Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): 2 Samuel"

Frances J. Olcott - "Good Stories for Holidays"

Jane Porter - "Thaddeus of Warsaw"

Victor Appleton - "Tom Swift And His Giant Cannon"

This Freedom

A >> A. S. M. Hutchinson >> This Freedom



Produced by Carrie Fellman and Charles Aldarondo




THIS FREEDOM

BY

A. S. M. HUTCHINSON

"With a great sum obtained I this freedom."--ACTS xxii, 28.






CONTENTS





PART ONE--HOUSE OF MEN

PART TWO--HOUSE OF WOMEN

PART THREE--HOUSE OF CHILDREN

PART FOUR--HOUSE OF CARDS






PART ONE--HOUSE OF MEN

CHAPTER I





Rosalie's earliest apprehension of the world was of a mysterious
and extraordinary world that revolved entirely about her father
and that entirely and completely belonged to her father. Under her
father, all males had proprietory rights in the world and dominion
over it; no females owned any part of the world or could do anything
with it. All the males in this world--her father, and Robert and
Harold her brothers, and all the other boys and men one sometimes
saw--did mysterious and extraordinary things; and all the females
in this world--her mother, and Anna and Flora and Hilda her sisters,
and Ellen the cook and Gertrude the maid--did ordinary and unexciting
and generally rather tiresome things. All the males were like story
books to Rosalie: you never knew what they were going to do next;
and all the females were like lesson books: they just went on and
on and on.

Rosalie always stared at men when she saw them. Extraordinary and
wonderful creatures who could do what they liked and were always
doing mysterious and wonderful things, especially and above all
her father.

Being with her father was like being with a magician or like watching
a conjuror on the stage. You never knew what he was going to do
next. Whatever he suddenly did was never surprising in the sense of
being startling, for (this cannot be emphasised too much) nothing
her father did was ever surprising to Rosalie; but it was surprising
in the sense of being absorbingly wonderful and enthralling. Even
better than reading when she first began to read, and far better
than anything in the world before the mysteries in books were
discoverable, Rosalie liked to sit and stare at her father and
think how wonderful he was and wonder what extraordinary thing he
would do next. Everything belonged to him. The whole of life was
ordered with a view to what he would think about it. The whole
of life was continually thrown off its balance and whirled into
the most entrancing convulsions by sudden activities of this most
wonderful man.

Entrancing convulsions! Wonderful, wonderful father with a bull
after him! Why, that was her very earliest recollection of him!
That showed you how wonderful he was! Father, seen for the first
time (as it were) flying before a bull! Bounding wildly across a
field towards her with a bull after him! Wonderful father! Did her
mother ever rush along in front of a bull? Never. Was it possible
to imagine any of the women she knew rushing before a bull? It
was not possible. To see a woman rushing before a bull would have
alarmed Rosalie for she would have felt it was unnatural; but for
her father to be bounding wildly along in front of a bull seemed
to her perfectly natural and ordinary and she was not in the least
alarmed; only, as always, enthralled.

Her father, while Rosalie watched him, was not in great danger. He
came ballooning along towards Rosalie, not running as ordinarily
fit and efficient men run, but progressing by a series of enormous
leaps and bounds, arms and legs spread-eagling, and at each leap
and bound always seeming to Rosalie to spring as high in the air
as he sprung forward over the ground. It would not have surprised
Rosalie, who was then about four, to see one of these stupendous
leaps continue in a whirling flight through mid-air and her father
come hurtling over the gate and drop with an enormous plunk at
her feet like a huge dead bird, as a partridge once had come plunk
over the hedge and out of the sky when she was in a lane adjacent
to a shooting party. It would not have surprised her in the least.
Nothing her father did ever surprised Rosalie. The world was his
and the fulness thereof, and he did what he liked with it.

Arrived, however, from the bull, not as a ballooning bird out of the
sky, but as a headlong avalanche over the gate, Rosalie's father
tottered to a felled tree trunk, and sat there heaving, and groaned
aloud, "Infernal parish; hateful parish; forsaken parish!"

Rosalie, wonderingly regarding him, said, "Mother says dinner is
waiting for you, father."

Her mother and her sisters and the servants and the entire female
establishment of the universe seemed to Rosalie always to be
waiting for something from her father, or for her father himself,
or waiting for or upon some male other than her father. That was
another of the leading principles that Rosalie first came to know
in her world. Not only were the males, paramountly her father, able
to do what they liked and always doing wonderful and mysterious
things, but everything that the females did either had some relation
to a male or was directly for, about, or on behalf of a male.

Getting Robert off to school in the morning, for instance. That
was another early picture.

There would be Robert, eating; and there was the entire female
population of the rectory feverishly attending upon Robert while
he ate. Six females, intensely and as if their lives depended upon
it, occupied with one male. Three girls--Anna about sixteen, Flora
fourteen, Hilda twelve--and three grown women, all exhaustingly
occupied in pushing out of the house one heavy and obstinate male
aged about ten! Rosalie used to stand and watch entranced. How
wonderful he was! Where did he go to when at last he was pushed
off? What happened to him? What did he do?

There he is, eating; there they are, ministering. Entrancing and
mysterious spectacle!

Robert, very solid and heavy and very heated and agitated, would
be seated at the table shoving porridge into himself against the
clock. One of his legs, unnaturally flexed backward and outward, is
in the possession of Rosalie's mother who is on her knees mending
a hole in his stocking. The other leg, similarly contorted, is on
the lap of Ellen the cook, who with very violent tugs, as if she
were lashing a box, is lacing a boot on to it. Behind Robert is
Anna, who is pressing his head down with one hand and washing the
back of his neck with the other. In front of him across the table
is Hilda, staring before her with bemused eyes and moving lips and
rapidly counting on drumming fingers. Hilda is doing his sums for
him. Beside him on his right side, apparently engaged in throttling
him, is Gertrude the maid. Gertrude the maid is trying to tear off
him a grimed collar and put on him a clean collar. Facing Gertrude
on his other side is Flora. Flora is bawling his history in his
ear.

Everybody is working for Robert; everybody is working at top speed
for him, and everybody is loudly soliciting his attention.

"Oh, do give over wriggling, master Robert!" (The boot-fastener.)

"'Simon de Montford, Hubert de Burgh, and Peter de Roche.' Well,
say it then, you dreadful little idiot!" (The history crammer.)

"Oh, master Robert, do please keep up!" (The collar fastener.)

"Keep down, will you!" (The neck washer.)

"Four sixes are twenty-four and six you carried thirty!" (The
arithmetician.)

"Robert, you must turn your foot further round!" (The stocking-darner.)

"'The Barons were now incensed. The Barons were now incensed. The
Barons were now incensed.' Say it, you ghastly little stupid!"

"Do they make you do these by fractions or by decimals?... Well,
what do you know, then?"

Entrancing spectacle!

Now the discovery is by everybody simultaneously made and
simultaneously announced that Robert is already later in starting
than he has ever been (he always was) and immediately Rosalie
would become witness of the last and most violent skirmish in this
devoted attendance. Everybody rushes around hunting for things and
pushing them on to Robert and pushing Robert, festooned with them,
towards the door. Where was his cap? Where was his satchel? Where
was his lunch? Where were his books? Who had seen his atlas? Who
had seen his pencil box? Who had seen his gymnasium belt? Was his
bicycle ready? Was his coat on his bicycle? Was that button on his
coat?

With these alarums at their height and the excursions attendant on
them at their busiest, another splendid male would enter the room
and immediately there was, as Rosalie always saw, a transference
of attendance to him and a violent altercation between him and
the first splendid male. This new splendid male is Rosalie's other
brother, Harold. Harold was eighteen and him also the entire female
population of the rectory combined to push out of the rectory every
morning. Harold was due to be pushed off half an hour later than
Robert, and as he was a greater and more splendid male than Robert
(though infinitely lesser than her father) so the place to which
he was pushed off was far more mysterious and enthralling than the
place to which Robert was pushed off. A school Rosalie could dimly
understand. But a bank! Why Harold should go to sit on a bank all
day, and why he should ride on a bicycle to Ashborough to find a
bank when there were banks all around the rectory, and even in the
garden itself, Rosalie never could imagine. Mysterious Harold! Anna
had told her that men kept money in banks; but Rosalie had never
found money in a bank though she had looked; yet banks--of all
extraordinary places--were where men chose to put their money!
Mysterious men! And Harold could find these banks and find this money
though he never took a trowel or a spade and was always shiningly
clean with a very high collar and very long cuffs. Wonderful,
wonderful Harold!

Robert was due to be pushed off half an hour before Harold was
due to be pushed off, but he never was; the two splendid creatures
always clashed and there was always between them, because they
clashed, a violent scene which Rosalie would not have missed for
worlds. A meeting of two males, so utterly unlike a meeting of two
females, was invariably of the most entrancingly noisy or violent
description. When ladies came to the rectory to see her mother they
sat in the drawing-room and sipped tea and spoke in thin voices;
but when men came to see her father and went into the study, there
was very loud talking and often a row. Yes, and once in the village
street, Rosalie had seen two men stand up and thump one another
with their fists and fall down and get up and thump again. When
two women, her sisters or others, quarrelled, they only shrilled,
and went on and on shrilling. It was impossible to imagine the
collision of two women producing anything so exciting and splendid
as invariably was produced by the collision of two males.

As now----

In comes Harold in great heat and hurry (as men always were) with
his splendid button boots in one hand and an immense pair of shining
cuffs in the other hand.

"Haven't you gone yet, you lazy young brute?"

"No, I haven't, you lazy old brute!"

Agitated feminine cries of "Robert! Robert! You are not to speak
to Harold like that."

"Well, he spoke to me like that."

"Yes, and I'll do a jolly sight more than speak to you in a minute
if you don't get out of it. Get out of it, do you hear?"

"Shan't!"

"Robert! Robert! Harold! Harold!"

"Well, get him out of it, or he'll be sorry for it. Why is he always
here when I'm supposed to be having my breakfast? Not a thing ready,
as usual. Look here, where I'm supposed to sit--flannel and soap!
That's washing his filthy neck, I suppose. Filthy young brute! Why
don't you wash your neck, pig?"

"Why do you wear girl's boots with buttons, pig?"

Commotion. Enthralling commotion. Half the female assemblage hustle
the splendid creature Robert out of the door and down the hall and
on to his bicycle; half the female assemblage cover his retreat
and block the dash after him of the still more splendid Harold;
all the female assemblage, battle having been prevented and one
splendid male despatched, combine to minister to the requirements
of the second splendid male now demanding attention.

Busy scene. Enthralling spectacle. There he is, eating; shoving
sausages into himself against the clock just as Robert had shovelled
porridge into himself against the clock. One ministrant is sewing
a button on to his boot, another with blotting paper and hot iron
is removing a stain from his coat, divested for the purpose; one
is pouring out his coffee, another is cutting his bread, a third is
watching for his newspaper by the postman. And suddenly he whirls
everything into a whirlpool just as men, if Rosalie watches them
long enough, always whirl everything into a whirlpool.

"Oh, my goodness, the pump!"

Chorus, "The pump?"

"The bicycle pump! Has that young brute taken the bicycle pump?"

"Yes, he took it. I saw it."

Commotion.

"Catch him across the field! Catch him across the field! Where
are my boots? Where the devil are my boots? Well, never mind the
infernal button. How am I going to get to the bank with a flat tyre?
Can't some one catch him across the field instead of all standing
there staring?"

Away they go! Rosalie, seeking a good place for the glorious
spectacle, is knocked over in the stampede for the door. Nobody
minds Rosalie. Rosalie doesn't mind--anything to see this entrancing
sight! Away they go, flying over the meadow, shouting, scrambling,
falling. Out after them plunges Harold, shirt-sleeved, one boot half
on, hobbling, leaping, bawling. Glorious to watch him! He outruns
them all; he outbellows them all. Of course he does. He is a man.
He is one of those splendid, wonderful, mysterious creatures to
whom, subject only to Rosalie's father, the entire world belongs.
Look at him, bounding, bawling! Wonderful, wonderful Harold!

But Robert is wonderful too. If it had been Anna or Flora or Hilda
gone off with the pump, she would have been easily caught. Not
Robert. Wonderful and mysterious Robert, wonderfully and mysteriously
pedalling at incredible speed, is not caught. The hunt dejectedly
trails back. The business of pushing Harold out of the house is
devotedly resumed.

And again--enthralling spectacle--just as the reign of Robert was
terminated by the accession of Harold, so the dominion of Harold
is overthrown by the accession of father. Harold is crowded about
with ministrants. Nobody can leave him for a minute. Rosalie's
father appears. Everybody leaves Harold simultaneously, abruptly,
and as if by magic. Rosalie's father appears. Everybody disappears.
Wonderful father! Everybody melts away: but Harold does not melt
away. Courageous Harold! Everybody melts; only Harold is left,
and Rosalie watching; and immediately, as always, the magnificent
males clash with sound and fury.

Rosalie's father scowls upon Harold and delivers his morning
greeting. No "Good morning, dear," as her mother would have said.
"Aren't you gone yet?" like a bark from a kennel.

"Just going."

Wonderful father! A moment before there had been not the remotest
sign of Harold ever going. Now Harold is very anxious to go. He is
very anxious to go but, like Robert, he will not abandon the field
without defiance of the authority next above his own. While he
collects his things he whistles. Rosalie shudders (but deliciously
as one in old Rome watching the gladiators).

"Do you see the clock, sir?"

"Yes."

"Well, quicken yourself, sir. Quicken yourself."

"The clock's fast."

"It is not fast, sir. And let me add that the clock with which you
could keep time of a morning, or of any hour in the day, would have
to be an uncommonly slow clock."

Harold with elaborate unconcern adjusts his trouser clips. "I should
have thought that was more a matter for the Bank to complain of,
if necessary. I may be wrong, of course----"

"You may be wrong, sir, because in my experience you almost invariably
are wrong and never more so than when you lad-di-dah that you are
right. You may be wrong, but let me tell you what you may not be.
You may not be impertinent to me, sir. You may not lad-di-dah me,
sir."

"Father, I really do not see why at my age I should be hounded out
of the house like this every morning."

"You are hounded out, as you elegantly express it, because morning
after morning, owing to your disgustingly slothful habits, you
clash with me, sir. My breakfast is delayed because you clash with
me, and the house is delayed because you clash with me, and the
whole parish is delayed because you clash with me."

"Perhaps you're not aware that Robert clashes with me."

"Dash Robert! Are you going or are you not going?"

He goes.

"Bring back the paper."

He brings it back.

Wonderful father!

Rosalie's father gives a tug at the bell cord that would have
dislocated the neck of a horse. The cord comes away in his hand.
He hurls it across the room.

Glorious father!

There was a most frightful storm one night and Rosalie, in Anna's
bed with Flora crowded in also and Hilda shivering in her nightgown
beside them, too young to be frightened but with her sister's
fright beginning to communicate itself to her, said, "Ask father
to go and stop it."

"Fool!" cried Flora. "How could father stop the storm?"

Why not?






CHAPTER II





Flora's sharp and astounding reply to that question of Rosalie's
was recalled by Rosalie, with hurt surprise at Flora's sharpness
and ignorance, when, shortly afterwards, she found in a book a man
who could, and actually did, stop a storm. This was a man called
Prospero in a book called "The Tempest."

She was never--that Rosalie--the conventional wonder-child of
fiction who reads before ten all that its author probably never
read before thirty; but she could read when she was six and she
read widely and curiously, choosing her entertainment, from her
father's bookshelves, solely by the method of reading every book
that had pictures.

There was but one picture to "The Tempest," a frontispiece, but it
sufficed, and at the period when Rosalie believed the ownership of
the world to be vested in her father and under him in all males,
"The Tempest," because it reflected that condition, was the greatest
joy of all the joys the bookshelves discovered to her. She read it
over and over again. It presented life exactly as life presented
itself to the round eyes of Rosalie: all males doing always noisy
and violent and important and enthralling things, with Prospero,
her father, by far the most important of all; and women scarcely
appearing and doing only what the men told them to do. Miranda's
appearances in the story were indifferently skipped by Rosalie;
the noisy action and language in the wreck, and the noisy action
and language of the drunkards in the wood were what she liked, and
all the magic arts of Prospero were what she thoroughly appreciated
and understood. That was life as she knew it.

Rosalie's father, when Rosalie thought the world belonged to him
and revolved about him, was tall and cleanshaven and of complexion
a dark and burning red. When he was excited or angry his face used
to burn as the embers in the study fire burned when Rosalie pressed
the bellows against them. He had thick black eyebrows and a most
powerful nose. His nose jutted from his face like a projection
from a cliff beneath a clump of bushes. He had been at Cambridge
and he was most ferociously fond of Cambridge. One of the most
fearful scenes Rosalie ever witnessed was on one boat-race day when
Harold appeared with a piece of Oxford ribbon in his buttonhole. It
was at breakfast, the family for some reason or other most unusually
all taking breakfast together. Rosalie's father first jocularly
bantered Harold on his choice of colour, and everybody--anxious as
always to please and placate the owner of the world--laughed with
father against Harold. But Harold did not laugh. Harold smouldered
resentment and defiance, and out of his smouldering began to maintain
"from what chaps had said" that Oxford was altogether and in every
way a much better place than Cambridge. In every branch of athletics
there were better athletes, growled Harold, at Oxford.

Rosalie has been watching the embers in her father's face glowing
to dark-red heat. Everybody had been watching them except Harold
who, though addressing his father, had been mumbling "what chaps
had said" to his plate.

"Athletes!" cried Rosalie's father suddenly in a very terrible
voice. "Athletes! And what about scholars, sir?"

Harold informed his plate that he wasn't talking about scholars.

Rosalie's father raised a marmalade jar and thumped it down upon
the table so that it cracked. "Then what the dickens right have
you to talk at all, sir? How dare you try to compare Oxford with
Cambridge when you know no more about either than you know of
Jupiter or Mars? Athletes!" He went off into record of University
contests, cricket scores, running times, football scores, as if
his whole life had been devoted to collecting them. They all showed
Cambridge first and Oxford beaten and he hurled each one at Harold's
head with a thundering, "What about that, sir?" after it. He leapt
to scholarship and reeled off scholarships and scholars and schools,
and professors and endowments and prize men, as if he had been an
educational year-book gifted with speech and with particularly loud
and violent speech. He spoke of the colleges of Cambridge, and with
every college and every particular glory of every college demanded
of the unfortunate Harold, "What have you got in Oxford against
that, sir?"

It was awful. It was far more frightening than the night of the
storm. Nobody ate. Nobody drank. Everybody shuddered and tried
by every means to avoid catching father's rolling eye and thereby
attracting the direct blast of the tempest. Rosalie, who of course,
being a completely negligible quantity in the rectory, is not
included in the everybody, simply stared, more awed and enthralled
than ever before. And with much reason. As he declaimed of the glories
of the colleges of Cambridge there was perceptible in her father's
voice a most curious crack or break. It became more noticeable
and more frequent. He suddenly and most astoundingly cried out,
"Cambridge! Cambridge!" and threw his arms out before him on the
table, and buried his head on them, and sobbed out, "Cambridge! My
youth! My youth! My God, my God, my youth!"

Somehow or other they all slipped out of the room and left him
there,--all except Rosalie who remained in her high chair staring
upon her father, and upon his shoulders that heaved up and down,
and upon the coffee from an overturned cup that oozed slowly along
the tablecloth.

Extraordinary father!

Rosalie's father had been a wrangler and one of the brilliant men
of his year at Cambridge. All manner of brilliance was expected
for him and of him. He unexpectedly went into the Church and as
unexpectedly married.

His bride was the daughter of a clergyman, a widower, who kept a
small private school in Devonshire. She helped her father to run
the school (an impoverished business which, begun exclusively for
the "sons of gentlemen," had slid down into paying court to tradesmen
in order to get the sons of tradesmen) and she maintained him in
the very indifferent health he suffered. Harold Aubyn, the brilliant
wrangler with the brilliant future, who had begun his brilliance by
unexpectedly entering the Church, and continued it by unexpectedly
marrying while on a holiday in the little Devonshire town where he had
gone to ponder his future (a little unbalanced by the unpremeditated
plunge into Holy Orders) further continued his brilliance by
unexpectedly finding himself the assistant master in his father-in-law's
second-rate and failing school. The daughter would not leave her
father; the suitor would not leave his darling; the brilliant young
wrangler who at Cambridge used to dream of waking to find himself
famous awoke instead to find himself six years buried in a now
third-rate and moribund school in a moribund Devonshire town. He
had a father-in-law now permanent invalid, bedridden. He had four
children and another, Robert, on the way.

It was his father-in-law's death that awoke him; and he awoke
characteristically. The old man dead! Come, that was one burden
lifted, one shackle removed! The school finally went smash at the
same time. Never mind! Another burden gone! Another shackle lifted!
Dash the school! How he hated the school! How he loathed and
detested the lumping boys! How he loathed and abominated teaching
them simple arithmetic (he the wrangler!) and history that was
a string of dates, and geography that was a string of capes and
bays, and Latin as far as the conjugations (he the wrangler!) how
he loathed and abominated it! Now a fresh start! Hurrah!

That was like Rosalie's father--in those days. That way blew the
cold fit and the hot fit--then.

The magnificent fresh start after the magnificent escape from the
morass of the moribund father-in-law and the moribund school and
the moribund Devonshire town proved to be but a stagger down into
morass heavier and more devastating of ambition. He always jumped
blindly and wildly into things. Blindly and wildly into the
Church, blindly and wildly into marriage, blindly and wildly into
the school, blindly and wildly, one might say, into fatherhood on
a lavish scale. Blindly and wildly--the magnificent fresh start--into
the rectory in which Rosalie was born.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.