The Playmaker by J.B. Cheaney Page B

voice rose, becoming shrill. “‘Twas not written to you. Only our mother had a part in it, and that little enough.”
    “I want to keep it, though.” I could not have found the words to say why, but these lines were of my father's heart, and in his hand, and seemed to give back a little of what he had taken away.
    “Poetry,” Susanna muttered bitterly. “A treasure indeed. You can guess how much comfort it brought her.” But she put up no further argument, especially when I offered her the ring and pendant, and the spoons to keep for me. Only the papers had I taken, and thought them a fair trade. But now they were gone. And the rector's testimony, and those silly beads I had bought in my mother's memory, and the shilling given me by my first friend in London—all gone.
    “Will you be buying that book, sirrah?” The bookseller, a portly dame who looked better suited to selling iron skillets, folded her arms and glared at me meaningfully.
    For answer I replaced the quarto and turned away, speechless. Drawn toward the cathedral by a need for quiet prayer and reflection, I climbed the stone steps and passed through the arched doorway into the nave—where I paused for a moment, blinking in surprise. The interior of St. Paul's was almost as boisterous as the grounds. It appeared to be a kind of public meeting hall, where money changed hands over the very font, and hopeful tradesmen angled for work, and lovers whispered together in dark corners. London had confounded me once again; in a daze I made my way past all these doings and into the unoccupied south transept, where a row of short high-backed benches stood in a pool of light falling from the clerestory overhead. Here I knelt, with my elbows on a bench and my head in my hands, and tried to think.
    By now my fright had ebbed away, and another sensation was stealing in to take its place. I recognized this new arrival— a quality that was my mother's bane, the one thing in me that drove her to violence. “Ah, thou'rt ever a stubborn lad!” she would cry. One time I refused to apologize to Susanna for an offense I did not see myself to blame for, and Mother took my head and slammed it against the heavy oak door of our cottage. “Stubborn, stubborn lad!” she cried, and then clutched one hand with the other as though to restrain them, while I bit my lip so hard it bled, forcing back tears. She had a temper but also truehumility; it was she who begged my pardon later, not the other way round.
    Alas though, she was right. When crossed, I am apt to dig in my heels and refuse to shift in any direction. I do not attack; I resist.
    And now I was crossed, as never before. I struck my head on the back of the bench and cursed my aunt, the so-called Holy Nan, with more passion than I had thought was in me. Without doubt she was responsible for this—she, and those she had set on me. “Fly away straight,” they said, but I hereby vowed not to oblige them. Those who had stolen my heart evidently expected me to run home with my tail between my legs. But I would not. I found myself knocking my head against the wood over and over, hard enough to hurt. Stubborn, stubborn lad. Almighty Lord, I prayed: let them not escape. Deliver me from unrighteous and evil men, and bring them unto thy most speedy judgment.
    Surely that judgment would fall, and soon. In the meantime I meant to stay, for no better reason than my enemies wished me gone.
    Returning to work at Motheby and Southern was out of the question. Somehow I must spirit back the pouch that held their bills and receipts and leave them to draw what conclusions they could. This was the very day we were to draw up the papers binding me to an apprenticeship, but fortunately that had not come to pass—I need not add bond-breaking to my list of woes. Most of my possessions, except what I carried on me, would have to be written off as lost. I dared not show my face on the docks;
they
would no doubt be watching, as they had before.