Paul Kelver | Page 8

Mrs. Fursey's tone implied that she was stating what
might possibly be but a popular fallacy, for which she individually took
no responsibility.
"And did you come from Heaven, Mrs. Fursey?" Mrs. Fursey's reply to
this was decidedly more emphatic.
"Of course I did. Where do you think I came from?"
At once, I am ashamed to say, Heaven lost its exalted position in my
eyes. Even before this, it had puzzled me that everybody I knew should
be going there--for so I was always assured; now, connected as it
appeared to be with the origin of Mrs. Fursey, much of its charm
disappeared.
But this was not all. Mrs. Fursey's information had suggested to me a

fresh grief. I stopped not to console myself with the reflection that my
fate had been but the fate of all little boys and girls. With a child's
egoism I seized only upon my own particular case.
"Didn't they want me in Heaven then, either?" I asked. "Weren't they
fond of me up there?"
The misery in my voice must have penetrated even Mrs. Fursey's
bosom, for she answered more sympathetically than usual.
"Oh, they liked you well enough, I daresay. I like you, but I like to get
rid of you sometimes." There could be no doubt as to this last. Even at
the time, I often doubted whether that six o'clock bedtime was not
occasionally half-past five.
The answer comforted me not. It remained clear that I was not wanted
either in Heaven nor upon the earth. God did not want me. He was glad
to get rid of me. My mother did not want me. She could have done
without me. Nobody wanted me. Why was I here?
And then, as the sudden opening and shutting of the door of a dark
room, came into my childish brain the feeling that Something,
somewhere, must have need of me, or I could not be, Something I felt I
belonged to and that belonged to me, Something that was as much a
part of me as I of It. The feeling came back to me more than once
during my childhood, though I could never put it into words. Years
later the son of the Portuguese Jew explained to me my thought. But all
that I myself could have told was that in that moment I knew for the
first time that I lived, that I was I.
The next instant all was dark again, and I once more a puzzled little boy,
sitting by a nursery fire, asking of a village dame questions concerning
life.
Suddenly a new thought came to me, or rather the recollection of an
old.
"Nurse, why haven't we got a husband?"

Mrs. Fursey left off her sewing, and stared at me.
"What maggot has the child got into its head now?" was her
observation; "who hasn't got a husband?"
"Why, mamma."
"Don't talk nonsense, Master Paul; you know your mamma has got a
husband."
"No, she ain't."
"And don't contradict. Your mamma's husband is your papa, who lives
in London."
"What's the good of him!"
Mrs. Fursey's reply appeared to me to be unnecessarily vehement.
"You wicked child, you; where's your commandments? Your father is
in London working hard to earn money to keep you in idleness, and
you sit there and say 'What's the good of him!' I'd be ashamed to be
such an ungrateful little brat."
I had not meant to be ungrateful. My words were but the repetition of a
conversation I had overheard the day before between my mother and
my aunt.
Had said my aunt: "There she goes, moping again. Drat me if ever I
saw such a thing to mope as a woman."
My aunt was entitled to preach on the subject. She herself grumbled all
day about all things, but she did it cheerfully.
My mother was standing with her hands clasped behind her--a favourite
attitude of hers--gazing through the high French window into the
garden beyond. It must have been spring time, for I remember the white
and yellow crocuses decking the grass.

"I want a husband," had answered my mother, in a tone so ludicrously
childish that at sound of it I had looked up from the fairy story I was
reading, half expectant to find her changed into a little girl; "I hate not
having a husband."
"Help us and save us," my aunt had retorted; "how many more does a
girl want? She's got one."
"What's the good of him all that way off," had pouted my mother; "I
want him here where I can get at him."
I had often heard of this father of mine, who lived far away in London,
and to whom we owed all the blessings of life; but my childish
endeavours to