Authors: Stella Gibbons
‘Is that where you preach, Cousin Amos?’
‘Ay.’
‘Does Judith or either of the boys ever come down to hear you preach?’ She was making conversation because she was conscious of a growing feeling of dismay at what lay before her, and did not wish to give way to it.
Amos frowned.
‘Nay. They struts like Ahab in their pride and their eyes drips fatness, nor do they see the pit digged beneath their feet by the Lord. Ay, ’tes a terrible wicked family I’m cursed wi’, and the hand o’ the Lord it lies heavy on Cold Comfort, pressin’ the bitter wine out o’ our souls.’
‘Then why don’t you sell it and buy another farm on a really
nice
piece of land, if you feel like that about it?’
‘Nay … there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort,’ he answered, heavily. ‘’Tes old Mrs Starkadder – Ada Doom as was, before she married Fig Starkadder. She’s sot against our leavin’ the farm. She’d never see us go. ’Tes a curse on us. And Reuben sits awaitin’ for me to go, so as he can have the farm. But un shall niver have un. Nay I’ll leave it to Adam first.’
Before Flora could convey to him her lively sense of dismay
at the prospect indicated in this threat, he moved forward saying, ‘’Tes nearly full. We mun go in’, and in they went.
Flora took a seat at the end of a row near the exit; she thought it would be as well to sit near the door in case the double effect of Amos’s preaching and no ventilation became more than she could bear.
Amos went to a seat almost directly in front of the little platform, and sat down after directing two slow and brooding glances, laden with promise of terrifying eloquence to come, upon the Brethren sitting in the same row.
The dog-kennel was now packed to bursting, and the organ had begun to play something like a tune. Flora found a hymnbook being pressed into her hand by a female on her left.
‘It’s number two hundred, “Whatever shall we Do, O Lord”,’ said the female, in a loud conversational voice.
Flora had supposed, from impressions gathered during her wide reading, that it was customary to speak only in whispers in a building devoted to the act of worship. But she was ready to learn otherwise, so she took the book with a pleasant smile and said, ‘Thank you so much.’
The hymn went like this:
Whatever shall we do, O Lord,
When Gabriel blows o’er sea and river,
Fen and desert, mount and ford?
The earth may burn, but we will quiver.
Flora approved of this hymn, because its words indicated a firmness of purpose, a clear plan in the face of a disagreeable possibility, which struck an answering note in her own character. She sang industriously in her pleasing soprano. The singing was conducted by a surely excessively dirty old man with long, grey hair who stood on the platform and waved what Flora, after the first incredulous shock, decided was a kitchen poker.
‘Who is that?’ she asked her friend.
‘’Tes Brother Ambleforth. He leads the quiverin’ when we begins to quiver.’
‘And why does he conduct the music with a poker?’
‘To put us in mind o’ hell fire,’ was the simple answer, and Flora had not the heart to say that as far as she was concerned, at any rate, this purpose was not achieved.
After the hymn, which was sung sitting down, everybody crossed their legs and arranged themselves more comfortably, while Amos rose from his seat with terrifying deliberation, mounted the little platform, and sat down.
For some three minutes he slowly surveyed the Brethren, his face wearing an expression of the most profound loathing and contempt, mingled with a divine sorrow and pity. He did it quite well. Flora had never seen anything to touch it except the face of Sir Henry Wood when pausing to contemplate some late-comers into the stalls at the Queen’s Hall just as his baton was raised to conduct the first bar of the ‘Eroica’. Her heart warmed to Amos. The man was an artist.
At last he spoke. His voice jarred the silence like a broken bell.
‘Ye miserable, crawling worms, are ye here again, then? Have ye come like Nimshi son of Rehoboam, secretly out of yer doomed houses to hear what’s comin’ to ye? Have ye come, old and young, sick and well, matrons and virgins (if there is any virgins among ye, which is not likely, the world bein’ in the wicked state it is), old men and young lads, to hear me tellin’ o’ the great crimson lickin’ flames o’ hell fire?’
A long and effective pause, and a further imitation of Sir Henry. The only sound (and it, with the accompanying smell, was quite enough) was the whickering hissing of the gas flares which lit the hall and cast sharp shadows from their noses across the faces of the Brethren.
Amos went on:
‘Ay, ye’ve come.’ He laughed shortly and contemptuously. ‘Dozens of ye. Hundreds of ye. Like rats to a granary. Like field-mice when there’s harvest home. And what good will it do ye?’
Second pause, and more Sir Henry stuff.
‘Nowt. Not the flicker of a whisper of a bit o’ good.’
He paused and drew a long breath, then suddenly he leaped from his seat and thundered at the top of his voice:
‘
Ye’re all damned!
’
An expression of lively interest and satisfaction passed over the faces of the Brethren, and there was a general rearranging of arms and legs as though they wanted to sit as comfortably as possible while listening to the bad news.
‘Damned,’ he repeated, his voice sinking to a thrilling and effective whisper. ‘Oh, do ye ever stop to think what that word
means
when ye use it every day, so lightly, o’ yer wicked lives? No. Ye doan’t. Ye never stop to think what anything means, do ye? Well, I’ll tell ye. It means endless horrifyin’ torment, with yer poor sinful bodies stretched out on hot grid-irons in the nethermost fiery pit of hell, and demons mockin’ ye while they waves cooling jellies in front of ye, and binds ye down tighter on yer dreadful bed. Ay, an’ the air’ll be full of the stench of burnt flesh and the screams of your nearest and dearest …’
He took a gulp of water, which Flora thought he more than deserved. She was beginning to feel that she could do with a glass of water herself.
Amos’s voice now took on a deceptively mild and conversational note. His protruding eyes ranged slowly over his audience.
‘Ye know, doan’t ye, what it feels like when ye burn yer hand in takin’ a cake out of the oven or wi’ a match when ye’re lightin’ one of they godless cigarettes? Ay. It stings wi’ a fearful pain, doan’t it? And ye run away to clap a bit o’ butter on it to take the pain away. Ah, but’ (an impressive pause) ‘
there ’ll be no butter in hell!
Yer whoal body will be burnin’ and stingin’ wi’ that unbearable pain, and yer blackened tongues will be stickin’ out of yer mouth, and yer cracked lips will try to scream out for a drop of water, but no sound woan’t come because yer throat is drier nor the sandy desert and yer eyes will be beatin’ like great red hot balls against yer shrivelled eye-lids …’
It was at this point that Flora quietly rose and with an apology to the woman sitting next to her, passed rapidly across the narrow aisle to the door. She opened it, and went out. The details of Amos’s description, the close atmosphere and the smell of the gas made the inside of the chapel quite
near enough to hell, without listening to Amos’s conducted tour of the place thrown in. She felt that she could pass the evening more profitably elsewhere.
But where? The fresh air smelled deliciously sweet. She regained her composure while she stood in the porch, putting on her gloves. She wondered if she should drop in to see ‘Other Wives’ Sins’, but thought not; she had heard enough about sin for one evening.
What, then, should she do? She could not return to the farm except with Amos in the buggy, for it was seven miles from Beershorn and the last bus to Howling left at half-past six during the winter months. It was now nearly eight o’clock and she was hungry. She looked crossly up and down the street; most of the shops were shut, but one a few doors from the cinema was open.
It was called Pam’s Parlour. It was a tea-shop, and Flora thought it looked pretty grim; there were cakes in its windows all mixed up with depressing little boxes made of white wood and raffia bags and linen bags embroidered with hollyhocks. But where there were cakes there might also be coffee. She crossed the road and went in.
No sooner did she stand inside than she realized that she had gone out of hell fire into an evening of boredom. For someone was seated at one of the tables whom she recognized. She seemed to remember meeting him at a party given by a Mrs Polswett in London. And he could only be Mr Mybug. That was who he looked like, and that, of course, was who he was. There was no one else in the shop. He had a clear field, and she could not escape.
He glanced up at her as she came in, and looked pleased. He had some books and papers in front of him and had been busily writing.
By now Flora was really cross. Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation? Here was an occasion, she thought, for indulging in that deliberate rudeness which only persons with habitually good manners have the right to commit; she sat down at a table with her back to the supposed Mr Mybug, picked up a menu which had gnomes painted on it, and hoped for the best …
A waitress in a long frilly chintz dress which needed ironing had brought her some coffee, some plain biscuits and an orange, which she had dressed with sugar and was now enjoying. The waitress had warned her that we were closed, but as this did not seem to prevent Flora sitting in the shop and enjoying her sugared orange, she did not mind if we were.
She was just beginning on her fourth biscuit when she became conscious of a presence approaching her from behind, and before she could collect her faculties the voice of Mr Mybug said:
‘Hullo, Flora Poste. Do you believe that women have souls?’ And there he was, standing above her and looking down at her with a bold yet whimsical smile.
Flora was not surprised at being asked this question. She knew that intellectuals, like Mr Kipling’s Bi-coloured Python-Rock-Snake, always talked like this. So she replied pleasantly, but from her heart: ‘I am afraid I’m not very interested.’
Mr Mybug gave a short laugh. Evidently he was pleased.
She spooned out some more orange juice and wondered why.
‘Aren’t you? Good girl … we shall be all right if only you’ll be frank with me. As a matter of fact, I’m not very interested in whether they have souls either. Bodies matter more than souls. I say, may I sit down? You do remember me, don’t you? We met at the Polswetts in October. Look here, you don’t think this is butting in or anything, do you? The Polswetts told me you were staying down here, and I wondered if I should run into you. Do you know Billie Polswett well? She’s a charming person, I think … so simple and gay, and such a genius for friendship. He’s charming, too … a bit homo, of course, but quite charming. I say, that orange does look good … I think I’ll have one too. I adore eating things with a spoon. May I sit here?’
‘Do,’ said Flora, seeing that her hour was upon her and that there was no escape.
Mr Mybug sat down and, turning round, beckoned to the waitress, who came and told him that we were closed.
‘I say, that sounds vaguely indelicate,’ laughed Mr Mybug, glancing round at Flora. ‘Well, look here, miss, never mind that. Just bring me an orange and some sugar, will you?’
The waitress went away and Mr Mybug could once more concentrate upon Flora. He leaned his elbows on the table, sunk his chin in his hands, and looked steadily at her. As Flora merely went on eating her orange, he was forced to open the game with, ‘Well?’ (A gambit which Flora, with a sinking heart, recognized as one used by intellectuals who had decided to fall in love with you.)
‘You are writing a book, aren’t you?’ she said, rather hastily. ‘I remember that Mrs Polswett told me you were. Isn’t it a life of Branwell Brontë?’ (She thought it would be best to utilize the information artlessly conveyed to her by Mrs Murther at the Condemn’d Man, and conceal the fact that she had met Mrs Polswett, a protégée of Mrs Smiling’s, only once, and thought her a most trying female.)
‘Yes, it’s going to be dam’ good,’ said Mr Mybug. ‘It’s a psychological study, of course, and I’ve got a lot of new matter, including three letters he wrote to an old aunt in Ireland, Mrs
Prunty, during the period when he was working on “Wuthering Heights”.’
He glanced sharply at Flora to see if she would react by a laugh or a stare of blank amazement, but the gentle, interested expression upon her face did not change, so he had to explain:
‘You see, it’s obvious that it’s his book and not Emily’s. No woman could have written that. It’s male stuff … I’ve worked out a theory about his drunkenness, too – you see, he wasn’t really a drunkard. He was a tremendous genius, a sort of second Chatterton – and his sisters hated him because of his genius.’
‘I thought most of the contemporary records agree that his sisters were quite devoted to him,’ said Flora, who was only too pleased to keep the conversation impersonal.
‘I know … I know. But that was only their cunning. You see, they were devoured by jealousy of their brilliant brother, but they were afraid that if they showed it he would go away to London for good, taking his manuscripts with him. And they didn’t want him to do that because it would have spoiled their little game.’
‘Which little game was that?’ asked Flora, trying with some difficulty to imagine Charlotte, Emily and Anne engaged in a little game.
‘Passing his manuscripts off as their own, of course. They wanted to have him under their noses so that they could steal his work and sell it to buy more drink.’
‘Who for – Branwell?’
‘No – for themselves. They were all drunkards, but Anne was the worst of the lot. Branwell, who adored her, used to pretend to get drunk at the Black Bull in order to get gin for Anne. The landlord wouldn’t have let him have it if Branwell hadn’t built up – with what devotion, only God knows – that false reputation as a brilliant, reckless, idle drunkard. The landlord was proud to have young Mr Brontë in his tavern; it attracted custom to the place, and Branwell could get gin for Anne on tick – as much as Anne wanted. Secretly, he worked twelve hours a day writing “Shirley”, and “Villette” – and, of course, “Wuthering Heights”. I’ve proved all this by evidence from the three letters to old Mrs Prunty.’