Alice in Bed Read Free

Miss James! Most people intend to read our Lord’s words but never get round to it. I always say, you could die tomorrow, and then where would you be?”
    I refrain from pointing out that the Old Testament surely cannot contain “our Lord’s words.” I explain that I was not in the habit of reading scripture and had no idea the Bible was full of so many abominations; indeed, when it comes to smitings, abominations, plagues, stonings, and the like, the Old Testament must have no equal.
    â€œAh yes, that is why we find the New Testament far safer, Miss James. Particularly for ladies.” He is smooth as oil, this Roger Yardley. He has for the most part avoided looking directly at me, no doubt finding me quite hideous.
    Nurse glides through the room again, now in her woolen cloak, carrying her marketing basket, eyes cast down in her angelic mode, one of her standards. I watch the cleric’s hand slide into his Gladstone bag and emerge with a stack of tracts, which he places on the table between us. I read, upside down: The Wages of Sin is Death. (Shouldn’t it be are death? And since everyone dies, isn’t that an empty threat?) He asks if I’d like him to read to me, and I say, “Oh, no, thank you. Nurse is reading to me just now, from Tolstoy.” He looks perplexed. Only after he leaves will I realize that he was proposing to read one of the tracts to me.
    He and I lumber down several unpromising conversational paths. He asks me about the nature of my suffering, and I give a garbled account of suppressed gout, mind cramps, useless legs, attacks of panic, and am just about to describe the dreadful sensation of snakes coiling and uncoiling in my stomach that afflicts me just as I am falling asleep when I notice his glazed smile. In a flash, I see myself through his eyes: a boring invalid, full of peculiar fancies, pathetically grateful for a few kind words from a handsome young cleric.
    How far I have fallen and how quickly, too! Six months ago, in London, I presided briefly over what Henry referred to as my “salon,” and fashionable Londoners would call every Wednesday morning to sample my American drolleries. Even Fanny Kemble, the great actress, came, and her entrance never failed to be dramatic, owing to her breathlessness and pallor after the ordeal of my staircase. Although she was gracious and went around telling people about the “so very clever and droll Miss James,” I felt self-conscious in her presence, having heard that American women made her think of white mice shrieking. William’s friends from the Society for Psychical Research also came and discoursed amusingly about mediums and “beings.”
    Then my legs collapsed again, and I had to give up London for tranquil Leamington. (Tranquil is a kind way of putting it.) Katherine and I had a lovely two months here, until Louisa’s lungs went downhillagain and K was summoned home. And here I am, stranded in the Midlands, unable to walk, far from every soul I have ever known. (But I shan’t sink into self-pity and become a bore even to myself.)
    The parson has been talking about the weather and from there has managed to leapfrog nimbly to Nature, in which he naturally discerns the hand of the Creator.
    â€œYou have heard of Mr. Charles Darwin, I suppose?” I say.
    â€œNaturally, Miss James.” His jaw muscles work yeomanlike at his chewing.
    â€œThen you must know that Nature is just one thing eating a smaller thing all the way down. Even the birds seem to spend most of their time trying to peck one another’s eyes out.”
    â€œMiss James, I think you would be persuaded to change your mind if you were to read Bishop Paley. He gives this example: If a person who has never seen a watch were walking through a wood and came upon one, he would know immediately that it had been designed and could not have arisen by chance. So too with the human frame and the complex working of