“Follow me to the attic,” he whispered. On reaching the attic, he fumbled under an old trunk in the corner of the room, and with a mixture of shyness and pride produced a crumpled exercise book.
“What’s that?” Susanna courageously hid her disappointment, for her hopes had soared to a private arsenal, or failing that, sweets.
“It’s what I’ve wrote.”
“What, lessons?”
“No, a book.”
“A book, what you’ve wrote?” She took the exercise book and turned over its pages with awe. “Did you write all this when you hadn’t got to?”
He nodded.
“’Tisn’t a book exactly, not like a story book. It’s all different things. Some of it’s po’try.”
“Po’try! My goodness! What’s it all about?”
“You can read it.”
“I’d rather you told me about it. Your writing’s awfully muddly.”
“It’s about a land. Just you and me live there. There’s lots of room.”
“There would be,” she agreed. “If there was only you and me there. Doesn’t Mummy or Daddy or the others ever come?”
“Not in my book. But I expect they do sometimes on a visit.”
“What do we do?”
“Just ordinary things, walk and pick flowers and eat.”
“Eat what?”
“Just what we pick, strawberries an’ raspberries an’ gooseberries an’ radishes an’ lettuces an’ ’tatoes.”
“No meat?”
“No.”
“I wouldn’t like that.”
“Then you jolly well can live at home; I’m not goin’ round killing things just for you to eat. But I tell you what, you can have eggs if you like, birds just drop those.”
“Who cooks?”
“There isn’t any cooking in my book.”
“What’s it about then?”
Baruch looked cross.
“Oh, if you’re so interested, read it for yourself.”
Susanna found the book dull, but she enjoyed talking about it. On paper the land was vague and intangible; during their talks it became a real place, and in spite of protest, Susanna succeeded in building a kitchen and in serving two large and elaborate meals a day. She also built a nursery, and provided herself and Baruch with a fine family of six, three boys and three girls. None of these innovations ever crept between the covers of the exercise book, but as matters for discussion they kept both children happy for hours. When he returned to school, they were the main topic of their letters, Susanna pleading for more of the amenities of civilization, Baruch clinging to his land being a spot for primitive living.
“Dear Baruch if you are doing anything about our land could you catch a bear I would like a coat all made of fur—”
“Dear Susanna I will not catch anything but skins just lie about in our land like they do on the floor at grandfather’s—”
He never mentioned the school to her, he reserved that for Catherine.
“Dear Mummy me and James minor went to tea on Saturday with Higgs we played bagotell it is a good game then we played happy familys I was top this week love Baruch.”
Catherine, still nervous about him, made the half-term the excuse, and went over and had a long talk with Miss Jones, the matron.
“Oh, he is a dear little boy,” said Miss Jones. “Never a bit of trouble, the quietest boy in the school. I’ve had him in here once or twice for a day—you know, those funny turns he has if he sees blood or anything. Quite strong he is, the doctor says. Funny how strong boys get upset by a little blood. I knew a man once, six foot two he was, he’d faint dead away if he saw a cut finger.”
Catherine, travelling home, laughed at herself for a fussy mother. These funny turns of Baruch’s were quite ordinary—Miss Jones said so, and she ought to know. She smiled, and quoted to herself:
“The worry cow would have lived till now
If she hadn’t lost her breath.
She worried her hay wouldn’t last all day,
And worried herself to death.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
That lent, Judith, having reached the advanced age of twelve, was considered by David old enough to be confirmed. Catherine protested. In her opinion twelve was far too young, but he was firm.
“She’s a thoughtful girl, it’s time this wonderful help was given to her.”
Catherine, who was exceedingly doubtful how Judith would view the matter, decided to break the news to her herself. She found her lying on a rug on her back on the lawn. She grinned at her mother.
“Mummy, I was thinking how I do hate church-workers.”
“Why, darling?”
“Look at those Miss Loves for instance, they’re so busy and so good, and their noses are so red, and their clothes so awful. Why do church-workers have to look like that?”
“They don’t all,” Catherine objected. “I don’t look like that, do I?”
“You! You’re not a church-worker.”
“Rubbish! Of course I am. Don’t I read to the mothers on Wednesdays, and sew for the heathen on Fridays, and go to heaps of committees?”
“That doesn’t make you a church-worker, that’s just what you have to put up with for having married Daddy. Church-working, the sort that makes your nose red and your clothes dreadful, is a thing that comes over you, like a cold; you can’t help having it, and it’s awful, awful, awful!” She indignantly kicked holes in the grass with her heels as she spoke.
“What’s caused this outburst? What have the Miss Loves been doing?”
“Not ‘doing,’ saying. They said that Daddy had told them I was being confirmed this year, and so wouldn’t I like to teach in the Sunday school in the autumn.
And I said it was a beastly lie, and I never wanted to teach in the Sunday school. And they looked at each other all prim and shocked-looking, and their noses got redder than ever, and they said I was a naughty little girl to talk like that, and then they scuttled off to tell all the other parish pussies how badly you are bringing us up.”
“So I am, evidently, if you can speak as rudely as that to the Miss Loves,” Catherine retorted coldly. Then she sat down on the edge of the rug. Judith, Daddy does want you to be confirmed this year.”
Judith rolled over and faced her mother. There was the light of battle in her eyes.
“Well, I won’t be!”
“Why not?”
“Dozens of reasons. But mostly it’s all wrong. I shouldn’t be made to be confirmed: it’s a thing that ought to wait till I want it myself.”
“If we waited for that,” said Catherine drily, “we might wait forever.”
“Well, if I was never done it’s only me that would be hurt.”
“That’s rubbish, and you know it. You would never be hurt at all, and Daddy would be hurt all the time.”
Judith savagely dug up a daisy.
“It’s so silly of Daddy to care so.”
“But he does care dreadfully. You’ll have to give in. You couldn’t hurt him like that.”
“I won’t give in. I won’t do a thing I think is wrong just because it’ll hurt somebody if I don’t.”
“But you don’t think it wrong, you only hate being interfered with.”
Judith carefully considered the point while she replanted the daisy.
“Perhaps you’re right, Mummy. But, anyway, I won’t be confirmed this year. Daddy can’t make me.”
“No.” Catherine got up. “Well, if that’s your decision, I should go and tell him now if I were you.”
“Oh, Mummy! How terribly mean of you.” She caught her mother by the arm. “You’re not going to make me tell Daddy, are you?”
“Oh yes, I am. I hate hurting your father; it’s a horrid job, you can do it yourself.”
“Oh, must I? Dadd
y will look miserable, and I shall feel a mean dog.”
“Well, I think you are rather, hurting him over something which isn’t really a matter of conscience with you.” She moved off into the house.
Judith knocked on the study door. David called to her to come in. She came unwillingly. He was sitting at his desk. Nervously she ran her forefinger up and down its fluted edges. He put his arm round her.
“Has Mummy told you that I thought you might be confirmed this year?”
She wriggled, embarrassed, in his encircling arm.
“I told her I didn’t want to,” she muttered.
He stroked her cheek.
“I know just how you feel, darling, unworthy, and it’s quite right that you should. But none of us are perfect, that’s why the Holy Ghost is sent to us. You would be glad of His help, wouldn’t you? Shall we say a little prayer about it?”
Five minutes later a crimson-faced Judith sought out Miss Crosby.
“Oh, Crossy, I’m a weak worm. I’m going to be confirmed. I never meant to. I went in to Daddy to tell him I wouldn’t be, and I never said a word. What was the use? He’s so good, he wouldn’t understand.”
Esther and Susanna, on hearing Judith’s news, regarded her with awe and admiration. Esdras and Tobit had been confirmed, but they’d just been “done” at school, and nobody had heard very much about it. But Judith’s being “done” was different, the first sign of growing-up to happen in the schoolroom; it made her seem old, somehow. They watched her to see if she became very good. She didn’t. The only effect her confirmation classes seemed to have was to make her cross and snappy. In fact, on the actual day itself, she was so worn down by the atmosphere of the day being so special that everybody spoke to her in a whisper; so aggravated by the gifts from relations and friends of delicately bound “Little Holy Books,” as she described them, that she completely lost her temper. She sulked all the morning, and when Miss Crosby, who was secretly sympathising with her, told her it was time to change into her white frock, she hurled a book at her and dashed out to a secluded corner of the garden, where she threw herself on to her face and whispered to the grass:
“Curse! Bother! Blow! Curse! Curse! Curse! Curse!”
After which outburst of evil language she felt better.
A week or two later she sought out Catherine.
“Mummy, are you going to help your daughters not to be made into church pussies?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because, as one of my daughters said a week or two ago, church-working is a thing you catch like a cold. Just doing some work to help your father won’t make you have the disease.”
“But it’s an awful risk if we start at it very young. Do you want to see my nose getting redder and redder, and my clothes getting awfuller and awfuller, and me getting gooder and gooder?”
“It’s a distressing picture, but I’m not anxious.”
“It’s this Sunday school,” Judith moaned. “I see it hanging over my head like an axe ready to drop at any minute.”
“More like a pillow than an axe, I think,” said Catherine consolingly. “Frankly, Judith,” she went on, “I think you are far too young to be any good as a Sunday school teacher, but you’ll only be given the babies—one can’t teach those tots, anyway—so it will merely be a matter of keeping them quiet.”
“It’s all very well, but if they make me teach in the Sunday school it’s only a beginning. Little by little those Miss Loves will have sucked us all in. And if it doesn’t have an awful effect on me, it will on Esther. Esther’s just the sort to become a proper church puss.”
Catherine laughed.
“You’re being most dramatic, darling, but you don’t frighten me.”
There were two Miss Loves. Their appearance was unfortunate. Their clothes a tragedy. Their energy tireless. No club, society, or work of any sort had its being in the parish, but the Miss Loves had at least two fingers, and often both hands, in it. They marred otherwise blameless characters by being uncharitable gossips given to unwarrantable interference.
“Did you see Mrs. Churston’s hat in church, Dora?”
“Yes, I did, Mabel. Frankly, I thought it too daring to be quite nice—I wonder what that dear man thinks of his wife’s clothes.”
“I hear she’s going away again.”
“Tch! Tch! Poor man. She’s a sad gadabout, I’m afraid. You know, Mabel, I sometimes wonder if it’s quite all right—You know what I mean—”
“Oh, you don’t think—? Well, of course I’ve sometimes wondered—”
“Well, one never knows, does one?”
The elder Miss Love ran the senior Sunday school, the younger the infants’. Judith, as she had feared, was to teach in the latter.
One afternoon she burst into the schoolroom, flung one green and one red book on to the table, and faced her sisters and Miss Crosby with mock tragedy.
“Look at them, my dears!” She pointed dramatically at the two books. “The chains of our bondage. The green is lessons for infants on Sunday mornings, and the red teaches the little dears on Sunday afternoons. Don’t you smile, Esther. By next Easter you’ll be given just such ones, and in about three years Susanna will be for it, and then by degrees we shall all read to mothers, and sew flannel for the poor and heathen, and get up bazaars, and sell at smelly jumble sales, and join girls’ clubs, and ‘Oh, that will be joyful,’” she sang. “‘Joyful, joyful, joy-oy-ful.’ And the worst of it is,” she concluded, “we’ll none of us be so unkind as to say, ‘No,’ because Daddy’s so sure we’re enjoying it. Oh, Crossy! Why aren’t I grown-up, and old enough to go away and do something?”
Miss Crosby was secretly disappointed in Judith. She would have preferred to have seen her make a fight. But she realised that David’s simple certainty of a longing for goodness in all with whom he came in contact was very disarming. Judith did wish to be good in her own way, but her ideas of goodness and her father’s were not synonymous, and never would be. Miss Crosby couldn’t find it in her heart actually to blame the child, knowing that in similar circumstances she herself would have faltered.
“Oh, well,” she said, “doing things one doesn’t like is grand training.”
“Look at that!” Judith turned to her sisters. “Nobody sides with us, they’ll let us grow old, and frumpish, and dull, till nobody will want to know us, and then they’ll be sorry.”
“I don’t mean to grow frumpish,” Esther expostulated. “I want a man to marry me, then I’ll have lots and lots of children.”
“Oh, goodness! How dull,” Judith exclaimed. “Then you’ll settle down and be jealous of me and Susanna doing exciting things, won’t she, Susanna?”
“I don’t want to do exciting things,” Susanna retorted. “I want to go and live somewhere with Baruch.”
“Fat lot of chance you’ll have of doing that. Baruch will get a wife; he won’t want you.”
“Oh yes, he will, Judith. I know he will.”
Judith opened her mouth to reply, but Miss Crosby, scenting trouble, told them to run up and put on their things; it was time they went for their walk.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The older Judith grew, the clearer it became to Miss Crosby that her brains were above the ordinary. She watched over her like an old hen, and in the supreme privacy of her bed, and occasionally when her mind drifted in church, composed a saga round her future. But the more clearly she realised the admirable qualities of the girl’s brains, the more marvellous the future she foretold for her in her sagas, the more obvious it became that she must have a special education. She must, in fact, be sent to a college. Miss Crosby was sorry to come to this decision, for she was a great admirer of Catherine’s, and she could see clearly that her admiration would receive a severe jolt when the moment came for her to mention the word college. For she couldn’t blind herself to the
fact that Catherine’s attitude, in all other matters so right, so sane, was downright frivolous when it came to the education of girls.
In the schoolroom, the chance of Judith being sent to a college was openly discussed. Esther and Susanna, though thankful nobody was considering higher education for themselves, agreed it was the very thing for Judith. But for months the subject remained embedded in the school-room; nobody mentioned it to Catherine. Then Esdras went up to Oxford, and it was clear all the other boys were to go there in due course. Esdras, who had no brains in particular; Tobit, whose one ambition was to be a gardener; Sirach, who said he wanted to be a vet; Baruch, Manasses, Maccabeus, nice intelligent children—but none of them in the same class as their sister.
“Judith dear,” said Miss Crosby with determination. “The time has come for you to talk to your mother.”
“Crossy darling,” Judith wheedled, “you talk to her. You’ll explain much better than me. Mummy always makes me wonder if she thinks being good at lessons is much use. She doesn’t exactly laugh at me, but I sometimes feel she’s just going to.”
Catherine was arranging a bowl of flowers in the drawing-room.
“Well, Crossy. You are looking terribly grim and determined. What is it?”
Miss Crosby fidgeted anxiously with some small silver ornaments on an occasional table beside her.
“Mrs. Churston, Judith’s growing up. Have you thought of her future? Have you—?” Desperately she opened and shut a small silver box “have you thought of sending her to college?”
“College! Good gracious, no! I’d hate my Judith to be a Bluestocking. She’s quite as clever as she needs to be with all she’s learnt from you. As soon as she’s old enough, I want to take her about. Dances and things. I hope she’ll get to know some nice men.”
“Oh, Mrs. Churston.” Miss Crosby’s voice rang with the intensity of her feelings. She would have knelt at Catherine’s feet if she had thought it would do the slightest good. “There’ll be plenty of time for all that afterwards. She really is so exceptionally clever, I feel it’s—oh, forgive me—I feel it’s your duty to give her this opportunity to make a career for herself, to meet brains in the same class as her own.”
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