第38章

"That's all right, father...I'm not going while you want me...You and I...always...it's just the same now."But even as he spoke he felt as though he were giving some pledge that was to involve him in far more than he could see before him.

Then, with a happy sense that the sentimental part of the conversation was over, he began to talk about all kinds of things.

He let himself go and even, after a while, began to feel the whole thing really jolly and pleasant.His father wanted waking up.He had been here so long, with all these awful frumps, brooding over one idea, never getting away from this Religion.

Martin began to imagine himself very cleverly leading his father into a normal natural life, taking him to see things, making him laugh; it would do his health a world of good.

Then, quite suddenly, the old man said:

"And what do you remember, Martin, of the old days here, the days when you were quite small, when we lived in Mason Street?"What did Martin remember? He remembered a good deal.He was surprised when he began to think..."Did he remember..." his father suggested a scene, a day--yes, he remembered that.His father continued, as though it had been for his own pleasure.

The scenes, the hours returned with a vividness and actuality that thronged the room.

He could see Mason Street with its grocer's shop at the corner, its Baths and Public Library, the sudden little black dips into the areas as the houses followed one another, the lamp-post opposite their window that had always excited him because it leaned inwards a little as though it would presently tumble.He remembered the fat short cook with the pink cotton dress who wheezed and blew so when she had to climb the stairs.He remembered the rooms that would seem bare enough to him now, he supposed, but were then filled with exciting possibilities--a little round brown table, his mother's work-box with mother-of-pearl shells upon the cover, a stuffed bird with bright blue feathers under a glass case, a screen with coloured pictures of battles and horses and elephants casted upon it.He remembered the exact sound that the tinkling bell made when it summoned them to meals, he remembered the especial smell of beef and carpet that was the dining-room, he remembered a little door of coloured glass on the first landing, a cupboard that had in it sugar and apples, a room full of old books piled high all about the floor upon the dry and dusty boards...a thousand other things came crowding around him.

Then, as his father's voice continued, out from the background there came his own figure, a small, pale, excited boy in short trousers.

He was immensely excited--that was the principal thing.It was evening, the house seemed to swim in candlelight and smoke through which things could be seen only dimly.

Something wonderful was about to happen to him.He was in a state of glory, very close to God, so close that he could almost see Him sitting with His long white beard in the middle of a cloud, watching Martin with interest and affection.He was pleased with Martin and Martin was pleased with himself.At the same time as his pleasure he was aware that the stuff of his new black trousers tickled his knees and that he was hungry.

He saw his small sister Amy for a moment and expressed quite effectively by a smile and nod of the head his immeasurable superiority to her...

They, he and his father, drove in a cab to the Chapel.Of what followed then he was now less aware.He remembered that he was in a small room with two men, that they all took off their clothes (he remembered that one man, very stout and red, looked funny without his clothes), that they put on long white night-shirts, that his was too long for him and that he tripped over it, that they all three walked down the centre of the Chapel, which was filled with eyes, mouths and boots, and that he was very conscious of his toe-nails, which had never been exposed in public before, that they came to a round stone place filled with water and into this after the two men he was dipped, that he didn't scream from the coldness, of the water although he wanted to, that he was wrapped in a blanket and finally carried home in an ecstasy of triumph.

What happiness followed! The vitality of it swept down upon him now, so that he seemed never to have lived since then.He was the chosen of God and every one knew it.What a little prig and yet how simple it had all been, without any consciousness of insincerity or acting on his part.God had chosen him and there he was, for ever and ever safe and happy.

It was not only that he was assured that when the moment arrived he would have, in Heaven, a "good time"--it was that he was greatly exalted, so that he gave his twopence a week pocket-money to his school-fellows, never pulled Amy's hair, never teased his mother's canary.He had been aware, young though he was, of another life.He prayed and prayed, he went to an endless succession of services and meetings.There was Mr.Bates, one of the leading brethren then, who loved him and spoilt him...above all, through and beyond it all, there was his father, who adored him and whom he adored.

That adoration--of God, of his father, of life itself! Was it possible that a small boy, normal and ordinary enough in other ways, could feel so intensely such passions?

The dark room was crowding him with figures and scenes.A whole world that he had thought dead and withered was beating--urgently, insistently, upon his consciousness.

In another instant he did not know what surrender, what acknowledgement he might have made.It seemed to him that nothing in life was worth while save to receive again, in some fashion, that vitality that he had once known.

The door was flung open; a stream of light struck the dark; the shadows, memories, fled, helter-skelter, like crackling smoke into the air.

Amy stood in the doorway, blinking at him, scowling.He knew, for some undefined reason, that he could not meet his father's eyes.He jumped up and walked to the window.