Bildungsromans; Domestic fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction
There were golden stars all over the ceiling of St. Mary's Chapel. Roddy
and she were sent there after they had had chicken-pox and when their
whooping-cough was getting better. They were not allowed to go to the
church at Barkingside for fear of giving whooping-cough to the children
in Dr. Barnardo's Homes; and they were not allowed to go to Aldborough
Hatch Church because of Mr. Propart's pupils. But they had to go to
church somewhere, whooping-cough or no whooping-cough, in order to get to
Heaven; so Mark took them to the Chapel of Ease at Ilford, where the
Virgin Mary in a blue dress stood on a sort of step over the door. Mamma
said you were not to worship her, though you might look at her. She was a
graven image. Only Roman Catholics worshipped graven images; they were
heretics; that meant that they were shut outside the Church of England,
which was God's Church, and couldn't get in. And they had only half a
Sunday. In Roman Catholic countries Sunday was all over at twelve
o'clock, and for the rest of the day the Roman Catholics could do just
what they pleased; they danced and went to theatres and played games, as
if Sunday was one of their own days and not God's day.
She wished she had been born in a Roman Catholic country.
Every night she took the _Children's Prize_ to bed with her to keep her
safe. It had Bible Puzzles in it, and among them there was a picture of
the Name of God. A shining white light, shaped like Mamma's vinaigrette,
with black marks in the middle. Mamma said the light was the light that
shone above the Ark of the Covenant, and the black marks were letters and
the word was the real name of God. She said he was sometimes called
Jehovah, but that was not his real name. His real name was a secret name
which nobody but the High Priest was allowed to say.
When you lay in the dark and shut your eyes tight and waited, you could
see the light, shaped like the vinaigrette, in front of you. It quivered
and shone brighter, and you saw in the middle, first, a dark blue colour,
and then the black marks that were the real name of God. She was glad she
couldn't read it, for she would have been certain to let it out some day
when she wasn't thinking.
Perhaps Mamma knew, and was not allowed to say it. Supposing she forgot?
At church they sang "Praise Him in His name Jah and rejoice before Him."
Jah was God's pet-name, short for Jehovah. It was a silly name--Jah.
Somehow you couldn't help thinking of God as a silly person; he was
always flying into tempers, and he was jealous. He was like Papa. Dank
said Papa was jealous of Mark because Mamma was so fond of him. There was
a picture of God in the night nursery. He had a big flowing beard, and a
very straight nose, like Papa, and he was lying on a sort of sofa that
was a cloud. Little Jesus stood underneath him, between the Virgin Mary
and Joseph, and the Holy Ghost was descending on him in the form of a
dove. His real name was Jesus Christ, but they called him Emmanuel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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