The Rich Are with You Always (78 page)

  He was pleased at the speed she showed in responding to his stratagem, and at the conviction she put into yawning and resettling herself back in her own corner. She was a grand little actress.

  "Oh!" Walter said, in happy recollection. "Tiny lips, tiny teeth, and tiny little fingers."

  "Good, was it?"

  "Good! That simple one was like a dip into whipped cream!"

  When they were back in Montague Parade, Walter took off his cloak and gave it to Charity. "Cover up that gaudy dress," he said.

  He was gone rather a long time, explaining it to Arabella, and no doubt to Sarah too. John meanwhile complimented Charity on her nimbleness of mind and on her acting. She handed him the purseful of coin she had earned. "'Tis yourn now," she said. "You bought I off of Billy." And he, thinking it would be better for her to be without cash that night, took it, knowing he could return it when he took her back to the town centre tomorrow.

  When Walter opened the door and came out into the porch, John helped Charity down and paid off the cab. He watched her closely as she went up the garden path and saw her acquire a penitent stoop. It was an amazing transformation; she seemed actually to shrivel within herself.

  Arabella was fearful and a little effusive in her welcome; but she took heart when she saw what a pathetic figure of penitence Charity offered. "My dear child," she said, "you will come to look back on this as the greatest and most wonderful day in your entire life."

  "Yes'm."

  "This is the day—come into the light. Let's get a good look at you. Take that cloak off." John shut the door and watched. "Good gracious! You're painted up like a ship's figurehead!"

  "Yes'm," Charity repeated. There were tears in her voice; she was very good.

  "This is the day on which you return once more into that great, warm family of God's love. Do you love God, Charity?"

  This time the girl actually did burst into tears. They almost convinced John; they certainly convinced everyone else—even Sarah, up on the landing to prevent any of the servants, or the children if they should awaken, from laying eyes on this sullied creature.

  Arabella, now made even bolder, came forward to grasp Charity by the shoulders. "Your name means 'love'—did you know that? Caritas is Charity and is love and caring. And He loves and cares for you, my dear. His love is all around us now and always has been. All the time you spurned Him—all the days you have spent so deep in sin—His love was there, warm and caring, trying to reach you. Think of it, child!" Arabella was radiant in her own joy. It made John's scalp tingle just to watch her happiness and to hear that firm, powerful contralto ring out such tidings over that little gathering. "Think! Every minute of every hour of every day of your wretched life, He has been stretching out His arms toward you, hoping you will feel His touch. And tonight, tonight! At last He has reached you!"

  She clasped the girl to her. Charity collapsed to her knees, howling. "Oh ma'am, oh ma'am!" John realized then that this was no longer a charade; the girl had become possessed by her own acting. Arabella had said something—or some power had flashed unseen from woman to girl—that had transformed her entirely.

  For Arabella it was a dream realized. Firm and benign, oblivious to all around except the weeping girl, she said, "Come, child. Let us go upstairs now and take that vile grime off your face and pray together." She lifted Charity up. "Then you may have a good sleep—a godly sleep. And face a bright new dawn tomorrow." She helped her to the stair. "Bear up. You are walking with God now. He is at your right, the strength in my arm. But He is at your left as well. And He goes before you to vanquish the sinner who lies in wait. And He follows behind lest you falter and turn back."

  They passed out of sight at the stairhead.

  For a moment, neither Walter nor John breathed. It was Walter who spoke first. "I cannot believe it," he whispered.

  John was inwardly exultant. Never mind that his immediate plan had just fallen to bits. For ten years and more, since the first day he had met Arabella, he had been convinced there was a power and a fervour in her that would one day sweep her off her feet. But whenever he said so, people merely laughed—even Arabella. And now her time had come.

  But he gave no hint of his own sense of triumph to Walter. Instead, he asked where Charity was to sleep that night.

  "There's a box room at the back of the first floor," Walter answered tonelessly. "She's to sleep there, where she cannot pollute the servants. They've set Bickerstaff to cleaning it out."

  Bickerstaff was the Thorntons' only manservant.

  "Oh, Stevenson," Walter sighed. "What mischief have we set afoot?"

In the small hours of the following morning, the sudden crash of a door rang through the silent house, startling everyone awake. Then came Arabella's triumphant: "I thought so! Vile monster of depravity! Beast of beastliness!…" and a great deal more in that vein.

  John, coming out in his dressing gown, holding a candle shielded before him, was startled to find Young John on the stair, looking as newly wakened and as curious as himself. "Go back," he ordered. "No child is to come down here." Sarah came from her room to join him. And together they walked quickly along the passage to the box room where Charity had been put and where all the noise was coming from. Though neither said it, both were thinking Surely Thornton can't be such a bloody fool!

  But the man's voice, feebly protesting, was not Walter's; in fact, Walter himself, even more tired than they, joined them as they reached the bend at the end of the passage.

  "Bickerstaff," Arabella was saying, "you will leave this night. The minute you are dressed."

  "Arabella!" Walter called.

  She did not turn. "You will call back tomorrow at noon and collect your things and wages."

  All the while Charity was snivelling. "He made I. He made I."

  "And don't think you'll be getting a character."

  Bickerstaff, being naked, could not get up from the little truckle bed he and the girl were in. "'Tisn't right!" he said. "What be one slice more off of a cut cake? That's what she'm for. Girl o' that sort."

  "I will deal with this now, Mrs. Thornton," Walter said, marching to her side and trying to take her candle from her.

  But she would not let go. "Thank you, Mr. Thornton dear. It is already dealt with. Bickerstaff—did you hear me? Out, I say!"

  "'Tis the way o' the world, m'm," Bickerstaff said, trying to appear placatory. "You be flyin' in the face o' nature."

  
"Out!"
Arabella said.

  "You ask Mr. Thornton, m'm," he advised.

  "Bickerstaff!" Walter cried in anger and alarm. "Get out!"

  "I ain't got no clothes on," he mumbled.

  "Oh, for goodness' sake!" Arabella shrilled, as if he were inventing trivia. "Go round behind me." She stood with her face to the window, then, seeing Sarah, added: "You, Sarah dear, can go up to the next landing and stop any of the servants and children from coming down."

  Still Charity whined on: "He said as he'd tell ye lies about I. He said as he'd tell ye as I come to he and forced he to come to I. I didn't want no fuss, missiz."

  "You see," Walter began, talking to Arabella's back, then, noticing Bickerstaff standing, clutching his discarded nightshirt to him, said instead, "Go by, man! Go by!…You see, my dear?"

  "Has he gone?" Arabella turned back to Charity without waiting for Walter's answer.

  "I didn't want to be no trouble to ye, ma'am, not when you'd been so kind."

  "Trouble?" Arabella gave a despairing laugh.

  "You see?" Walter said. "They are beyond salvation."

  "Trouble? Is that all you thought of, child? Don't be blasphemous, Mr. Thornton dear—no one is beyond salvation. 'The long suffering of our Lord is salvation'— second epistle of Peter! Child, do you have no inkling? Don't you understand!"

  Charity snuffled. "What, ma'am?"

  "
Damnation,
child! Eternal torment! The fires of hell!"

  "I were damned at birth, ma'am."

  "Stand up!" Arabella said angrily. "Such nonsense!"

  "I'll see Bickerstaff doesn't steal anything on his way out," Walter said.

  "I be naked, ma'am," Charity said. Then she burst into tears again. "Oh ma'am, I be so shamed."

  "Stand up, I said."

  There was no resisting that command. Mindless of John, whom both women had by now forgotten, she stood. The sheet fell from her uncertain grasp. John wanted to turn away but could not. It was a beautiful, lissome young body; she even had the same slightly parrot-beaked nipples as Alice.

  Arabella went and stood close to her. The child looked transfixed into her eyes, seeing no rejection or condemnation there, only a tender, angry love. "This flesh," Arabella said, touching it gently, "this…soft…yielding flesh, which feels so warm and comforting to you. This"—suddenly she slapped the girl's body fiercely, on her side.

  Charity, though stung, now stood before her, petrified.

  "This," Arabella went on in that same low, compelling tone, "is the occasion of all your sin."

  "Yes, ma am."

  "And it is through this flesh that you must learn of the torment that never ceases. Oh, child! If, now that you have found God's love again—if, now that He holds His arms out to you—if you now turn your back on all that great, that abiding, that infinite mercy, then you shall find no hiding place. Not on the highest mountain nor in the deepest deep of the ocean shall you flee His terrible wrath. How can I bring you to see it? Have you any idea of the torments of Hell?"

  "No, ma'am. I mean, yes, ma'am. Please, ma'am, I be cold." She shivered.

  "Cold!" Arabella snorted, barely taking in what the girl had said. "It is not cold there! I will show you. You shall be made to see it. Take up that sheet now and wrap it about you."

  Mutely, still shivering, the girl obeyed.

  John knew that Arabella was insane—or, at least, possessed beyond the recalling power of reason—when he saw the fixed, intense stare in her eyes as she and the girl swept past him, oblivious of his presence.

  At some little distance, he followed them downstairs to the basement. They were in the kitchen. Arabella was thrusting a hot poker into the fire, which had been made up to stay overnight. He stood in the passageway and watched.

  "I shall show you," Arabella was saying, "what the torments of hell will be like. You have sunk so deep in wickedness—and all about you are sunk so deep, as well—that you have lost all sense of it. You set it all at nothing. You think a minute's carnal pleasure is something very light and small, no doubt. Do you not realize, child"—she pulled the poker out, looked at it, and thrust it back—"even to think of doing what you have done tonight, even to imagine it, is a mortal sin. Even to let your mind dwell on it for the smallest part of one fraction of a second is to risk eternal damnation. Eternal agony. The fires of hell for all eternity. A torment stretching into the endings of time, and beyond, and then again for an infinity of times."

  Charity stood, quaking.

  "We are now engaged in a fight for your soul, my dear. You understand?"

  "Yes, ma'am," she said blankly.

  "We are trying to save it from that everlasting damnation. And it's a battle we are going to win. Because we have the greatest army in the world, in the whole tide of time, fighting beside us. The whole vast company of the righteous. All calling now to your soul. Charity! Oh, do you not hear them! And there at their head—see! That peerless Prince, that most perfect Man. Your Saviour! The Christ who died for you. Oh child, on your knees! If you have any prayer within you—one word even, one cry of repentance—offer it now. Quick. Now! While that mighty host is turned to you. Just one word. The whole company of heaven is turned to hear. Now!"

  Charity had fallen to her knees and the sheet had slipped from her. She stood, kneeling and naked before Arabella, a golden light from the now fiercely drawn fire spilled down her breast and hip. "Oh, Father…" she began, tentatively. Tears welled up and consumed her. "No one ain't cared for I afore!" She wept.

  "There is One! There is One!" Arabella intoned. "And only One. No other hope. No other refuge. No other rock. So go on, child. Offer yourself now. Dedicate yourself anew to Him. Shall He who raised the harlot Magdalene to the innermost circle of God's cherishing, shall He scorn you now! Now, when you and He have drawn so close. Oh no, Charity! For shame, for shame. Fetch out all your sin. All your guilt. All that—filth. Lay it all before Him. Offer it to Him. Tell Him it's all you have to offer. And who else could understand that but Him? And then offer Him yourself. Open yourself to Him, Charity. Open your soul. Let Him enter you. Give yourself now to Him. Let Him fill you with His spirit. Nothing else can wash out all that…evil…all that…
human
pollution!"