"You're to get up at once. Your uncle says you are to spend a week in the attic for your naughtiness, so get up and dress quickly. I'll come back to take you in a few minutes. Your uncle says you're to go before breakfast, now, at once, so that you can speak to nobody."
Robbie had heard aright.
I was still very sore; my nightgown stuck to me here and there with dry blood, and hurt me as I tore it off. I dressed, and was ready when Aunt Martha returned. In the grey of a damp winter dawn I followed her upstairs. No one else was stirring. The unused, airless smell of the attic seemed more unpleasant than usual in the cold: an atmosphere at once frozen and stuffy. A mattress had been put on the floor; there were no bedclothes or coverlets. The room was bare except for a few boxes and old picture frames in one corner, the rusty old fender that always stood end upwards against the wall, and one rickety backless old chair.
"Here's a cloak to wrap round you in the night. Your uncle said I wasn't to leave one." She went away.
All day I was left alone. Twice Aunt Martha came up with a bowl of gruel and a dry crust, but (evidently under orders) she said nothing. It was so cold that the cloak could not prevent my getting numbed. I lay huddled up on the mattress all through the day, thinking, thinking, thinking.... Now that the first glow of the Wonder Night had passed away, there came a reaction, and I was gnawing away once more at all my bitter memories and hates. Pain, too, was governing me; my aching body was half numbed with cold, especially my legs and feet, which the cloak was not long enough to cover, huddle as I might. I kept my soul warm—and body too to some degree—by hugging to me the loves that now were mine. I lived the time spent with my mother and with Robbie over and over and over again: every gesture, every kindness, every kiss. For all my unhappiness and physical misery I could never again be so blankly, harbourlessly miserable as before. In my darkest moments I now knew that there were places of comfort to which I could fly.
I wondered what was going on in the house downstairs. It was night-time now; tomorrow morning Robbie would be going and I should be alone with Uncle Simeon. Escape I must. I climbed on to the rickety old chair and opened the skylight window. I looked out and observed that the skylight was of a level piece with the sloping roof. I could see nothing beyond the edge of the roof; the sense of the great drop beyond that edge came to me, and as I pictured myself falling, I shuddered. That way there was no escape.
Then, for one second, as I looked down the sloping roof, came a sudden notion to throw myself over. It was a physical impulse only, and passed as quickly as it came. It would have stayed longer had I been the least bit tempted. But I could never see the sense of suicide. I saw no good in killing myself, because I believed in immortality. By killing myself I should only be ensuring an Eternity in hell instead of an Eternity in heaven. The little boy in one of the new novels makes away with himself because he believes that there is nothing beyond death, and that by killing himself in this world he has killed his soul for ever. If I had believed that I too might have been tempted. But my creed was in immortality, from which there is no escape. Nor had I the physical courage which suicide requires. And it would steal my chance of meeting my mother in the next world and Robbie in this.
I lay down on my mattress, seeking vainly, like a mouse in a trap, some new way of escape. During the first night in that cold dreary attic I slept hardly at all. The rats frightened me; I could not sleep for fear they would crawl over my face once it was still. Surely Robbie would send some sign, some message. None came. Later I must have slept; for again it was Aunt Martha who woke me when she came to bring my "breakfast." She was startled to see how starved with cold I was, and came back with a big warm blanket. It was a brave thing for her to do.
"Robert Grove is going, isn't he?" I asked casually, steadying my voice.