This FreedomHutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
General
This Freedom
Hutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
Marriage -- Fiction; Women -- Social and moral questions -- Fiction
She said it had been a most frightful shock to her, what Huggo had
declared. She said, “Oh, Harry, I feel all undone.”
Undone! We’ll try to feel her mind with that; to let that explain her
when she said this else, and when she wrote some things that shall be
given.
She said she had suffered, in that moment of crying out to Huggo and
of stretching out her arm to him, the most extraordinary--what was the
word?--the most extraordinary hallucination. “Harry, when Huggo said
that frightful thing! Oh, Harry, like an extraordinary dream, I was a
child again. It wasn’t here; it was happening; it was the rectory; and
not you and the children but all us children that used to be around the
table there. No, not quite that. More extraordinary than that. Robert
was there; Robert, I think, in Huggo’s place; and all the rest were
me--me as I used to be when I was ten; small, grave, wondering, staring.
And yet myself me too as I was then--oh, horrified as I’d have then been
horrified to hear the Bible stories called untrue; jumped up and crying
out, ‘It isn’t! It isn’t!’ as I would then have jumped up and cried out;
and all the other Rosalies staring in wonder as I’d have stared. Oh,
extraordinary, extraordinary! Within this minute, I have been a child
again. The strangest thing, the strangest thing!
“I was a child again, Harry, in a blue frock I used to wear and in a
pinafore that had a hole in it; and all those other Rosalies the same.
Those other Rosalies! To see them! Harry, I’ve not seen that Rosalie
I used to be--not years and years. That tiny innocent! It is upon me
still. I feel that small child still. Oh, I feel it! I remember--dear,
did I ever tell you?--when my father once... had been talking about
Cambridge... and suddenly cried out, it was at breakfast, ‘Cambridge! My
youth! My God, my God, my youth!’ There was coffee from a cup that he’d
knocked over came oozing, and I just sat there huge-eyed, staring, a
small, grave wondering child....
“Oh, Harry, my youth, my childhood--and now the children’s! The
difference! The difference!”
Harry talked to her. He ended, “The teaching, all the ideas, dear girl,
you mustn’t worry, it’s all different nowadays.”
“Harry, to hear it from a child like that!”
“It’s startled you. It needn’t. We’ll talk it out. We’ll fix it. It’s
just what he’s been taught, old girl.”
She said, “Oh, it is what he’s not been taught!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account