Mr Wroe's Virgins

by Jane Rogers

  Again the silence, against which they beat like sleepwalkers, or like moths against a window when they seek the candlelight indoors: forming amongst themselves a rising wave of whispers upon which hungry sea his voice again set sail.

  ‘God’s order has been destroyed. The devil is out and about among us, his crooked hand is evident in all things: in the disturbances of the heavens, the eclipses and shooting stars: in the weather which has brought more ruined harvests since the turn of the century than ever before in history: in the profligacy and destruction of the French wars –’

  Here he was interrupted by a terrible cry from a woman in the centre of the crowd: at first I thought her injured, and there was an eddy of agitated movement around her, then a man called out, ‘Here’s Susan Batsby, as lost ’er two lads to Boney!’ and a ripple of sympathy ran through them as they turned back to Wroe.

  ‘The world is upside down, evil stalks abroad. Brothers and sisters, I shall not speak of the corruption at the heart of the kingdom, among those persons of high place who presume to rule us, and whose ways are more disgusting and profligate than the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah: for you may read of that in any penny paper. Nearer to home, brothers and sisters, ghosts and shadows of horror abound, and at every table, by every fireside, contagion lurks ready to strike. Even today, as I look at you, I can tell –’

  Their listening became a holding of breath, as he took his time scanning their faces. ‘There are among you two disbelievers who will fall sick before tomorrow daybreak, and who will sink and die within seven days, unless they turn and open their hearts to God.’

  ‘Who will be saved?’ A woman’s voice rang out, anguished.

  And pat as if he had planted her there (did he? was someone made to ask that question?) he told them about the promises made by God to his chosen people, the Israelites, and how it was still possible to find salvation by joining their church.

  His performance made a strong impression on me; firstly because he spoke of earthly things. He has never, in Sanctuary, made any reference to the outside world, to the plight of the weavers, to politics, or to the wars; indeed, has been careful to make a division between things of this world and things of God, and to suggest that Israelites have no interest in the former. It was with genuine passion that he outlined these injustices, which are real, and terrible, and the effects of which one may see in the faces of such a crowd; half-starved, sickly, brutalized. Secondly, I was struck by his – power. To many a simple soul in that audience, his power is quite simply the power of God. He is able to bewitch and convince them, and change their lives, because God speaks through him.

  This power is not – I think, upon hard reflection – is not simply the result of the sense of his words. It is not the rational mind that is moved. It is easy to describe injustice, to generate pity and anger. I have heard many speakers excel at it.

  It must have been in his use of silence; in the combined use of his deep musical voice and silence … An orator’s trick, to make us hunger for the word.

  But if I call it a trick; still I must admire the energy and intelligence which can perform that trick. May it not have been such an energy, in the beginning, that tricked the round earth out of chaos; the first small motion of life from stillness?

  *

  I am tempted now to laugh at myself; to count myself as easily swayed as the ignorant crowd who came flocking forward at the end of his speech, to join the Rolls of the Saved.

  I dreamed last night of Edward. Though I had not heard from him for months before father’s death, yet it seems likely to me that he will reply, when my letter bearing that news reaches him. Then, an instant change might be made in my circumstances. Who knows but I might leave the prophet’s household for America, to live in a New World, instead of daily awaiting the destruction of the Old? I might exchange hope and vigorous action, for this quiet meditation and growing sense of my own powerlessness.

  Tonight, after sitting by the dark window a good long while, I knew I should not sleep. Hearing that Joanna’s breathing was slow and regular, I dressed myself again and let myself out on to the landing. The house was silent, and very dark, only the rushlight from the corridor at the bottom of the stairs casting a faint illumination. Carrying my shoes, I crept down (the stairs creaking, as they always do, on the fourth step down); turned left past the kitchen and offices, and let myself out at the back door. Boney gave a low growl as I stepped into the yard, but I called his name softly, and was rewarded by the sound of his tail thumping on the ground. I sat on the doorstep and put on my shoes.

  I am not sure that I had formed any clear intention of going anywhere. I walked once around the house, noting the crack of light showing between the shutters of Mr Wroe’s study window, and the darkness everywhere else – and then I set out along the lane, heading for the canal. My eyes were used to the darkness now: it was dark moon, with patches of stars visible between the fast-moving clouds; a breathless, hurrying sort of night, which fuelled my own impatience and dissatisfaction. A warmish wind, smelling of freshly dug earth and spring. I thought of my father in the ground, rotting. I imagined the clean white bones starting to appear through the dark shrivelled flesh, and I prayed he was at rest. If I could believe any part of him lurked about the world – if I could believe in the closeness of his spirit, in the possibility of his ghostly voice on the wind … I would be glad.

  The wind rushing past my face, and threshing the arms of the beeches along the lane, was an easy figure for the tearing forward motion in my head. Nothing stayed – but past and through me whirled a host of impulses, thoughts, memories, ambitions, all so fast-moving that I could focus clearly on none. I realized that I was crying, and forced myself to stop and turn away from the wind, to feel the hot tears run down my cheeks, and steady myself with that sensation. When he died I could not cry at all, my eyes were hot and dry as if filled with desert sand. Now, with the wind hurtling past my head, I felt the lovely tears gushing from my eyes, and wiped the backs of my hands against my cheeks, and licked the salty moisture from them. Luxuriating in being a child, helpless, overwhelmed by the events of my life.

  When my tears stopped I felt weak and clean. I also had the hiccups. I leant against one of the beeches, alternately holding my breath and letting go to test if they were gone, and while I stood there I noticed a darker shape outlined against the path, moving towards me.

  Clearly, someone heading for Southgate. Maybe one of the elders, with some special message to the prophet? But I could see already that it was a woman. What woman would come to visit him in the middle of the night, on foot, alone? I drew further back behind my tree, pressing my knuckles into my mouth to silence the hiccups. As she drew closer there was something familiar about the way she walked – then I knew, it was Leah. I stepped forward and called her name, at which she stopped.

  ‘It is me. Hannah. I wondered who you were.’

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She came up to me, and touched my cape. ‘You are well hidden in that cloak, Sister Hannah.’

  ‘And you!’ She also was wearing a long black garment – close up, it seemed to be some kind of greatcoat.

  She looked up and down the path. ‘So where are you off to, then?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  She laughed. ‘You do not like imprisonment either.’

  We began to walk slowly back towards the house. ‘Is that how you think of it?’

  ‘Imprisonment,’ she said fiercely. ‘A little life laid out of us. Rows of duties. Are you content?’

  ‘I do not plan to stay here for the rest of my life.’

  ‘No? Where are you going?’

  ‘Who knows? Something will happen. But you have family, Leah, there is no need for you to stay here.’

  She laughed bitterly, but did not reply.

  ‘Is that where you have been?’ I asked.

  ‘Why should I tell you? How do you plan to get out, anyway?’

  ‘We are f
ree to leave. He has told me that –’

  ‘He?’

  ‘The prophet. Mr Wroe.’

  We walked in silence for a while and then she asked, ‘You were talking?’

  ‘We sometimes talk, after his reading.’

  Leah stopped and stared at me. ‘I never find it possible to speak to him. He always dismisses me while I am still reading.’

  ‘He seems happy to talk,’ I told her, thinking of the several occasions now on which he has engaged me in conversation.

  ‘Really? With you?’

  I smiled to myself in the dark. ‘Maybe he is intimidated by your beauty.’

  She considered this seriously. ‘It is possible. Do you think he likes Joanna?’

  ‘I do not think he much likes any of us. We are not here to be liked by him. He sees us as necessary trappings to his household of God: besides which, we perform a number of domestic functions more cheaply than servants.’

  ‘You think that is all his purpose?’

  ‘What else do you imagine?’ I knew, of course, but I suddenly wondered if his behaviour toward her was different.

  ‘I imagine he may want women for the same reason any other man does, from time to time.’

  ‘Joanna says he has a wife.’

  ‘She is dead.’

  ‘The church could hardly approve such –’

  ‘The church would not know.’

  ‘Has he proposed anything of the sort to you?’

  She looked at me, her face gleaming white in the darkness. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You wish him to?’ I thought she would not reply; the silence grew between us, and it was only as we approached the back door, and I was reaching out to pat Boney’s excited head, that she said in a low fierce voice, ‘I wish for change.’

  As we were creeping up the stairs she laid a hand on my shoulder to stop me, and putting her mouth right next to my ear, whispered, ‘Do you know where he keeps his money?’

  ‘No. Joanna has the housekeeping.’

  ‘There’s more than that, somewhere about.’ She patted my shoulder to make me go on; I noticed that she stepped over the fourth step from the top – just as I, too late remembering, put my weight on it. She has done this before.

  *

  The prophet himself intrudes into my thoughts increasingly. He is at the heart of this little world; his link with God the centre around which they all revolve. And yet there are contradictions.

  The faith of Dinah, the faith of Joanna – or of fifty other members of their church – is simple. Absolute. It determines every action of their lives; it glosses the inexplicable, it offers future rewards for every earthly disappointment. Now I observe their prophet, it seems to me that there is more (or maybe less) to his faith, than that. Two incidents particularly have stayed in my mind, this week, and lead me to puzzle over his beliefs and intentions. He is not a fraud, I am certain of that; and yet it occurs to me that he may not be altogether so great a believer as those who follow him.

  The first is straightforward enough; the sermon he preached on the Sabbath, to the text, The Prophet is a snare to his people. Developing the idea in a logical manner, he warned his listeners not to follow his every instruction, not to believe his every word, explaining that God has told him; ‘Son of Man, I have made thee a snare unto the house of Israel, and I have forbidden any man to take counsel of thee: for thy judgement is not better than that of others, and my children must not regard thee as wiser than other men.’

  I am puzzled by his choice of subject. For this church is literally a sanctuary; a construct of rules and regulations which shelter its members from the arduous world of change and choices outside. Every detail of their lives is prescribed; clothing, diet, hair, jewellery, manners, morals – even reading matter, for their rule book states they are to read nothing but the Bible (one of many injunctions I ignore; even sister Joanna owns and reads other material). The very freedom from choice of the Israelite way of life is an attraction, and it is the prophet’s rules and prohibitions which have created this secure place. Yet now he tells them it is a snare, not to be trusted?

  There was no reaction from the congregation – no casting off of prescribed garments, or wild snipping of beards. I wonder if they listen to him at all, or simply think to take in virtue, as a plant takes in the moisture that it needs, by standing in the rain of his words?

  I raised the question with Joanna, as we worked together in the kitchen on Sunday, but her gentle faith finds no difficulty in this.

  ‘It is God’s wish that we choose, Sister Hannah. Not that we are led, like blind unthinking sheep, but that we choose virtue for its own sweet sake. Ever since our first mother Eve was tempted to bite the apple, we have had knowledge of good and evil. If we follow the Prophet’s dictates slavishly, then we are snared and lost; but if we examine our conscience over each question and, seeing that it please Him – in the matter of dress for example, choose to lay aside worldly vanity – then we act aright.’

  On the second matter I did not consult Joanna; I am still not quite sure why. After the Sabbath evening meeting, as we were waiting for the prophet to lead us on our walk back from Sanctuary, a man suddenly burst in at the side door and pushed between us. Finding the prophet, he threw himself at his feet (this in the confined space of the vestibule, where a number of the elders, besides ourselves, were crowded) and begged mercy and forgiveness. Mr Wroe pulled him to his feet and asked – almost angrily – what was the matter. The man (a factory operative, judging by his clothes) blurted out that he had this week lost his wife and oldest child, that two others of his children were sick, and that he feared it was God’s judgement for his unholy way of life. Mr Wroe instructed him to pray and seek forgiveness, to come to Bible class on Tuesday night, and to attend Sanctuary at the early morning service on Sabbath next. ‘God will take you into His fold, and take your troubles upon Himself. Go in peace.’ But the man could not get up for sobbing his gratitude, and then Mr Wroe brushed past him and set off towards Southgate at such a pace that we had trouble keeping up, and Martha and I fell so far behind, helping Dinah, that we lost sight of the others.

  When I went to read to him an hour later, he did not request a passage, but sat glaring at me in silence for some time. At last he said, ‘I cannot hear the Bible tonight, Sister Hannah. How is your faith?’

  ‘I – much the same as when we spoke before.’

  ‘You are not converted then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘D’you believe in devils, Sister Hannah?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even when you see a case like that fellow tonight? Lost his wife, lost his children –?’

  ‘There are reasons, which are much easier to find out than devils, surely.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Maybe his wife was sickly from overwork and a poor diet; maybe their house is overcrowded; perhaps the children have succumbed to illness through lack of that fresh air and exercise which are necessary to youthful strength.’

  He snorted contemptuously. ‘You mistake symptoms for cause. Do you think the truth of a situation may be understood by examining its external appearance?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Let me show you something.’ He reached into an inner pocket and held out to me a thin gold band, similar to a wedding ring. ‘A type of ring worn by female followers of the church. Here. Take it.’

  ‘I could never wear a ring in the workshop and I would feel most uncomfortable –’

  ‘I do not wish you to wear it,’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘Examine it. Tell me what it is.’

  I took the ring and looked at it, then bit it. The right colour, but too hard for gold. ‘It is brass, maybe mixed with some other base metal.’

  ‘Worth?’

  ‘Maybe a shilling.’

  ‘I have sold them to church members for a guinea apiece, and told them they are gold.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Rings of God; angels’ rings. They bring great comfort t
o those who wear them; each one connects its wearer with the faith of the angels. Their value is inestimable – outside the sordid calculations of jewellers and bankers.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘But? How can you presume to know the value of such a ring to its wearer, Sister Hannah?’

  ‘And devils? – that man tonight?’

  ‘If he can believe it is God’s will his family should die; if he can see beyond that personal tragedy to some greater and as yet unknown good which God may bring from it –’

  ‘Is that what you believe?’

  ‘I believe the long strand of faith must be spun out, spun out of my entrails, like a spider’s thread, to make a line across every such devilish chasm –’

  I waited, but I could not help myself. ‘Until –?’

  He shrugged. ‘Until. Who knows. I am going out for a walk, Sister Hannah. I’ll bid you good-night.’ He held the door open for me, and followed me out, heading on through the great hall to the front door, where I watched him speak briefly with Samuel before going out into the night.

  *

  When I come into our bedchamber tonight, I smile to see Joanna at my old seat by the window, staring out across the field into the gathering dusk.

  ‘You have taken my place, sister.’

  She shakes her head. She has been reading to Mr Wroe tonight. She was going to ask him –

  ‘Has he given you permission to preach?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am sorry –’

  She shakes her head again. ‘Oh no, it is God’s will. The women of the church are not to preach. He will decide when and how to use us; we must be ready, that is all.’ She smiles her gentle smile. I want to offer her something for her disappointment.