I took my letter from the rack and read it while waiting for Mrs. Dodds, my landlady, to finish totting up a long row of figures. I liked going down to pay my weekly board. Mrs. Dodds’ office was cosy, she was kindly. She knew London like a book and could tell every one of her fifty lady-student boarders all they wanted to know about everything and every place in the world.
“I won’t!” I exclaimed, reading down the page. Mrs. Dodds looked up from her figuring.
“Won’t what?”
“Pay a snob-visit in Upper Norwood over the week-end. I don’t know the people.”
“The Handel Festival is being held this week; it is in the Crystal Palace which is at Upper Norwood. Probably that is why your friends are inviting you down. Don’t miss a treat like that, child.”
“They are not my friends, I’ve never seen them. My sister did the woman a kindness when she was ill out in Canada. The woman thinks she ought to pay back.”
“Well, let her.—Why not?”
“She does not owe me anything. They have money. I refused to bring over a letter of introduction to her. I won’t have anybody feel they have got to be good to me because my sister was good to them. They don’t owe me a thing!”
“Take all the fun that comes your way, don’t be stupid. That foot operation has taken it out of you. Go, have a good time.”
“I’d like to hear that festival all right!”
On reconsidering, I wrote, “I’ve had an operation on my foot. I still limp. If you will excuse a limp and a soft shoe, I would be pleased, etc. . . .”
I loathed the snoopy little woman with boiled-gooseberry eyes from the moment I saw her peering down the platform looking for something resembling my sisters. She knew all about my foot and that I was just out of nursing home—my sister had written her. They had corresponded ever since they met in Victoria.
“I suppose you can walk? It is only one mile.”
“No, I am afraid I cannot.”
“Then shall I call you a cab?”
She made it plain that it was my cab. When we got to her gate she turned her back till I had paid the cabby.
“You do not look the least like any of your sisters.”
“So I believe.”
They were people of very considerable means. On the way from the station she told me that her son had been in the Boer War. He got enteric. The whole family—father, mother, three sisters and the son’s fiancée—had gone out to South Africa to bring him home. They were just back.
“It was such a nice little pleasure jaunt!”
That was the scale on which these people could afford to do things. Six passages to Africa cost a great deal of money!
All the way in the cab she had stared at me.
“No,” she said, “I see no resemblance whatever. Three fine women—if ever there are fine women outside . . .” She stopped to consider and added, “Three Godfearing, fine women.”
She led me into a tasteless, chapel-like, little drawing room, its walls plastered with framed texts and goody-goody mottos.
“Put your foot up!” indicating a hard shiny sofa in an alcove. As soon as I was settled, she drew a chair to the side of the sofa, also arranged a small table on which stood an aspidistra plant, that beastly foliage thing so beloved of English matrons, because it requires no care, will thrive in any dingy room. English boarding houses always have aspidistras. I think it is the only growing plant that I loathe; it is dull, dry, ugly. When the woman had securely barricaded me into the alcove by her disagreeable self and the hateful plant she turned full upon me her gooseberry-green stare, scummed over the green with suspicion, mistrust and disappointment.
Again she stabbed, “You differ from your family.” Then in a voice, harsh, hateful, cruel, “Are you saved?”
Quite taken aback I faltered, “I . . . I . . . don’t know . . .”
“That settles the matter, you are not! I know that I am saved. I know that my entire family—myself, my husband, our three daughters, my son, my son’s fiancée—all are saved, thank God!”
She rolled her eyes over the aspidistra, as if she pitied the poor thing for not being included in family salvation.
The door opened, in marched her three daughters, two stumpy, one lank. Behind them came a maid carrying the tea tray. All the girls had strong, horsey, protruding teeth like their mother. Introductions followed. I was so shaken by my sudden shove into damnation that, not being yet fully recovered from my illness, tears came. I had to wink and sniff during the introductions to the daughters. For five minutes nobody spoke; strong, white teeth chewed insufficiently buttered muffins, hard lips sipped tepid tea. I did the same. The silence got unwelcome. I wanted to reinstate myself after my lack of self control. Mama was obviously upset that my salvation had been interrupted by tea. She drank three cups silently and straight off in long earnest gulps. Looking out of the window, I cried, “Oh, is that the roof of the Crystal Palace glittering over there?”
“Yes.”
“That is where the Handel Festival is being held, is it not?”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen Beerbohm Tree in Henry the Eighth? I was taken last night, it was simply splendid!”
Silence.
“I heard the Elijah in Albert Hall last week. The vast enclosed empty space made me feel quite queer when we first went into the hall. Does it make you feel that way?” I turned to the lean daughter as being most human.
“No.”
The girl was fingering the harmonium in the centre of the drawing room.
“Are you fond of music?” I ventured, and from Mama, in a tornado burst, came, “Our music is hymns at home. Of that, yes! Of concerts, theatres, NO! We are Christians.”
“But . . . the Elijah, the Messiah, are sacred,” I faltered.
“Sacred! The worst music of all! What do those professionals think of as they sing? Their own voices, their own glory, not the glory of God. We are Christians. We would not attend such performances.”
A hymn book fell off the harmonium. Did I see the lean daughter’s foot steal towards it as if she would kick it under the instrument? Mama stooped and replaced the book on the harmonium.
“I am very tired,” I pleaded. “May I go to my room and rest a little?”
The lean daughter showed me the way, but she did not speak.
Next morning a letter was passed round at breakfast. The lean daughter tossed it across the table to Father when she had read it.
The eldest daughter remarked, “What luck, dear Mama!”
“Providence, not luck, my child!”
The lean daughter scowled and Mama announced, “Brother Simon and Sisters Maria and Therese will be with us for luncheon.” Turning to her son, “It is my wish that you be here for lunch, my son. Brother Simon and the Sisters will wish to see you and ask about Africa.”
In an aside the lean daughter whispered in my ear, “Relatives by faith, not by blood!”
“Certainly I will be present, dear Mama,” said the son of the house.
Faint and chill the door bell tinkled under the hand of Brother Simon at noon. It was as if the pull were frozen by Brother’s touch, but the maid heard and admitted. Mama left the drawing room; there were whisperings in the hall, whisperings that chilled me but made my ears burn. I was introduced. Six eyes tore me as a fox tears a rabbit.
“Let us pray,” said Brother Simon, lifting fat red hands—the fingernails were very dirty. We all flopped where we were and ducked our noses into the seats of the chairs. My chair was in the bay window close to the street. I felt as if I were “praying on a housetop”. I was sure passers-by could hear Brother’s roar. At every footstep I peeped to see how pedestrians were taking it. Suddenly I heard my own name bellowed by Simon. He was explaining me to God as “the stranger within our gates”. He told God mean things about me, such personal things as made me feel almost as if I were eavesdropping. He told God that I came of religious stock but that I was rebellious. I felt my face was crimson when I got up from my knees.
The maid was in the doorway waiting to announce lunch. She looked very sorry about something, either a beastly lunch or my sins.
The lunch was certainly dreadful! The three visitors bragged how they had defied nurses and doctors to crawl to the bedsides of dying men in Africa for a last remonstrance with them about their sins. They discussed fallen soldiers with the son of the house.
“Was he saved?”
“No, no! I said a few words but I fear. . . .” Not one of those dead soldiers did Brother Simon credit with being saved or deserving to be.
At last lunch was over. The three trailed drearily away; they were booked for a religious meeting. All embraced Mama and the girls effusively. I’d have done them a damage had any of their kisses attacked my cheek. Brother took my hand in a clammy grip. One of his hands below mine, the other on top, was like being folded between raw kippers. “I shall,” he said, “continue to pray for you, my child!”
“Thank you, dear Brother,” murmured Mama. The kippers fell apart, releasing me.
The lean daughter’s hand slipped through my arm, her whisper was directed straight into my ear. “Brother and Sisters by faith, not by blood, thank God!”
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