Awakening Read Online Free Page A

years. Every modern town, the suave Mr Montagu wryly remarked, should have a Village Darwin as its idiot, a Lesser Baboon, if one might so phrase it. He and Papa attended a lecture on the mutability of species by Mr Lee the analytical chemist. Mr Montagu was well pleased with his own contribution to the debate; he’d shot a whole quiverful of arrows into the soft belly of the undereducated fellow. They say one comes to look like one’s dog or one’s hobby horse: in the case of poor Mr Lee there’s a speaking simian likeness, Mr Montagu observed.
    Papa was quiet; he didn’t throw stones. In our day, he muttered, shaking his head, it seems most naturalists are infidels. And poor Papa did not make a good death. But that was his illness.
    Curious expectation murmurs round the chapel. The deacons, seated in a row facing the flock, swivel their heads as one. There’s a sudden stillness, a rustle; the preacher slips through the partially open door – and is not Mr Idris Jones of Bedwellty but Mr Clifford of Praed Street in London.
    Easy, all too easy, to fall headlong for a young man floating aloft in a shabby coat and the mercy of Christ Jesus in his eyes. So easy if you cared a fig about young men. Anna can’t seem to melt feelings of friendship into passionate attraction to any of the eligible young ministers who visit Sarum House. She remains cool, comradely. John Clifford, introduced by Mr Elias in glowing terms, is a shy-looking soul in his twenties, pale hair beginning to recede. He looks as if he never ate cake; his face is all angles and points. At the same time he’d be glad to see you eating cake. Anna glances sidelong at Beatrice: she’s taken up with the wrigglings of Tom and Jack Elias, who, managing to dodge their ma (and how willing Loveday is to be dodged), have nabbed a place at the outer end of the pew.
    Yes, a lovely man, to whom Beatrice will surely be susceptible, having collected in her time reverend followers as a cat laps cream, turning from one to another in a whirl of bewilderment, finding that none could offer the thing (what is it?) that she craves. As one does crave, Anna thinks. Above them all towers Christian Ritter for whom – ever since she was a girl – Papa intended poor Beatrice.
    What Anna herself desires, she cannot exactly fathom. An end to pain and physical weakness would be a start. Beyond that: some urgent scope denied to her. Action. Vocation. Rather than sitting here under the pastor’s spell, Anna imagines being the pastor, up on a public stage, offering milk and honey from her lips, and bitter herbs too. To be the mouth rather than the ears.
    Foot-binding. Mr Thoms brought home from the mission to China a pair of doll-sized slippers. He told of women mincing on crippled feet; they were considered more beautiful when deformed. Anna said, ‘Oh yes, Mr Thoms, we have that here but less blatantly.’ Beatrice kicked her under the table. Mr Thoms looked mildly puzzled. Silenced, Anna exploded inwardly: our tongues are bound, our brains are bound. Women are not fully awake; never have been. One is condemned for thinking – and thinking aloud – oh, heresy! This farce, this hypocrisy, this stupefaction! With every throb of rebellion, Anna finds transient relief from her spasms. The spirit of the Puritan Pentecosts scintillates in Anna’s veins, hot as the brandy Mr Sala brings to relax her pain, as he puts it, and for a while it does.
    Mirrie Sala, intellectual, freethinking, has somehow got away. Or rather she’s got away with it. How did she do that? I don’t believe I shall, Anna thinks. The worst thing about being ill is being unable to ride Spirit. Anna can hardly bear to meet her pony’s melting eyes.
    I’ll get better. I’ll ride again, she promises herself. I will write if I cannot speak.
    She hears the word slave and pays attention. Mr Elias, introducing Mr Clifford, explains that Mr Idris Jones