I crawled upstairs to my bedroom. I had only my vest to take off—or tear off, for it was stuck to me with blood. When I was naked I looked at myself by the candle-light in the long wardrobe mirror. My white breastless little body was covered with blood and dark strokes and great weals. I bathed the worst places with the ice-cold water in my basin and then rubbed in plenty of the mixed whitening with which Grandmother had supplied me. It relieved me a little, and I got into bed.
Soon the door opened. My heart beat fast. It was only Aunt Martha, bringing my Christmas supper. Not flap-dragons, nor raisins nor almond paste; just a small basin of mutton gruel.
"I'm sorry you've been so naughty, child, and have had to be corrected."
She produced two apples craftily from her pocket, put them on the bedside pedestal with the gruel, and went out. I did not touch them. I was too sick and wretched to eat.
Nor could I sleep. The long night began; pain, hate and wretchedness possessed me, first one more than another, and each in turn. My rough woollen nightgown chafed my sores; the bed, which was never a soft one, hurt me everywhere. My whole body smarted and ached. Why had I to suffer such pain? Why was I starved and bullied and abused and beaten and half-killed? Why had a man, professing to be one of the Lord's own people, the right to flog me so? Oh, the tyrant, I could only hear to think of him by picturing to myself a glorious day when my turn would come, when I would cat-o'-nine-tail him till he fainted and bang his face against a stone wall till his pale features were one red indistinguishable mush. Hate, hate, a bitter ointment, had eased my pain; hate for him, hate for the world, and by silly bitter moments the Devil's temptation to hate God. From hate for the tyrant I came to pity for the victim, which was self-pity, so sweet a misery that it drove away all other trouble. I was the wretchedest of all God's creatures, the wretchedest being since Creation. For me all things were unjust. Robbie and Albert were never treated as I was; in this alone were they alike, and all children save me alike. Every little child I saw in the street was happy, free, well-treated. Every one else had brothers and sisters, and friends—and a mother.
The old new bitterness returned; why had my mother been taken away? She would have protected me and cherished me. I tried to think more clearly than ever before what she would have looked like if still alive; like Grandmother, I fancied, with the same kind gentle face, but taller and younger and warmer. I should have nestled to her bosom, she would have taken me in her arms. I should have comforted her. She would have loved me. The agony of the thought was torture. I needed her to madness. I could lie down no longer. I knelt up in bed and my soul cried out for her. Involuntarily my voice was crying too, "Mother, mother!"
I uttered the words without knowing, as it were, that I spoke; they were wrung from me without my consent; it was my soul not my mind which spoke. And I knew this time that the prayer would be answered; I had the sure supernatural instinct that my mother was coming to me. She had been mouldering in Tawborough graveyard for ten years now, yet I knew she was coming. I did not call again, but waited in intense expectation. I clasped my hands in an agony of hope.
She came. Right up to the bedside she moved in a white robe. She spoke. Her voice seemed nearer to me than if it had been at the bedside; inside me, in my very soul. Mother was with me, in me, around me.
"I am here, Mary, I love you. You want to know that I love you, and I have come to show you that I do."
The darkness was made radiant by the white figure before me. I was bathed in a new presence, and I knew that it was love. I was still kneeling on the bed and my face was on a level with my mother's. I bent forward to fulfil my supreme need; I went nearer, my arms were closing round her—and she was gone.