I saw myself,
Frances, Mabel too especially, on the rack, while that odious figure of
cruelty and darkness stood over us and ordered the awful handles turned
in order that we might be "saved"--forced, that is, to think and believe
exactly as she thought and believed.
I found relief for my somewhat childish indignation by letting myself
loose upon the organ then. The flood of Bach and Beethoven brought back
the sense of proportion. It proved, however, at the same time that there
had been this growth of distortion in me, and that it had been provided
apparently by my closer contact--for the first time--with that funereal
personality, the woman who, like her master, believed that all holding
views of God that differed from her own, must be damned eternally. It
gave me, moreover, some faint clue perhaps, though a clue I was unequal
of following up, to the nature of the strife and terror and frustrate
influence in the house. That housekeeper had to do with it. She kept it
alive. Her thought was like a spell she waved above her mistress's head.
Chapter VII
That night I was wakened by a hurried tapping at my door, and before I
could answer, Frances stood beside my bed.
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