After perhaps three or four hours, though it seemed unending years, I saw ahead of me the first roofs of Tawborough. I limped through the wet silent streets of the town, up Bear Street on to the Lawn, and through our garden gate. I pulled the bell, and then with a wretchedness and weariness I could not resist now that my goal was reached, sank down upon the doorstep.
Immediately I must have fallen asleep, for it seemed that I awoke from far away to see my Grandmother in her red dressing-gown and funny nightcap standing before me.
"It's me—Mary. I've come back, Grandmother, because he would have killed me. I've walked all night, and I'm so tired."
I rose to my feet, and fainted in her arms. Then I remember no more.
CHAPTER XIX: BEAR LAWN AGAIN
I awoke to find myself in my Grandmother's bed. Evening was darkening the room. Uncle Simeon had already come—and gone.
Precisely what had taken place I was not told, but according to Mrs. Cheese neither my Grandmother nor my Great-Aunt had minced their words. Aunt Jael, particularly, must have been in awful form. Though I had not yet told my tale, my condition must have spoken for itself; and if Aunt Jael's sympathy for me was not alone sufficient to pitch her to the highest key of scorn, the sight of her old enemy made good the deficiency. Even for him he must have cringed and whined exceptionally, being quite in the dark as to how much I had told. Whether the flagellative heart of my Great-Aunt was filled with professional jealousy or whether the new rôle of Tender and Merciful appealed to her for the moment, all that is certain is this: that she drove Master Simeon Greeber with words and scorpions over the doorstep, adding that he was never required to cross it again. Nor did he. I was many years older when next we met: under what circumstances the sequel will shew.
When I regained my health, which under my Grandmother's care and feeding was speedily enough, I was surprised to find how little Grandmother and Aunt Jael pressed me for details of my life at Torribridge. This incuriousness puzzled me: chiefly by contrast with what my own interest would have been in their place. Details of other people's doings and sayings were to become one of the absorbing passions of my life: I was born with my mind at a keyhole. Hence Tuesday afternoons, when they could be diverted from godly generalities to piquant personalities were more welcome than of old; and now that I was occasionally allowed to speak a word at Clinkerian ceremonies, I became quite deft in sidetracking Miss Salvation down the pathways of scandal, where Aunt Jael, not too reluctantly, would sometimes follow her. Aunt Jael, to do her justice, was not much of a gossip: she was too selfish, just as my Grandmother was too unselfish, too deeply absorbed in Aunt Jael ever to feel deep interest, even a scandal-mongering interest, in other people: while her suspicion that her own efforts were capable of similar sacrilegious discussion would not allow her to allow me to talk of Uncle Simeon's beatings and persecutions. She felt that however objectionable Uncle Simeon might be, she would not permit me—a child, a subject, a slave—to discuss him. Authority must be upheld, in whatever unpleasant quarters. In the Tacit Alliance and Trade Union for Cruelty to Children there must be no blacklegs.