Unfinished Portrait

‘I know—’ She came back from afar suddenly. ‘The story is called the Curious Candle …’

‘Oh!’ Celia drew an enraptured breath. Already she was intrigued—spellbound … The Curious Candle!

Celia was a serious little girl. She thought a great deal about God and being good and holy. When she pulled a wishbone, she always wished to be good. She was, alas! undoubtedly a prig, but at least she kept her priggishness to herself.

At times she had a horrible fear that she was ‘worldly’ (perturbing mysterious word!). This especially when she was all dressed in her starched muslin and big golden-yellow sash to go down to dessert. But on the whole she was complacently satisfied with herself. She was of the elect. She was saved.

But her family caused her horrible qualms. It was terrible—but she was not quite sure about her mother. Supposing Mummy should not go to Heaven? Agonizing, tormenting thought.

The laws were so very clearly laid down. To play croquet on Sunday was wicked. So was playing the piano (unless it was hymns). Celia would have died, a willing martyr, sooner than have touched a croquet mallet on the ‘Lord’s Day’, though to be allowed to hit balls at random about the lawn on other days was her chief delight.

But her mother played croquet on Sunday and so did her father. And her father played the piano and sang songs about ‘He called on Mrs C and took a cup of tea when Mr C had gone to town.’ Clearly not a holy song!

It worried Celia terribly. She questioned Nannie anxiously. Nannie, good earnest woman, was in something of a quandary.

‘Your father and mother are your father and mother,’ said Nannie. ‘And everything they do is right and proper, and you mustn’t think otherwise.’

‘But playing croquet on Sunday is wrong,’ said Celia.

‘Yes, dear. It’s not keeping the Sabbath holy.’

‘But then—but then—’

‘It’s not for you to worry about these things, my dear. You just go on doing your duty.’

So Celia went on shaking her head when offered a mallet ‘as a treat’.

‘Why on earth—?’ said her father.

And her mother murmured:

‘It’s Nurse. She’s told her it’s wrong.’

And then to Celia:

‘It’s all right, darling, don’t play if you don’t want to.’

But sometimes she would say gently:

‘You know, darling. God has made us a lovely world, and He wants us to be happy. His own day is a very special day—a day we can have special treats on—only we mustn’t make work for other people—the servants, for instance. But it’s quite all right to enjoy yourself.’

But, strangely enough, deeply as she loved her mother, Celia’s opinions were not swayed by her. A thing was so because Nannie knew it was.

Still, she ceased to worry about her mother. Her mother had a picture of St Francis on her wall, and a little book called The Imitation of Christ by her bedside. God, Celia felt, might conceivably overlook croquet playing on a Sunday.

But her father caused her grave misgivings. He frequently joked about sacred matters. At lunch one day he told a funny story about a curate and a bishop. It was not funny to Celia—it was merely terrible.

At last, one day, she burst out crying and sobbed her horrible fears into her mother’s ear.

‘But, darling, your father is a very good man. And a very religious man. He kneels down and says his prayers every night just like a child. He’s one of the best men in the world.’

‘He laughs at clergymen,’ said Celia. ‘And he plays games on Sundays, and he sings songs—worldly songs. And I’m so afraid he’ll go to Hell Fire.’

‘What do you know about a thing like Hell Fire?’ said her mother, and her voice sounded angry.

‘It’s where you go if you’re wicked,’ said Celia.

‘Who has been frightening you with things like that?’

‘I’m not frightened,’ said Celia, surprised. ‘I’m not going there. I’m going to be always good and go to Heaven. But’—her lips trembled—‘I want Daddy to be in Heaven too.’

And then her mother talked a great deal—about God’s love and goodness, and how He would never be so unkind as to burn people eternally.

But Celia was not in the least convinced. There was Hell and there was Heaven, and there were sheep and goats. If only—if only she were quite sure Daddy was not a goat!

Of course there was Hell as well as Heaven. It was one of the immovable facts of life, as real as rice pudding or washing behind the ears or saying, Yes, please, and No, thank you.

Celia dreamt a good deal. Some of her dreams were just funny and queer—things that had happened all mixed up. But some dreams were specially nice. Those dreams were about places she knew which were, in the dreams, different.

Strange to explain why this should be so thrilling, but somehow (in the dream) it was.

There was the valley down by the station. In real life the railway line ran along it, but in the good dreams there was a river there, and primroses all up the banks and into the wood. And each time she would say in delighted surprise: ‘Why, I never knew—I always thought it was a railway here.’ And instead there was the lovely green valley and the shining stream.

Then there were the dream fields at the bottom of the garden where in real life there was the ugly red-brick house. And, almost most thrilling of all, the secret rooms inside her own home. Sometimes you got to them through the pantry—sometimes, in the most unexpected way, they led out of Daddy’s study. But there they were all the time—although you had forgotten them for so long. Each time you had a delighted thrill of recognition. And yet, really, each time they were quite different. But there was always that curious secret joy about finding them …

Then there was the one terrible dream—the Gun Man with his powdered hair and his blue and red uniform and his gun. And, most horrible of all, where his hands came out of his sleeves—there were no hands—only stumps. Whenever he came into a dream, you woke up screaming. It was the safest thing to do. And there you were, safe in your bed, and Nannie in her bed next to you and everything All Right.

There was no special reason why the Gun Man should be so frightening. It wasn’t that he might shoot you. His gun was a symbol, not a direct menace. No, it was something about his face, his hard, intensely blue eyes, the sheer malignity of the look he gave you. It turned you sick with fright.

Then there were the things you thought about in the daytime. Nobody knew that as Celia walked sedately along the road she was in reality mounted upon a white palfrey. (Her ideas of a palfrey were rather dim. She imagined a super horse of the dimensions of an elephant.) When she walked along the narrow brick wall of the cucumber frames she was going along a precipice with a bottomless chasm at one side. She was on different occasions a duchess, a princess, a goose girl, and a beggar maid. All this made life very interesting to Celia, and so she was what is called ‘a good child’, meaning she kept very quiet, was happy playing by herself, and did not importune her elders to amuse her.

The dolls she was given were never real to her. She played with them dutifully when Nannie suggested it, but without any real enthusiasm.

‘She’s a good little girl,’ said Nannie. ‘No imagination, but you can’t have everything. Master Tommy—Captain Stretton’s eldest, he never stopped teasing me with his questions.’

Celia seldom asked questions. Most of her world was inside her head. The outside world did not excite her curiosity.

Something that happened one April was to make her afraid of the outside world.

She and Nannie went primrosing. It was an April day, clear and sunny with little clouds scudding across the blue sky. They went down by the railway line (where the river was in Celia’s dreams) and up the hill beyond it into a copse where the primroses grew like a yellow carpet. They picked and they picked. It was a lovely day, and the primroses had a delicious, faint lemony smell that Celia loved.

And then (it was rather like the Gun Man dream) a great harsh voice roared at them suddenly.

‘Here,’ it said. ‘What are you a-doing of here?’

It was a man, a big man with a red face, dressed in corduroys. He scowled.

‘This is private here. Trespassers will be prosecuted.’