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
The effect was that when Rosalie somehow found out, she felt it to be
a guilty knowledge. She was not supposed to know and she felt she ought
not to have known. And sharing, but secretly, the others’ knowledge that
Anna had drowned herself in the pond, she supposed that they equally
shared with her her knowledge of why poor Anna had drowned herself in
the pond--because of men. She overheard many conversations that assured
her in this belief. “Some man we knew nothing about,” the conversation
used to say. “What else could it have been? Hush, here’s Rosalie.”
And again, after they had all been out of the house to attend what was
called the inquest, “You heard what the coroner said--that there was
almost invariably something to do with a man in these cases. Poor Anna!
Poor darling Anna. If she had only told us. What else could it have
been? Harold, hush! Not in front of Rosalie!”
Of course it was nothing else. It was that. It was men. Anna had said
so. “I hate men. I hate them.” Yes, men had done this to Anna.
Her mind went violently, as it were with a violent clutch of both her
hands, as of one in horrible dark, clutching at means of light, to the
thought that next week she was to be away at school--to be right away
and in the safe middle of lots and lots of girls, and only girls. She
had a frightening, a shuddering, at the thought of men who caused these
terrible things to be done, who mysteriously and horribly somehow had
done this thing to Anna.
The long, black finger poked at the page again. “There. ‘This our
brother.’ Father will say ‘This our sister.’ Do you see, Rosalie? This
our sister.”
A shower of tears sprang out of Rosalie’s eyes and pattered upon the
page.
She wiped them. She set her teeth. A new and most awful concern
possessed her. ‘This our sister.’ Would father remember? When he came
to brother would he remember to say sister? And when ‘his’ would he
remember to say ‘her?’ She searched for the places. A most frightful
agitation seized her that father would forget. What would happen if he
forgot?
And at the very first place father did forget!
They were come from the church to the grave. They were grouped about
that most terrible and frightening pit. Rosalie was clutching her
mother’s dear hand, and in her other hand held her prayer book. There
it was, the first place for the change. Brokenly her father’s voice came
out upon the air, and at his very first word--the fatal word--Rosalie
caught her breath in sharp and agonized dismay.
“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of
misery....”
She called out--she could not help it--“Father!”
Her mother’s hand, squeezing hers, restrained her.
The broken voice went on “... cometh up and is cut down like a flower.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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