Mr Wroe's Virgins

by Jane Rogers

  ‘You will be able to resume your night class when we return, Sister Hannah.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me, what do you hope to achieve by this work?’ His tone was mild, but there is always an air of mockery in his voice, so that I seem to become over serious – angry – in order to defend my ideas. What nonsense. What defence do they need against someone like him?

  ‘Within your own household you have instructed that all the women should be taught to read. My teaching enables men and women to discover God’s word for themselves.’

  ‘You do not teach them to read so they can read the Bible.’

  ‘Why not? The Bible among other things. I sincerely hope they will read their Bibles.’

  ‘And the pamphlets of political agitators; and handbills for secret union meetings, the vituperations of the radical press, charters and petitions numbering their so-called greivances –’

  ‘Those too.’

  ‘Do you think they will be any happier for it?’

  ‘I imagine they will. I imagine it must be better for people to have some means of forming an opinion on their situation in life, than for them to remain a dull ignorant mass, as easily swayed in this direction as that by the next cunning orator who stands before them.’

  ‘So you are teaching them to think, as well as to read?’

  ‘Teaching them to read is no more than teaching a child to speak; it opens a door on to the world.’

  ‘But it seems to me you are very remiss, Sister Hannah, if you teach them to read without teaching them how to think. If you give them the skill without teaching them how to use it.’

  ‘The purpose of their reading is for them to form their own opinions.’

  ‘Take up that book.’ He gestured towards the heavy Bible I had set down after my reading. ‘Solomon. Song of Songs.’

  I did as I was told.

  ‘Now read to me the opening verses.’

  The Song of songs, which is Solomon’s.

  Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine.

  Because of the savour of thy good ointments, thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.

  Draw me, we will run after –

  He interrupted me. ‘Chapter V, verse 2.’

  I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.

  I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on?

  I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?

  My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.

  I rose up to open to my beloved: and my hands dripped with myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.

  I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake, I saught him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer –

  ‘That will do.’

  The Bible slipped from my grasp as I closed it, and slithered from my knees to the floor. He watched me pick it up and place it on the table.

  ‘How shall this be interpreted, by a man whom you have taught to read?’

  ‘I … interpretations may vary.’

  ‘By a working man who has learned to read in your night class?’

  ‘It would depend on whether he attended church – on whether he had any other knowledge to draw upon, to assist him in –’

  ‘If he did not.’

  ‘Many Bibles are annotated to explain and interpret those passages where misunderstanding may arise.’

  ‘The cheaper ones are not.’

  ‘Then he would believe the verses to be about love.’

  ‘They are about love. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. If a man could give all the substance of his house for love – They are entirely about love.’

  ‘I know what you are trying to make me say. That an uneducated reader might read this as a description of, of – affection – between a man and a woman – whereas –’

  ‘Affection? Not quite the word, sister. As a clear and graphic description of the act of love, surely? Open to me, my sister, my love –’

  It was very warm in the room. I pulled my chair back from the fire.

  He barely paused. ‘– but I interrupted you. “Whereas”?’ he questioned.

  ‘Whereas. You know. The love of Christ for his church.’

  He nodded; ‘A metaphor. Concerning the great, burning love Christ bears to His bride the church on earth, and the overwhelming love and inexpressible joy the individual soul may find in God. Certainly. I sleep, but my heart waketh. The corrupt and slumbering church is remotely touched by the word of Christ, but makes excuses to avoid admitting His presence. I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them? Indeed. The hand of the beloved in the door – the true spirit of Christ touching and awakening the heart of the church, moving it to penitence and pity for its past failings. You do not need an interpreter, Sister Hannah. But you will allow that it is possible to read these verses and extract from them a meaning quite other than their intended one?’

  I did not reply.

  ‘And if that is the case here, that it may be so in many others? Particularly where a writer has perhaps set out deliberately to lead his innocent audience astray?’

  ‘The alternative is brutish ignorance.’

  ‘Brutish ignorance: or manipulated delusion based on partial knowledge. Which would you say is preferable?’

  ‘You are too stark. Partial knowledge may lead to fuller knowledge – people are not all fools.’

  ‘Brutish ignorance has its own defences, its own feelers – as much as any other living organism. It can tell where to turn to the sun, how to shelter from the rain, how to grasp food or deal with an enemy. Yet you seek to meddle – are you not afraid?’ His tone at last was serious, the mockery fallen away like a shell.

  ‘Afraid?’

  ‘Yes. That you will take away those instinctive responses which have enabled the mob to survive and fight and grab what it could when the time was right – and substitute for them a hollow pretence of equality, containing no real power.’

  ‘No, no. Your premise is that the lot of the people can never be improved. If that were so, then it would be wrong to offer them a chimera of knowledge. But it can, and will, be improved – from this low stage to the next, to the day when every hand in a mill will have as great an understanding of political power and government – and as great a say in the government’s composition – as the son of a lord or a bishop.’

  He laughed. ‘You take into account neither human greed nor human stupidity. But most faulty of all, you ignore the system upon which our world is built, which is but as a gateway into eternity. Each individual has a span of sixty brief years. You would have to be a profligate, extravagant, deliberately blind and wanton fool, to invest energy in seeking to improve the conditions of such a span of time – in the face of eternity.’

  ‘The addition of all those spans together makes up eternity.’

  He stood up and took my empty glass from my hand. ‘You are an idealist, sister.’

  ‘And you are –’ There were words in my head, but none of them exactly right.

  ‘Oh, I know. A charlatan. The love you bear humanity is, I am sure more worthy than mine. I am simply sorry to see you wasting your considerable talents.’

  His tone was suddenly more unpleasant than I can describe. Vicious.

  ‘What do you think I should be doing, Mr Wroe?’

  ‘What do women do, Sister Hannah? Many marry and breed, and pour out their great love on the endless wave of new humanity disgorged by their fertility. Others serve God, bringing new souls into His fold. Others – survive. Work, eat, sleep. Martha had a life, before she came here, you know.’

  Martha. ‘The life of a brute. You recommend this to me.’

  ‘Not
in the least. I do not necessarily recommend any of them.’

  ‘I know what I want to do, and when I am able to be independent – I shall leave your household and do it.’ I heard my own voice, loud with defiant anger.

  ‘I am sure you will. I shall be sorry to lose you.’ His voice suddenly low, kindly, and with a rumble – a slight roughness to it that seems to catch at my own throat. Listen Hannah, this man is a performer. This man is an actor.

  But when he looks at me directly I cannot tell what to think: only that I know I shall feel foolish, and angry with myself, afterwards.

  *

  In Harrogate, the evening before our last big meeting, he came to me where I was ironing my dress, and asked if I could sew fresh buttons on his shirt, and mend a rip in his jacket sleeve. ‘Have you been in a fight?’ I asked, jokingly. He did not reply, simply set down the damaged clothes, with a needle and thread he had borrowed from the woman of the house, and left me.

  ‘Leah is a better needlewoman than I!’ I called after him; does he think I am a slave?

  I was sitting sewing outside the back door, using the last of the sunlight to see by, when he poked his head out the door.

  ‘Ah! A breath of evening air. How is my jacket, Sister Hannah?’

  ‘Nearly done.’

  ‘Tell me –’ he stepped out of the house and walked a little way along the path, peering over the hedge to see the sheep on the other side. ‘I have been thinking about these millhands – these operatives of yours, who are so keen to read.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What do they themselves imagine will happen, once they are literate? What do they foresee?’

  I shrugged. ‘How can I tell the thoughts of a mass of people? I can tell you about Annie, the spinner’s wife whose babies died. I can tell you about Albert, the boy who is going blind, whose father is in the union. He has given me his father’s views on the future.’

  ‘That will do.’

  ‘Well –’ Albert and I talk on our way home after class; and often end up standing staring over the side of the canal bridge, while we finish our conversation. The last time we stood there, clumps of brownish foam dotted the surface of the water, like strange flowers. These come from the dye works at Albion Mill. ‘Well, he told me his father says the masters will stop at nothing now they have lowered wages twice. That they will continue to lower them, and at the same time, bring in more and more machines to do the work of men, until whole factories may be run employing no more than two or three children to piece together broken threads: that the machines will do the work of a hundred men at once.’ Wroe nodded; I had to ask him to take a step back, for his shadow was falling over my needlework.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, then working men and women will starve; for there is no steady labour to be had in the countryside now. Farmers everywhere have taken away their workers’ rights to bits of land, and even their rights to eat at the farm kitchen table. Without benefit of a share in the produce they have helped to grow, their wages are too low to live upon.’

  ‘Come to the point. What does your friend propose?’

  I could repeat Albert’s words exactly; ‘My father says, we are a troublesome bunch. We will not quietly wither away, like an unharvested field in winter. We will be meddlin’ and meetin’ and readin’ newspapers, and searching after forming our own opinions. We are a dangerous crew, he says, and magistrates were wise to call up the soldiers, or what decent folk could sleep safe abed?’ It was pleasant to see the wry smile he had copied from his father’s face, to accompany the words.

  ‘Meaning what?’ demanded Wroe.

  ‘Meaning that they must combine now; that they must withdraw their labour while it still has value to the masters, and obtain some rights to safeguard their future livelihood.’

  ‘A turn-out. Their vision goes no further than that.’

  ‘How can it? They must grasp rights one by one, hand over hand, like someone climbing up a cliff; they must grasp each tool or support which can help them to continue their climb. It will not all be achieved at one blow.’

  ‘So the overall vision is not theirs, but that of your educated Cooperators; of your Mr Owen, with his New View of society.’

  ‘I have said – it is not a question of an overall vision. It is a question of survival, of grasping the tools to continue to survive. No one is forcing a system upon them.’

  He took the jacket off me and held it up to the light. I thought he was going to complain about my poor workmanship, but he did not; only thanked me gravely for my trouble, and disappeared back into the house.

  Joanna

  It is time to celebrate our fifth festival of the New Moon together. It falls this month on Friday, and being directly before the Sabbath, makes two days for which all must be ready in advance. We will spend these two days in preparations and Thursday fasting, in Sanctuary.

  I am out of step, now, with the New Moon. For as long as I can remember, my bleeding has begun as the old moon wanes, and ceased as the new crescent appears. Symbolic and accurate mirror of our lives, the heavenly signs of the time for repentance and discharging the old: for welcoming and giving thanks for the new, the Moon has always been especially our feast – the women’s feast, whose bodies as regularly discharge the past and make way for new life.

  I sense my distance from my sisters: already, though they do not know my state, I am removed from the innocent cycle of their days. I can envy them their careless innocence, their childlike concern in matters of the minute, in what is cooking and what has burned, and the size of the heap of dirty linen to be washed. I remember my own closeness to such concerns, before God’s great intervention, and I see a sweetness in such unconscious service, the sweetness there is in the chirrupping and bustle of sparrows.

  The duties of the household seem to press upon me with uncommon severity, this month: I pray God may give me strength to fulfil his works and desires. Unbidden memories of that dreadful hour of my sacrifice combine with fears and excitements for the future, to make my sleep fitful. This past week I have risen from my bed near as exhausted as I fell into it, having been subject to a thousand fears and visions in the night. By day I have suffered frequent headaches; there seems to be a mistiness before my eyes, so that the threading of a needle, and reading the Holy Book, are both great difficulties. If I blink repeatedly the mist will clear, but after a few moments’ concentration upon any detail, it returns. I have been obliged to ask Sisters Hannah and Leah to read to the Prophet in my stead. I do God’s will, I pray (though I know myself unworthy) He will grant me His peace. The vessel which carries His son must be calm, serene, strong: I feel my own frailty only too keenly. And until the blessed nature of my service can be revealed to the others, I must maintain a semblance of my earlier vigour about the house: indeed, I fear for household order when the time comes for me to play a lesser role.

  For which fear I must reprimand myself, and increase my faith in His will, who has in His hands the organization of all things.

  I ascribe to my tiredness the shortness of my temper and the irritable fault I find with my sweet sisters. I pray they may forgive me wholeheartedly – if not now, then when they know the nature of my mission. My nerves seem inflamed to such a point of foolish sensitivity that my sisters in God can do no right. How little are our hearts and minds, which can at first glance see no more than our own self-interested motives and desires: may God grant us a share in His loving vision. Without His aid we are locked in self, each as small and limited as the confines of her own skull.

  Yesterday I irritably – and wrongly – found fault with my sisters Rachel and Rebekah, due to my inability to take this larger view. Knowing that today and tomorrow must be devoted to culinary preparations for the feast days, and to a thorough cleansing both of this house and Sanctuary, I was most impatient that the remains of the laundry work be dispatched with haste. Our monthly wash having been performed last week, Sister Rachel and Sister Rebekah devoted Friday and Sunday t
o the ironing (which I thought long, failing to take account of the excellence with which they starched and got up the Sanctuary cloths and ephods). Yesterday there remained nothing but the careful stowing away of clean bed and table linens in the chests; and ephods, surplices and all religious linens in the closets in Inner Sanctuary. I despatched them in the carriage on this errand at nine in the morning, and looked to their return soon after ten. But finding them not returned by eleven, and the slops from the bedrooms not yet emptied (for I have banned poor clumsy Sister Martha from the task, after her unfortunate stumble last week – it appears impossible to cleanse the bad odour from the stair-well, though Sister Hannah and I scrubbed from top to bottom), I felt compelled to follow them to Sanctuary to urge their speedy return. The carriage had returned empty a half-hour after their departure, and Samuel informed me they had offered to walk home when their work was complete, since they would have nothing to carry. The morning was unwholesomely close, and I regretted not taking the carriage as soon as I reached the bridge, for I was covered in a flush of perspiration, and filled with a distinct sense of nausea. These, I know, are fair signs that God’s will is achieved, and I embrace them with joy – but yet, at the time, I must allow I felt unwell, and could have wished for a respite from my holy state. By the time I gained Sanctuary I fear my hasty temper had risen against the girls, for interrupting my morning’s work (I had been about directions for the procuring of foodstuffs for the feast day; someone had to be sent up to Clough farm with a cart in the afternoon to collect all the butter and cheeses, and to see if he had any eggs to spare. And the outer office was blocked with four barrels of sour cyder Sister Benson sent us, to make into vinegar; which needs starting this week, while the warm weather lasts – but I digress). Imagine my despair at finding both the side door and the great door locked. The girls had already left, but I had not encountered them on my way. I had not thought to bring my own keys, feeling quite certain of finding them still in the building – and so I was forced to retrace my steps without the opportunity of rest. My physical discomfort was increased by the appearance of two sadly ignorant children, who followed close on my heels, demanding (with all manner of impertinence) to know the reason for the strangeness of my dress, if I were a lady, and if I lived in ‘yon house of debauchery across the canal’. May God forgive me, I lacked the patience He has vouchsafed me in the past, to turn away their wrath with gentle replies. My attempt to hurry away from them met with a worse result, for they began to run and jump about in my way, calling upon me to reply. Two gentlemen passing were kind enough to scold them and send them off. But memory of the incident troubles me greatly: did God’s own son not say to us, ‘Suffer the little children’? Formerly, it would have been no trouble to me to speak kindly to them, and help them into the way of God’s love.