for a drive: she wanted to give Clarissa and Miss Bodenham the birthday treat of both coming too.
Clarissa was delighted, but Agatha thought it the most alarming birthday treat that could possibly have been proposed. David was not a professional driver; he was only a boy, not much older than Kitty and Clarissa. She knew it was most dangerous.
“But he drives splendidly,” said Kitty. “ He came more than two hundred miles yesterday, and he has won lots of races.”
This was the reverse of reassuring. Certainly one would feel less, rather than more, at ease in the village cab if a jockey held the reins, and a racing motorist was a much more desperate character than any horse jockey.
Agatha laughed nervously, and said she would prefer a more steady driver.
Then she saw Clarissa’s disappointed face, and knew that she must give in.
Clarissa leaped into the seat by the driver, while Agatha and Kitty got in behind.
The car seemed to go terribly fast, and Agatha’s breath was completely taken away by the wind, which then proceeded to battle with her for her hat. She clung to its brim, pulling it terribly out of shape, and feeling as battered as the hat itself. She was watching Clarissa, and thought that she too was enjoying the drive less than she had expected, for she was not looking at the countryside as it rushed past them, but sat with her eyes on the steering-wheel, evidently anxious as to the driver’s skill.
After a time, she asked David a question.
“Don’t speak to the driver!” shouted Agatha from behind. “You must not divert his attention, it is not safe.”.
To her horror, David seemed almost to turn round in his seat and look back over his shoulder, as he answered:
“It’s all right, it doesn’t disturb me at all.”
“Don’t speak to anyone,” cried Agatha.
She tried to control her fears, feeling that they would disgrace her in Kitty’s eyes, but it was agony to her to see Clarissa again speak to David, and then he seemed to be explaining to her the uses of the various handles and pedals.
After a time, they slowed down, and Agatha could begin to breathe once more.
“I want to drive,” said Clarissa, turning round and looking over her shoulder with a bewitching smile at Agatha.
“No! No! My darling, you can’t, you mustn’t. I beg you not to. It is not safe.”
Agatha knew she was making a fool of herself, but she couldn’t help it. It was a matter of life and death.
“Do let her try,” said David. “I will keep my hand on the wheel, and I promise you it will be quite safe.”
“I forbid it,” said Agatha. She had never spoken so strongly to Clarissa in her life.
Clarissa was alarmed at her vehemence.
“Of course I won’t if you f
eel like that,” she said, but she looked a little sulky. It was the first time that their wills had ever been opposed. A cloud fell over them, and David drove on.
Clarissa was bored for a few moments, but very quickly her interest returned, and she was obviously learning all she could from David, even though she did not actually drive. In fact, there was a time when she did put her hand on the wheel, and helped to steer the car, though David still controlled it.
Agatha pretended not to see. She said no more.
They drove for about two hours, and when they got home Agatha jumped out quickly, and hardly waited to say good-bye. She ran into the house, and up to her bedroom, where she was violently sick. She was reeling.
Clarissa stayed for a few minutes at the gate, saying how much she hoped that Agatha would let her learn to drive. David and Kitty were surprised at her ardent desire for this, and at the spirit with which she was ready to take the wheel without demur on the very first time she had ever driven in a car. They could not know how long she had in imagination been an expert driver, and that therefore it seemed to her the natural thing that if she was in a car at all, she should drive it.
When Agatha and Clarissa met at luncheon, it was easy to see that their drive had affected them in very different ways. Agatha’s face was the colour of sand, and her usually neat hair was draggled and untidy. She looked shattered —exhausted—broken. Clarissa, on the other hand, had more colour than she had ever had in her life. Her hair had fallen out of the tight round chignon into which she had so laboriously pinned it that morning, with the help of Agatha and Helen, and it was now gaily and merrily blown about. Her eyes shone, and she was full of new zest and enthusiasm.
“I must learn to drive,” she said. “Do please let me, and then let us have a motor, so that I can drive you about. We will make our play real.”
“Playing at motoring is more to my taste than motoring itself,” said Agatha primly. “ I didn’t like it at all. It made me sick.”
Love Child Page 5