But even if Mama didn’t choose to spend time with me, I couldn’t understand her callousness over Benjy – Benjy who had been her pride and joy, the longed-for son, the unexpected gift from God. I remembered her desperation when she thought he might have drowned, how she had held him so tight and cried over him so loudly. How, then, could she leave him to the devices of such a person as Mrs McQueen? It seemed another instance of the ways of the adult world, which no one except Mr Jameson seemed to find at all odd.
Saturday 28th June
It is so exciting! I have received a proper grown-up letter from Mr Jameson! It was in an envelope with my name on but no stamp. He hadn’t put it in the post but left it with Mama last night. She gave it to me at breakfast after I had finished my milk and toast. When she put it in front of me, I recognized Mr Jameson’s handwriting straight away. I asked her what it was about, and she said I’d have to open it as that was the usual way to find out what was in letters. It was very neatly written and had some little drawings around the edge – Mr Jameson as a Tired Old Bird and me as a Daisy Flower.
The letter is attached, pinned to the journal. I recognize Mr Jameson’s neat hand and his very strange little drawings.
My dear Child,
This is a short letter, but ‘short is sweet’. At least I hope you will think so. I am very fond of going to the theatre, and there is a play at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in London, which I think you will like. It is called Sylvie’s Wish and is a kind of fairy story and has no horrid moral to it, but is all fun and lightness. If you are willing to come with me, we will take the half past twelve train from Oxford next Thursday and see a matinée (which is the French word for morning, as I am sure you know, but in this instance it has perversely decided to mean the afternoon), then I will take you for tea in a nearby hotel. After that we will return in the train and you will be tucked up in bed by nine o’clock. Does that sound nice? I hope you think so. I am already getting my opera hat ready and hope you will wear your prettiest dress so that everybody will be ridiculously jealous of us.
Your good friend,
John Jameson.
P.S. I have already spoken to your papa and mama and they have no objection provided you are back before midnight and don’t turn into a pumpkin.
I was so excited I had to read the letter over and over to make sure I was not mistaken. I could not believe that Mr Jameson wanted to take me to the theatre, in London and (although it is horrid to say so) I was pleased when Christiana and Sarah both looked at me as if they simply could not believe it either! Mama asked if I would like to go, and I said it would be the most exciting thing ever as I have never even been to London, let alone to a theatre there. Christiana caught hold of the letter as if she still did not believe what I’d said and then when she saw it was true, looked at Mama saying how was it that I should be the first to go to a London theatre considering I was only eleven, and shouldn’t Mr Jameson have asked them first? Mama said it was because I had spent time with Mr Jameson and he was fond of me, and the play was a children’s play anyway. Then Sarah said if it was a children’s play, then why was Mr Jameson going? And Papa said that Mr Jameson knew one of the actresses in it, and anyway it was his business what he did and where he went. Then he folded his newspaper and looked at Christiana and Sarah very crossly and said they had both had an opportunity to be nice to Mr Jameson and had chosen to be proud and unkind instead, and God does not let these things pass unpunished. ‘Go and eat the bread of mortification,’ he said, ‘and see how you like the taste.’ Then he got up and went to his study to write his sermon and my sisters became very quiet. Mama said I should write back immediately and I could use her notepaper if I liked. So I went with her into the morning room and she got out a sheet of lavender-scented paper and the inkstand and asked if Miss Prentiss had taught me how to write a formal reply. I felt Mr Jameson was not the sort of person who wanted a formal reply but as Mama was being so nice I didn’t like to say so.
I wrote: ‘Miss Daisy Baxter thanks Mr John Jameson for his kind invitation to the theatre next week, and has great pleasure in accepting.’ Then I put the date and sealed it with sealing wax and Mama gave me a penny stamp to affix to the outside, above the address. ‘You may take it to the postbox yourself, if you like,’ she said. ‘I know how exciting it is to begin one’s first grown-up correspondence.’ And she smiled at me as if she really understood how I felt and I was so happy!!!
It remains with me now – the excitement of putting on my coat and hat, walking the fifty yards to the postbox at the corner, and letting the lavender-scented letter slide slowly inside. I held onto it until the last possible moment, then let it fall: down into the dark. I stood back, imagining the postman collecting it and Mr Jameson in due course receiving it in his college rooms with Benson presiding over the tea table and Dinah sitting on his lap with that funny half-smile she always seemed to have. And Mr Jameson opening it and saying to Benson: ‘She can come!’ And his pale, quiet face lighting up with pleasure. And part of my pleasure, I recall, was to be so favoured by Mama. She not only helped me with the letter, but also planned what I should wear; and on the day of the outing, she came to my bedroom and dressed me herself, saying I had to do her justice when I appeared in public at Drury Lane. She was not as good as Nettie in tying tapes and putting on petticoats, but to feel her slender fingers pat and stroke my body and to smell the delicate scent of lavender-water arising from her neck as she stooped and tied my sash, was complete bliss. I felt that almost everything that was happening to me then was new and exciting, and it was Mr Jameson who was making it all possible. I was beginning to see him as a kind of hero and, in my childish way, to fall a little in love with him.
7
DANIEL BAXTER
I look at my face in the shaving-mirror – the handsome nose, the fine whiskers, the sleek brown hair – and realize that I hate myself. I’ve hated myself for a long time, but it’s easy to keep unwanted thoughts at bay if you keep hand, brain and eye busy. And I’ve kept very busy. I’m a veritable whirlwind of surplice and cassock. I throw myself with abandon into the matters of the moment, the daily concerns of the physical world that is, and always will be, too much with us. I’m a wonderful man when it comes to action: the committees, the vestry duties, the morning services, the evening services, the Sunday sermons, the visiting of the sick, the celebration of funerals, weddings, baptisms – the whole panoply of rituals that can be so satisfying when you do them well and are duly praised for it. People look at me and think I’m a fine man, a God-fearing man. They grasp my hand with fervour, or murmur a blessing under their breath, and I lap up their good opinion. Truly, the sin of pride rides high with me. But underneath it all, I’m a Doubter.
Looking at myself now – pallid, hollow-eyed – I can deny it no longer. Piece by piece, my faith has fallen away. I’m a hypocrite; standing in the pulpit every Sunday and urging my congregation to live their lives well in the hope of eternal bliss, and yet having no belief myself that such bliss will be forthcoming. I claw pathetically at the idea of Heaven, of which I was once so certain; that I saw reflected in human love and in the wonders of nature. But is there such a place? And was that Jesus of Nazareth, to whom I have dedicated my life, in truth divinely inspired? And is there beyond Him a divine watchmaker who has articulated all the parts of the universe according to a most wonderful plan? Or is everything a product of pure chance, of a rolling evolution that takes care of itself and owes nothing to a Supreme Maker? Is it all chaos, meaninglessness, absurdity? And am I, Daniel Baxter, absurd to believe in it? Or am I destined to burn for my disbelief, to add forever to the burden of mankind’s sins that Christ died for in agony? I do not know. I do not know. I fear I will go mad in my confusion. And I cannot openly speak of it to anyone.
I have tried several times to confide in John Jameson. I’d once hoped for some comfort from a man who is both honest and clever; but I sense increasingly that he shies away from such discussions. He’s happy
enough to talk about points of principle, but I don’t feel that he has ever had to endure desperate feelings such as mine. I suspect he is a cold fish under all the cleverness and whimsy. Indeed, he looks uncomfortable when I express doubt about the smallest point of faith, and becomes quite petulant if I persist in more rigorous questioning, saying I am enthusiastic enough in my torments to be a Methodist. At other times he has come close to suggesting that, like Newman, I’m tempted to go over to Rome. Perhaps that reflects the confusion of my own thoughts. Once I took a pride in the sensible pragmatism of the Anglican Church, but now it seems a nothingness, a compromised middle way that has nothing in it of true belief. Perhaps I would do better to strike out and nail my true colours to the mast – but which colours? And what mast?
And John is strangely elusive these days. We no longer meet every week in the old, intimate pattern that was such a comfort to me. He’s become so much a friend of the family now that our private discussions have become more superficial and ad hoc. In fact, I sometimes think he spends more time with Daisy than with me. Even Evelina has been forced to entertain him on the many afternoons when I am out on parish business. But when opportunity arises, I still bring my questions to him in the hope that I might find illumination, if not comfort. Only yesterday, as I was struggling with my sermon and John was picking about in my bookcase for a particular illustration of a tropical bird, I found a great heat rise in my breast as I attempted, without success, to find a justification for the concept of Eternal Punishment. I suppose I am unduly sensitive to the concept of damnation, being perhaps so much in danger of it myself. But how could God condemn me to perpetual pain for an honest struggle with my conscience? How could He, who is perfectly good and merciful, deal out a punishment which I myself regard as abhorrent, and would not confer on the worst of my enemies? The more I thought about it, the more wretched I became. ‘How can there be such a thing as Eternal Damnation?’ I cried. ‘Suffering with no hope of reprieve? That is an act of savagery, not of a wise and loving Father. I cannot believe in it. I simply cannot.’
John looked up from his book. ‘In that case, Daniel, you will be denying the sacred truth of the Bible.’
‘Then either the Bible is wrong, or God is wrong, or there is something badly wrong with my conscience,’ I snapped, heedless of the enormity of what I was saying.
John closed his book, put it back on the shelf and considered. ‘I admit it is a problem,’ he said at last. ‘But all religions rely on interpretation, and where a variety of languages are involved, interpretation is at its most unreliable. Perhaps “eternal” is not quite what we think it is. Perhaps in the original Hebrew the word does not mean “for ever” at all.’
If true, I thought, what a solution that would be for so many of the problems that have exercised all our minds for years! ‘But how do we know if the word has been misinterpreted?’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘All other answers are contradictions and our religion cannot be a contradiction, can it?’
A great sense of disappointment came over me. I had hoped that he would bring me genuine enlightenment, stop up the hole in the sand into which the grains of doubt were pouring so fast. ‘But everything we believe depends on words, John – and if we can juggle with them at will, how can we know the true meaning of anything? We could each gloss our own version of the Bible entirely to suit ourselves! Words must mean what they say they mean – they must be immutable and fixed – otherwise we are lost.’
‘Are we?’ He smiled. ‘A reader may have a partial – or incorrect – understanding of the words, but that is not the Bible’s fault. It is certainly not God’s.’
I was exasperated. ‘You might as well contend that the Bible means what it says because it – well – says what it means.’
‘For some people it is the same.’ He looked quietly pleased with himself, but I felt cheated. I’ve always hated that kind of hair-splitting theology. It is passionless and dry; and I want nothing to do with it. I need explanations that are strong and simple – that move the soul. They are what brought me to God in the first place, and they are the only things that will bring me back to Him.
And so every day I long to feel again that first careless rapture when Heaven and Love and Passion and Desire were all overwhelmingly present in my heart; when I woke each day with such a sense of freshness and purpose, my limbs firm, my eyes bright, and my whole body ready to be active in the work of the Lord – and when my love for Christ was entwined and reflected so gloriously in my love for Evelina. Not just because of her beauty, but because she seemed to offer – in her piety, her sweet smile, and the soft movement of her limbs – a way to a better future; a future in which I could be as God intended, and carry out His work.
I’d been a lost soul before I’d met her. I’d gone up to Oxford intending to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a country parson; but it was not my vocation, and certainly far from my choice. Even at school, I had been uncertain of my suitability for a life of probity and restraint, but once at the university, I fell in with dubious companions and proceeded, in my own quiet way, to go to the dogs. I drank too much and I gambled at cards. I did as little work as I could and very often I woke with my head in such a hazy state that I would attempt to clear it by smiting my forehead on the bedpost until the blood ran. The mark would remain with me all day, a fearful reminder of my excess; but if, when night fell, there was nothing to distract me, I would drink again, seeking out the most disreputable places in which to hide myself. And when I was drunk, my passions had full reign. I would fall out of the public houses and into the muddy streets, and thence into the clutches of the nice girls who fleeced me of my money and gave me little satisfaction in return, although I yearned after the sight of their pale, naked breasts and the secret dusky places beneath their petticoats. I always repented most sincerely when I woke, and chastised myself once more with the wretched bedpost, but it would not be many days before I got more soddenly drunk, fell deeper into debt, and made myself more shameful in the very houses of shame themselves.
Of all my diversions, only nature was capable of holding me steady. I’d leave my studies behind and walk along the river, or across the fields, sometimes twelve or twenty miles at a stretch, the wind in my face and the firm earth at my feet. Only then would I feel myself cleansed and close to God. Yet, once back in the world of paper and pen, I would immediately suffer from pains in my head and sickness in my stomach. I’d creep wearily between the dreariness of my college room, the dreariness of the lecture hall, and the dreariness of chapel, utterly despising myself and my whole life.
It was in that state that Evelina took pity on me. It’s still a source of astonishment and delight to me that she did so. I have no idea what I would have made of my life otherwise; to what depths I would have fallen if she had not been there to encourage and inspire me. And yet – such is the mysteriousness of God’s ways – it was one of my disreputable companions who proved the means of bringing us together. Wilfrid Chauncey was by no means the worst of my cronies, more of a sportsman than a drinker, running hares along the Oxfordshire hedges and keeping hounds in his college rooms. One night, after extolling the virtues of his uncle’s estate which had ‘acres of shooting and no one to take advantage of it’, he invited me to spend the week before Christmas at the house. His uncle spent most of his time in the library, he said, and was happy for his guests to drink and play cards as much as they wished. It was a very Liberty Hall – provided one did not encounter Wilfrid’s cousin Evelina, who was something of a prig.
I’d accepted with alacrity, having little else to do at the end of term and not relishing a sermon from my father about my dissipated ways. I’d hoped not to encounter the priggish cousin. Well-brought-up ladies didn’t interest me; I thought them vapid to say the least. But I’d scarcely arrived – and was still in my travelling clothes, grimy and dishevelled – when I opened the door to the drawing room, and there she was – standing at the window, gazing out at the distan
t mountains, her dark hair coiling down her back and a volume of poetry in her hand. She looked like any other modest and pious young lady, and I began to introduce myself with the kind of nonchalant swagger that had become habitual with me. But when she turned to look at me, the careless words died on my lips. Her eyes in that moment seemed not to be the eyes of a young girl at all, but of an angel. An angel who could see through me and read my mind.
Wilfrid strolled in behind me. ‘Hello, Evelina. You’re back from Caerwen, then? Let me introduce Daniel Baxter, the best fellow in Oxford – and the best shot too.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said the angel. ‘Such proficiency usually means a man has spent more time with his gun than with his books.’
Wilfrid gave me a sly grin. ‘You see, sporting prowess doesn’t impress Evelina. She only cares for reading. And don’t think of making love to her, Dan, because it’s a hopeless cause. She’s destined to join the Misses Venables and be lost to the world for ever.’
His words pierced me like a sword. This beautiful young creature lost to the world? But Evelina smiled patiently. ‘You do exaggerate, Wilfrid. It’s not as though I’ll be locked up all day like a nun.’
‘You might as well be,’ he grumbled.
She shook her head in mock despair and turned to me. ‘I need to explain, Mr Baxter. Caerwen is nothing terrible or medieval – just the Misses Venables and their friends trying to lead a good life. I plan to join them as soon as I am old enough. But in the meantime I’d be obliged if you would talk to me as if I’m an ordinary human being. Young men are often so put out when they know my intentions that I’m obliged to take my walks on my own.’
After Such Kindness Page 11
