Yet if only she had not had that trick of letting her voice die out with her lips still active but inaudible, and staring you with those innocent, earnest, inquiring blue eyes of hers, Mrs Tewler’s ideas might have been more explicit,
“Sometimes I can’t make head or tail of it,” Mrs. Tewler would complain, but really it was the tail she lost. She wanted to know, for Dearest One’s sake, what were all those dreadful things that lay in wait for the unguarded young, underneath the sunken tail and the raised eyebrows. She wanted particulars and she got this sort of thing.
“Sometimes I think it’s the good ones really make the bad ones. For after all, you see....”
“There isn’t so very much that they can do with themselves....”
“Well, my dear, it isn’t as though we was octopuses, is it? all legs and arms and things....”
“His Grace had a sort of joking way of saying, ‘All the world’s a stage, my girl’....”
Mrs Tewler went to the Public Library afterwards and with the librarian’s assistance looked that up in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations:
Nothing in that. It was a mystery.
“All they want to do is something queer and awful. Would it matter—whether it was upside down or round about, if the good people didn’t make such a fuss about it? I could never find anything so wonderful....”
“But good people say, ‘This is a sin’, and that is terrible....”
“What is—exactly?”
“Doing all these things. And so they make laws against them and all that, and it seems to give them dignity, so to to speak, as though they mattered. Why should they matter? For instance, is there really any great harm....”
Lost again!
Most people like breaking laws, just to show they aren’t to be put upon. If they’d been left alone, they’d just have done this or that and forgotten about it. Everybody does things somewhen—”
“But they are sins,” cried Mrs Tewler. “And I think it’s all terrible. And wicked!”
“Maybe you’re right. They call it Original Sin, It seems the most unoriginal sort of sin possible to me. Why if for example....”
“But someone must teach them these dreadful things!”
“They get together. Or they get alone. And there’s nothing else to distract them. And before you know where you are you find....”
“But if one keeps one’s little boy away from nasty little boys and girls, and watches over his reading and never leaves him alone until he’s sound asleep—”
“There’s dreams,” said the wise woman. “There’s fancies that come from nowhere at all. Very likely you’ve forgotten your own early dreams and fancies. Most people do. Or they wouldn’t make such a fuss. I haven’t. Why, long before I went into service, I used to sleep with the curate and my elder brother and a boy I once saw bathing—”
“My dear Mrs Humbelay!”
“Only in dreams. Have you forgotten all that about yourself? Well “—down went the voice—” and I used to imagine myself....” Mrs Tewler could get nothing of it.
“Oh! Oh!” she cried. “My Boy isn’t like that. My Boy can’t be like that He just sleeps like a little harmless lamb....”
“Maybe he’s different. Still I’m only telling you what I’ve come across in life. I can’t make out what it’s all about....
“It’s a great relief to talk to an understanding woman like yourself. I’ve thought of putting all my troubles plainly and simply to Mr Burlap. What I’ve been through. What I’ve seen. But you see he doesn’t know anything of what I’ve been, really. He thinks I’m just a comfortable respectable widow. I wouldn’t like him to turn against me...”
“I don’t think you’d be wise to tell him.”
“Nor me. Still, what’s the answer to it all? We’ve got all these desires and impulses, we’re told, so as to have children.
So you may say. But they don’t lead to children, Mrs Tewler. They lead right away from them. Why, I ask you, my dear, should Nature dispose a man—well now, for example, to....”
III. Mr Myame Deplores Sin
Mrs Tewler brooded profoundly on these conventions. Enough came across to convince her of the diabolical wickedness that would presently be weaving its snares about the unsuspecting feet of the Most Precious Child in the world. She tried Mr Burlap, the pastor of the little chape). He received her in his Sanctum. “It’s a very difficult thing,” she said, “for a mother to know what to do about the—I hardly know how to put it—well, the sexual education of a solitary fatherless child.”
“H’rump,” said Mr Burlap. He leant back in his chair and looked as thoughtful as he could, but his ears and nostrils had suddenly gone very red, and his eyes, magnified by his spectacles, were uncomfortable and defensive.
“Yee-es,” he said. “It is a difficult problem.”
“It is a difficult problem.”
“It is certainly, a very difficult problem.”
“That’s what I feel.”
So far they were in perfect agreement.
“Whether he ought to be told” she resumed after a pause.
“Whether he ought to be warned. Books perhaps. A talk to a doctor.”
“Oom,” said Mr Burlap, filling the Sanctum with his reverberation.
“Exactly,” she said, and waited.
“You see, my dear Mrs Tewler, that this problem so to speak varies with the circumstances of the case. We are not all made alike. What may be wise in one case may be quite unsuitable for another case.”
“Yes? “she said.
“And of course, Vice Versa.”
“I see that,” she said.
“Rereads?”
“Quite often.”
“There is a little book called, I believe, The Loves of the Flowers. Mr Burlap’s face was suffused with an honourable blush. “He could have no more helpful introduction to the—to the great mystery.”
“I will give it to him.”
“And then perhaps a little judicious talk.”
“Judicious talk.”
“When the opportunity arises,”
“I must pray for that.”
All that was very clear and helpful. But it seemed to leave something still to be said. There was something even a little superficial about it all. “Nowadays,” she said, “there is so much evil about.”
“These are evil times, Mrs Tewler. ‘The world is very evil; the times are growing late.’ This has never been so true as it is to-day. Guard him. Evil communications corrupt good manners. Keep him close to you. Yes.”
He seemed to be wanting to convey that the matter was practically settled.
“I have taught him his letters and so on, but presently he will have to go to school. There he may learn—all sorts of things.”
“Oom,” said Mr Burlap again, and then seemed to be struck by an idea.
“I hear such dreadful things of schools,” she said. Mr Burlap roused himself from his idea. “Boarding schools?”
“Yes, boarding Schools.”
“Boarding schools,” said Mr Burlap, “are, without exception, Sinks of Iniquity. Especially the Preparatory Schools and the so-called Public Schools. I know. I know. There are things—I cannot speak of them,”
“That is exactly what I came to talk to you about,” said Mrs Tewler.
“Well,” said the worthy pastor, “H’rump. Here we have in our own little congregation just the one man.... You have never noted? Mr Myame. That slender, reserved man with a big head, large black side-whiskers and a bass voice. You must at least have noticed his voice. You could hardly fail to do that. He is a man of great spiritual power, a Boanerges, a son of Thunder. He has a small, a very select, private day school. He is most particular whom he takes. His wife is, I fear, consumptive; a very sweet and tender woman. They have no children of their own; it is a great sorrow to them; but their school is in the best sense of the word their family. They study the characters of their little charges. They are never weary of discussing them. There and with your home influence, I cannot imagine any harm coming near to your little fellow....”