“Well, mester — we’n axed you to come her ter christen this childt, an’ you’n come, an’ I’m sure we’re very thankful. I can’t see lettin’ the poor blessed childt miss baptizing, an’ they aren’t for goin’ to church wi’t — ” He seemed to lapse into a muse. “So,” he resumed, “we’v axed you to come here to do the job. I’m not sayin’ as it’s not ‘ard on us, it is. I’m breakin’ up, an’ mother’s gone. I don’t like leavin’ a girl o’ mine in a situation like ‘ers is, but what the Lord’s done, He’s done, an’ it’s no matter murmuring. . . . There’s one thing to be thankful for, an’ we are thankful for it: they never need know the want of bread.”
Miss Rowbotham, the lady of the family, sat very stiff and pained during this discourse. She was sensitive to so many things that she was bewildered. She felt her young sister’s shame, then a kind of swift protecting love for the baby, a feeling that included the mother; she was at a loss before her father’s religious sentiment, and she felt and resented bitterly the mark upon the family, against which the common folk could lift their fingers. Still she winced from the sound of her father’s words. It was a painful ordeal.
“It is hard for you,” began the clergyman in his soft, lingering, unworldly voice. “It is hard for you today, but the Lord gives comfort in His time. A man child is born unto us, therefore let us rejoice and be glad. If sin has entered in among us, let us purify out hearts before the Lord. . . .”
He went on with his discourse. The young mother lifted the whimpering infant, till its face was hid in her loose hair. She was hurt, and a little glowering anger shone in her face. But nevertheless her fingers clasped the body of the child beautifully. She was stupefied with anger against this emotion let loose on her account.
Miss Bertha rose and went to the little kitchen, returning with water in a china bowl. She placed it there among the tea-things.
“Well, we’re all ready,” said the old man, and the clergyman began to read the service. Miss Bertha was godmother, the two men godfathers. The old man sat with bent head. The scene became impressive. At last Miss Bertha took the child and put it in the arms of the clergyman. He, big and ugly, shone with a kind of unreal love. He had never mixed with life, and women were all unliving, Biblical things to him. When he asked for the name, the old man lifted his head fiercely. “Joseph William, after me,” he said, almost out of breath.
“Joseph William, I baptize thee. . . .” resounded the strange, full, chanting voice of the clergyman. The baby was quite still.
“Let us pray!” It came with relief to them all. They knelt before their chairs, all but the young mother, who bent and hid herself over her baby. The clergyman began his hesitating, struggling prayer.
Just then heavy footsteps were heard coming up the path, ceasing at the window. The young mother, glancing up, saw her brother, black in his pit dirt, grinning in through the panes. His red mouth curved in a sneer; his fair hair shone above his blackened skin. He caught the eye of his sister and grinned. Then his black face disappeared. He had gone on into the kitchen. The girl with the child sat still and anger filled her heart. She herself hated now the praying clergyman and the whole emotional business; she hated her brother bitterly. In anger and bondage she sat and listened.
Suddenly her father began to pray. His familiar, loud, rambling voice made her shut herself up and become even insentient. Folks said his mind was weakening. She believed it to be true, and kept herself always disconnected from him.
“We ask Thee, Lord,” the old man cried, “to look after this childt. Fatherless he is. But what does the earthly father matter before Thee? The childt is Thine, he is Thy childt. Lord, what father has a man but Thee? Lord, when a man says he is a father, he is wrong from the first word. For Thou art the Father, Lord. Lord, take away from us the conceit that our children are ours. Lord, Thou art Father of this childt as is fatherless here. O God, Thou bring him up. For I have stood between Thee and my children; I’ve had my way with them, Lord; I’ve stood between Thee and my children; I’ve cut ‘em off from Thee because they were mine. And they’ve grown twisted, because of me. Who is their father, Lord, but Thee? But I put myself in the way, they’ve been plants under a stone, because of me. Lord, if it hadn’t been for me, they might ha’ been trees in the sunshine. Let me own it, Lord, I’ve done ‘em mischief. It could ha’ been better if they’d never known no father. No man is a father, Lord: only Thou art. They can never grow beyond Thee, but I hampered them. Lift ‘em up again, and undo what I’ve done to my children. And let this young childt be like a willow tree beside the waters, with no father but Thee, O God. Aye an’ I wish it had been so with my children, that they’d had no father but Thee. For I’ve been like a stone upon them, and they rise up and curse me in their wickedness. But let me go, an’ lift Thou them up, Lord . . .”
The minister, unaware of the feelings of a father, knelt in trouble, hearing without understanding the special language of fatherhood. Miss Rowbotham alone felt and understood a little. Her heart began to flutter; she was in pain. The two younger daughters kneeled unhearing, stiffened and impervious. Bertha was thinking of the baby; and the younger mother thought of the father of her child, whom she hated. There was a clatter in the scullery. There the youngest son made as much noise as he could, pouring out the water for his wash, muttering in deep anger:
“Blortin’, slaverin’ old fool!”
And while the praying of his father continued, his heart was burning with rage. On the table was a paper bag. He picked it up and read, “John Berryman — Bread, Pastries, etc.” Then he grinned with a grimace. The father of the baby was baker’s man at Berryman’s. The prayer went on in the middle kitchen. Laurie Rowbotham gathered together the mouth of the bag, inflated it, and burst it with his fist. There was a loud report. He grinned to himself. But he writhed at the same time with shame and fear of his father.
The father broke off from his prayer; the party shuffled to their feet. The young mother went into the scullery.
“What art doin’, fool?” she said.
The collier youth tipped the baby under the chin, singing:
“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can. . . .”
The mother snatched the child away. “Shut thy mouth,” she said, the colour coming into her cheek.
“Prick it and stick it and mark it with P,
And put it i’ th’ oven for baby an’ me. . . .”
He grinned, showing a grimy, and jeering and unpleasant red mouth and white teeth.
“I s’ll gi’e thee a dab ower th’ mouth,” said the mother of the baby grimly. He began to sing again, and she struck out at him.
“Now what’s to do?” said the father, staggering in.
The youth began to sing again. His sister stood sullen and furious.
“Why, does that upset you?” asked the eldest Miss Rowbotham, sharply, of Emma the mother. “Good gracious, it hasn’t improved your temper.”
Miss Bertha came in, and took the bonny baby.
The father sat big and unheeding in his chair, his eyes vacant, his physique wrecked. He let them do as they would, he fell to pieces. And yet some power, involuntary, like a curse, remained in him. The very ruin of him was like a lodestone that held them in its control. The wreck of him still dominated the house, in his dissolution even he compelled their being. They had never lived; his life, his will had always been upon them and contained them. They were only half-individuals.
The day after the christening he staggered in at the doorway declaring, in a loud voice, with joy in life still: “The daisies light up the earth, they clap their hands in multitudes, in praise of the morning.” And his daughters shrank, sullen.
A FRAGMENT OF STAINED GLASS
Beauvale is, or was, the largest parish in England. It is thinly populated, only just netting the stragglers from shoals of houses in three large mining villages. For the rest, it holds a great tract of woodland, fragment of old Sherwood,
a few hills of pasture and arable land, three collieries, and, finally, the ruins of a Cistercian abbey. These ruins lie in a still rich meadow at the foot of the last fall of woodland, through whose oaks shines a blue of hyacinths, like water, in May-time. Of the abbey, there remains only the east wall of the chancel standing, a wild thick mass of ivy weighting one shoulder, while pigeons perch in the tracery of the lofty window. This is the window in question.
The vicar of Beauvale is a bachelor of forty-two years. Quite early in life some illness caused a slight paralysis of his right side, so that he drags a little, and so that the right corner of his mouth is twisted up into his cheek with a constant grimace, unhidden by a heavy moustache. There is something pathetic about this twist on the vicar’s countenance: his eyes are so shrewd and sad. It would be hard to get near to Mr Colbran. Indeed, now, his soul had some of the twist of his face, so that, when he is not ironical, he is satiric. Yet a man of more complete tolerance and generosity scarcely exists. Let the boors mock him, he merely smiles on the other side, and there is no malice in his eyes, only a quiet expression of waiting till they have finished. His people do not like him, yet none could bring forth an accusation against him, save, that “You never can tell when he’s having you.”
I dined the other evening with the vicar in his study. The room scandalizes the neighbourhood because of the statuary which adorns it: a Laocoon and other classic copies, with bronze and silver Italian Renaissance work. For the rest, it is all dark and tawny.
Mr Colbran is an archaeologist. He does not take himself seriously, however, in his hobby, so that nobody knows the worth of his opinions on the subject.
“Here you are,” he said to me after dinner, “I’ve found another paragraph for my great work.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Haven’t I told you I was compiling a Bible of the English people — the Bible of their hearts — their exclamations in presence of the unknown? I’ve found a fragment at home, a jump at God from Beauvale.”
“Where?” I asked, startled.
The vicar closed his eyes whilst looking at me.
“Only on parchment,” he said.
Then, slowly, he reached for a yellow book, and read, translating as he went:
“Then, while we chanted, came a crackling at the window, at the great east window, where hung our Lord on the Cross. It was a malicious covetous Devil wrathed by us, rended the lovely image of the glass. We saw the iron clutches of the fiend pick the window, and a face flaming red like fire in a basket did glower down on us. Our hearts melted away, our legs broke, we thought to die. The breath of the wretch filled the chapel.
“But our dear Saint, etc., etc., came hastening down heaven to defend us. The fiend began to groan and bray — he was daunted and beat off.
“When the sun uprose, and it was morning, some went out in dread upon the thin snow. There the figure of our Saint was broken and thrown down, whilst in the window was a wicked hole as from the Holy Wounds the Blessed Blood was run out at the touch of the Fiend, and on the snow was the Blood, sparkling like gold. Some gathered it up for the joy of this House. . . .”
“Interesting,” I said. “Where’s it from?”
“Beauvale records — fifteenth century.”
“Beauvale Abbey,” I said; “they were only very few, the monks. What frightened them, I wonder.”
“I wonder,” he repeated.
“Somebody climbed up,” I supposed, “and attempted to get in.”
“What?” he exclaimed, smiling.
“Well, what do you think?”
“Pretty much the same,” he replied. “I glossed it out for my book.”
“Your great work? Tell me.”
He put a shade over the lamp so that the room was almost in darkness.
“Am I more than a voice?” he asked.
“I can see your hand,” I replied. He moved entirely from the circle of light. Then his voice began, sing-song, sardonic:
“I was a serf in Rollestoun’s Newthorpe Manor, master of the stables I was. One day a horse bit me as I was grooming him. He was an old enemy of mine. I fetched him a blow across the nose. Then, when he got a chance, he lashed out at me and caught me a gash over the mouth. I snatched at a hatchet and cut his head. He yelled, fiend as he was, and strained for me with all his teeth bare. I brought him down.
“For killing him they flogged me till they thought I was dead. I was sturdy, because we horse-serfs got plenty to eat. I was sturdy, but they flogged me till I did not move. The next night I set fire to the stables, and the stables set fire to the house. I watched and saw the red flame rise and look out of the window, I saw the folk running, each for himself, master no more than one of a frightened party. It was freezing, but the heat made me sweat. I saw them all turn again to watch, all rimmed with red. They cried, all of them when the roof went in, when the sparks splashed up at rebound. They cried then like dogs at the bagpipes howling. Master cursed me, till I laughed as I lay under a bush quite near.
“As the fire went down I got frightened. I ran for the woods, with fire blazing in my eyes and crackling in my ears. For hours I was all fire. Then I went to sleep under the bracken. When I woke it was evening. I had no mantle, was frozen stiff. I was afraid to move, lest all the sores of my back should be broken like thin ice. I lay still until I could bear my hunger no longer. I moved then to get used to the pain of movement, when I began to hunt for food. There was nothing to be found but hips.
“After wandering about till I was faint I dropped again in the bracken. The boughs above me creaked with frost. I started and looked round. The branches were like hair among the starlight. My heart stood still. Again there was a creak, creak, and suddenly a whoop, that whistled in fading. I fell down in the bracken like dead wood. Yet, by the peculiar whistling sound at the end, I knew it was only the ice bending or tightening in the frost. I was in the woods above the lake, only two miles from the Manor. And yet, when the lake whooped hollowly again, I clutched the frozen soil, every one of my muscles as stiff as the stiff earth. So all the night long I dare not move my face, but pressed it flat down, and taut I lay as if pegged down and braced.
“When morning came still I did not move, I lay still in a dream. By afternoon my ache was such it enlivened me. I cried, rocking my breath in the ache of moving. Then again I became fierce. I beat my hands on the rough bark to hurt them, so that I should not ache so much. In such a rage I was I swung my limbs to torture till I fell sick with pain. Yet I fought the hurt, fought it and fought by twisting and flinging myself, until it was overcome. Then the evening began to draw on. All day the sun had not loosened the frost. I felt the sky chill again towards afternoon. Then I knew the night was coming, and, remembering the great space I had just come through, horrible so that it seemed to have made me another man, I fled across the wood.
“But in my running I came upon the oak where hanged five bodies. There they must hang, bar-stiff, night after night. It was a terror worse than any. Turning, blundering through the forest, I came out where the trees thinned, where only hawthorns, ragged and shaggy, went down to the lake’s edge.
“The sky across was red, the ice on the water glistened as if it were warm. A few wild geese sat out like stones on the sheet of ice. I thought of Martha. She was the daughter of the miller at the upper end of the lake. Her hair was red like beech leaves in a wind. When I had gone often to the mill with the horses she had brought me food.
“‘I thought,’ said I to her, ‘‘twas a squirrel sat on your shoulder. ‘Tis your hair fallen loose.’
“‘They call me the fox,’ she said.
“‘Would I were your dog,’ said I. She would bring me bacon and good bread, when I called at the mill with the horses. The thought of cakes of bread and of bacon made me reel as if drunk. I had torn at the rabbit holes, I had chewed wood all day. In such a dimness was my head that I felt neither the soreness of my wounds nor the cuts of thorns on my knees, but stumbled towards the mill, almost
past fear of man and death, panting with fear of the darkness that crept behind me from trunk to trunk.
“Coming to the gap in the wood, below which lay the pond, I heard no sound. Always I knew the place filled with the buzz of water, but now it was silent. In fear of this stillness I ran forward, forgetting myself, forgetting the frost. The wood seemed to pursue me. I fell, just in time, down by a shed wherein were housed the few wintry pigs. The miller came riding in on his horse, and the barking of dogs was for him. I heard him curse the day, curse his servant, curse me, whom he had been out to hunt, in his rage of wasted labour, curse all. As I lay I heard inside the shed a sucking. Then I knew that the sow was there, and that the most of her sucking pigs would be already killed for tomorrow’s Christmas. The miller, from forethought to have young at that time, made profit by his sucking pigs that were sold for the mid-winter feast.
“When in a moment all was silent in the dusk, I broke the bar and came into the shed. The sow grunted, but did not come forth to discover me. By and by I crept in towards her warmth. She had but three young left, which now angered her, she being too full of milk. Every now and again she slashed at them and they squealed. Busy as she was with them, I in the darkness advanced towards her. I trembled so that scarce dared I trust myself near her, for long dared not put my naked face towards her. Shuddering with hunger and fear, I at last fed of her, guarding my face with my arm. Her own full young tumbled squealing against me, but she, feeling her ease, lay grunting. At last I, too, lay drunk, swooning.
“I was roused by the shouting of the miller. He, angered by his daughter who wept, abused her, driving her from the house to feed the swine. She came, bowing under a yoke, to the door of the shed. Finding the pin broken she stood afraid, then, as the sow grunted, she came cautiously in. I took her with my arm, my hand over her mouth. As she struggled against my breast my heart began to beat loudly. At last she knew it was I. I clasped her. She hung in my arms, turning away her face, so that I kissed her throat. The tears blinded my eyes, I know not why, unless it were the hurt of my mouth, wounded by the horse, was keen.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 580