The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

did not permit of any other opposition.

“What do you mean, you awful old man,” said Mary, snapping the words, “by calling an innocent child unclean? Do you doubt your power over a little girl’s mind, that you would whip her with a rod? Disgraceful! That child manages a kitchen capable of producing good food for fifty stomachs, and how do you thank her? You pay her no wages, but that is no surprise, since you pay no wages to any Child of Jesus! But to beat her! To beat her because she asked for rags for my courses? To call her unclean? Sir, you are a bigot and a disgrace to your calling!”

He had reared up in outrage, eyes rolling in his head, but when Mary mentioned rags and courses, he flung his arms about his head, hands blocking his ears, and rocked in his chair.

For perhaps a minute she surveyed him angrily, then she sat down on her chair and sighed. “Father, you are a fraud,” she said. “You think yourself a son of God, and you keep these children to worship and adore you. I acquit you of being greedy for profits from your nostrums, for I believe that you spend them on good food and other comforts for your followers. Your expenses must be considerable, even including fodder for your donkey train and coal for the fires I presume you need in your laboratory as well as in your kitchen. Nothing you have dictated to me thus far has told me why you are here, or how long you have been here, or what you intend to achieve. But you disappoint me bitterly, to take out your spleen on an innocent like Therese-and for no better reason than her sex. The female sex is God’s creation in equal measure to the male sex, and how He has designed our bodily functions is His business, not yours, for you are not God. Do you hear me? You are not God!”

His hands had dropped from his ears, though the look on his face said he didn’t like either Mary’s subject matter or the tone of her voice. But he didn’t get up and run; instead, he swung to face her, thin lips peeled back from perfect teeth.

“I am God,” he said, fairly calmly, and smiled. “All members of the male sex are God. Females are the creation of Lucifer, put on earth to tempt, seduce, corrupt.”

She snorted derisively. “Rubbish! Men are not God, any more than women are. Males and females both are God’s creation. And did it ever occur to you that it is not women who tempt and seduce, but men who are weak and unworthy? If there is a devil in humankind, it is in men, who strive to corrupt women, then blame women. I have had some experience of the devil in men, sir, and I assure you that it needs no lures thrown out by women. It is already inborn.”

“This conversation is pointless!” he snapped. “Kindly pick up your pencil, madam.”

“I will do that, Father Dominus, if you give me a new subject. Thus far I have given you nigh on two hundred pages of text, and only the first fifty are fresh and original. After that, you merely go over the same ground. Move on, Father! I am very interested in the genesis of Cosmogenesis. It is time you told your readers what happened after you entered the Seat of God in your thirty-fifth year. Why, for instance, did you enter it?”

She had caught him; he stared at her in amazement, almost as if he had received another visitation. Mary breathed a silent sigh of relief. It was in his power to kill her, and perhaps for a few moments when she had castigated him so bitingly he had contemplated having Brother Jerome pitch her down her privy well to certain death, but, all-unknowing, she had saved her life by showing him where he was going wrong. The brain that once must have been as formidable as any in the whole country was softening, a gradual process of which perhaps he had some awareness, yet knew not how to remedy it. Would he, back in his heyday, have whipped poor little Therese? Or thought the female sex unclean? Mary didn’t know, but wanted to. Now, with any luck, she might find out, for he was grateful enough at her criticism to come to the conclusion that her life was worth sparing. He wanted to write this book, but he didn’t know how. A mind that could invent lamps and cure-alls apparently did not have the ability to plan a verbal construction. As long as she guided him in his literary work, he would keep her alive.

“Proceed as follows,” he said. “‘Lucifer’s greatest stratagem in his bid to control the destiny of men was his invention of gold. Consider its qualities, and be consumed with admiration for the subtlety of Lucifer’s mind! It is his own colour, brilliant and yellow as the Sun. It never tarnishes. It is malleable and ductile enough to be worked into all manner of objects. It is as permanent as it is heavy. It contains no imperfection. As long as men have existed, they have worshipped gold, and in doing so, worshipped Lucifer. Men kill for it. They hoard it. They base the economic prosperity of their societies on it. They conquer for it. They demonstrate their wealth by loading it upon their own selves and the bodies of their women, who hunger for it as an adornment. It goes into the tombs of the chieftains and emperors to tell future generations how great the power of the dead man.

“‘In my thirty-fifth year I was entrusted with the custody of the gold hoarded by a man given entirely over to Lucifer, though I did not see it at the time. This gold was in many forms-coins, jewellery, ornaments, objects. My master removed the precious stones from the jewellery and gave me the gold mountings, chains, pieces. I was to melt it down, remove any impurities, and cast the gold into ingots. Then I was to bring him the ingots. But the actual refining of the ingots had to be conducted in complete secrecy, so much so that my master refused to let me tell him whereabouts I would do this work.’”

His face had taken on a dreamy look; Mary scribbled with her pencil and said nothing, waiting out the pause.

“‘He knew I would not betray him, for he owned my soul. I remembered the moors and caves of the Peak District, and found a huge cave that now functions as my laboratory. It was perfect for my purposes, even including, in close proximity, a hidden cave in which I could stable the donkeys which brought in my requirements during the nights. When I had set myself up, I gave my helpers poisoned rum to drink, then threw them down a hole into the darkness. For six months I toiled, melting down the gold into ten-pound ingots-a smaller size than is usual, but I needed something of a weight that I myself could carry. I was young then, and wiry.

“‘And when my work was done, I went to explore the caves, and so found the dark Who is God. It was a revelation in many ways, far beyond the pillars of Cosmogenesis. For I looked on the gold ingots and saw them for what they were-the work of Lucifer. The property of Lucifer. The instrument of Lucifer. And I understood that my master was Lucifer’s servant in every way. Therefore he should not have his gold. I took it and I hid it far from the laboratory cave, and I never went back to my old master.

“‘I remained with God in the darkness for many moons. How much of Lucifer’s Sun time passed, I do not know. But when finally I emerged I was changed. Gold had no power over me, or any other of Lucifer’s tricks. Stark white spiders weaved their colourless strands over the gold, a mouldering that threw Lucifer’s power in his face as of no moment, a nothing. And there it sits to this day, in the darkness of God, rendered null and void.’”

Putting down her pencil, Mary stared at Father Dominus with awe and a new respect. “You are a singularity, Father,” she said. “You are a bigot and a tyrant, but you have had the strength to withstand the lure of gold.”

Working his muscles as if they hurt, he got to his feet. “I am tired,” he said on a whisper. “Copy that, please.”

“Gladly, but more gladly still if you would send me Therese.”

But, as was his wont, he had disappeared in a twinkle, and she could not be sure he had even heard her.

What a story! Was it true? Father Dominus could and did lie, but somehow this tale of gold had the ring of truth about it. Yet who could this mythical master have been, to have accumulated so much gold that it took Father Dominus six months to refine it? And would he really permit the publication of something that described with no emotion the murder of a number of helpers?

Her dinner came-a beefsteak with mushrooms, creamed potatoes, and, for dessert, a slice of steamed treacle pudding. A reward for putting her dictator on the right road again, she divined. Not one to look gift horses in the mouth, Mary demolished the meal with real enjoyment, and felt the strength flow into her. Perhaps he wasn’t mad, she thought, stomach full and attitude unusually benign.

Which did not last beyond the morrow, when Father Dominus came looking dishevelled and sleepless, sat down in his chair and proceeded to give her a treatise on the chemistry of gold and how to refine it. It seemed she had to ask him how to spell every fourth or fifth word, so larded was it with abstruse terms, and that shredded his temper.

“Learn to spell, madam!” he shouted, jumping up in a rage. “I am not here to serve as your lexicon!”

“I can spell extremely well, Father, but I am not an apothecary or a chemist! When I ask you to spell a word, that word is strange to my experience! If your subject were music, I would not need to ask how to spell glissando or toccata, for I am a proficient in music. But what you have dictated to me today is a closed book.”

“Pah!” he spat, and vanished.