Guilt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  She felt all the force of that comparison; but not as her sister had hoped, to urge her to exertion now; she felt it with all the pain of continual self-reproach, regretted most bitterly that she had never exerted herself before; but it brought only the torture of penitence, without the hope of amendment. Her mind was so much weakened that she still fancied present exertion impossible, and therefore it only dispirited her more. Nothing new was heard by them, for a day or two afterwards, of affairs in Harley Street, or Bartlett’s Buildings. But though so much of the matter was known to them already, that Mrs. Jennings might have had enough to do in spreading that knowledge farther, without seeking after more, she had resolved from the first to pay a visit of comfort and inquiry to her cousins as soon as she could; and nothing but the hindrance of more visitors than usual, had prevented her going to them within that time. The third day succeeding their knowledge of the particulars, was so fine, so beautiful a Sunday as to draw many to Kensington Gardens, though it was only the second week in March. Mrs. Jennings and Elinor were of the number; but Marianne, who knew that the Willoughbys were again in town, and had a constant dread of meeting them, chose rather to stay at home, than venture into so public a place. An intimate acquaintance of Mrs. Jennings joined them soon after they entered the Gardens, and Elinor was not sorry that by her continuing with them, and engaging all Mrs. Jennings’s conversation, she was herself left to quiet reflection. She saw nothing of the Willoughbys, nothing of Edward, and for some time nothing of anybody who could by any chance whether grave or gay, be interesting to her. But at last she found herself with some surprise, accosted by Miss Steele, who, though looking rather shy, expressed great satisfaction in meeting them, and on receiving encouragement from the particular kindness of Mrs. Jennings, left her own party for a short time, to join their’s. Mrs. Jennings immediately whispered to Elinor, “Get it all out of her, my dear. She will tell you any thing if you ask. You see I cannot leave Mrs. Clarke.” It was lucky, however, for Mrs. Jennings’s curiosity and Elinor’s too, that she would tell any thing _without_ being asked; for nothing would otherwise have been learnt. “I am so glad to meet you;” said Miss Steele, taking her familiarly by the arm—“for I wanted to see you of all things in the world.” And then lowering her voice, “I suppose Mrs. Jennings has heard all about it. Is she angry?” “Not at all, I believe, with you.” “That is a good thing. And Lady Middleton, is _she_ angry?” “I cannot suppose it possible that she should be.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Aye, I believe that will be best for her. Let her name her own supper, and go to bed. Lord! no wonder she has been looking so bad and so cast down this last week or two, for this matter I suppose has been hanging over her head as long as that. And so the letter that came today finished it! Poor soul! I am sure if I had had a notion of it, I would not have joked her about it for all my money. But then you know, how should I guess such a thing? I made sure of its being nothing but a common love letter, and you know young people like to be laughed at about them. Lord! how concerned Sir John and my daughters will be when they hear it! If I had my senses about me I might have called in Conduit Street in my way home, and told them of it. But I shall see them tomorrow.” “It would be unnecessary I am sure, for you to caution Mrs. Palmer and Sir John against ever naming Mr. Willoughby, or making the slightest allusion to what has passed, before my sister. Their own good-nature must point out to them the real cruelty of appearing to know any thing about it when she is present; and the less that may ever be said to myself on the subject, the more my feelings will be spared, as you my dear madam will easily believe.” “Oh! Lord! yes, that I do indeed. It must be terrible for you to hear it talked of; and as for your sister, I am sure I would not mention a word about it to her for the world. You saw I did not all dinner time. No more would Sir John, nor my daughters, for they are all very thoughtful and considerate; especially if I give them a hint, as I certainly will. For my part, I think the less that is said about such things, the better, the sooner ’tis blown over and forgot. And what good does talking ever do you know?” “In this affair it can only do harm; more so perhaps than in many cases of a similar kind, for it has been attended by circumstances which, for the sake of every one concerned in it, make it unfit to become the public conversation. I must do _this_ justice to Mr. Willoughby—he has broken no positive engagement with my sister.” “Law, my dear! Don’t pretend to defend him. No positive engagement indeed! after taking her all over Allenham House, and fixing on the very rooms they were to live in hereafter!”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  She then left the room; and Elinor dared not follow her to say more, for bound as she was by her promise of secrecy to Lucy, she could give no information that would convince Marianne; and painful as the consequences of her still continuing in an error might be, she was obliged to submit to it. All that she could hope, was that Edward would not often expose her or himself to the distress of hearing Marianne’s mistaken warmth, nor to the repetition of any other part of the pain that had attended their recent meeting—and this she had every reason to expect. CHAPTER XXXVI. Within a few days after this meeting, the newspapers announced to the world, that the lady of Thomas Palmer, Esq. was safely delivered of a son and heir; a very interesting and satisfactory paragraph, at least to all those intimate connections who knew it before. This event, highly important to Mrs. Jennings’s happiness, produced a temporary alteration in the disposal of her time, and influenced, in a like degree, the engagements of her young friends; for as she wished to be as much as possible with Charlotte, she went thither every morning as soon as she was dressed, and did not return till late in the evening; and the Miss Dashwoods, at the particular request of the Middletons, spent the whole of every day in Conduit Street. For their own comfort they would much rather have remained, at least all the morning, in Mrs. Jennings’s house; but it was not a thing to be urged against the wishes of everybody. Their hours were therefore made over to Lady Middleton and the two Miss Steeles, by whom their company, in fact was as little valued, as it was professedly sought. They had too much sense to be desirable companions to the former; and by the latter they were considered with a jealous eye, as intruding on _their_ ground, and sharing the kindness which they wanted to monopolize. Though nothing could be more polite than Lady Middleton’s behaviour to Elinor and Marianne, she did not really like them at all. Because they neither flattered herself nor her children, she could not believe them good-natured; and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical; but _that_ did not signify. It was censure in common use, and easily given.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Even so. You would be surprised to hear how often I watched you, how often I was on the point of falling in with you. I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight, as the carriage drove by. Lodging as I did in Bond Street, there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant watchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing desire to keep out of your sight, could have separated us so long. I avoided the Middletons as much as possible, as well as everybody else who was likely to prove an acquaintance in common. Not aware of their being in town, however, I blundered on Sir John, I believe, the first day of his coming, and the day after I had called at Mrs. Jennings’s. He asked me to a party, a dance at his house in the evening. Had he _not_ told me as an inducement that you and your sister were to be there, I should have felt it too certain a thing, to trust myself near him. The next morning brought another short note from Marianne—still affectionate, open, artless, confiding—everything that could make _my_ conduct most hateful. I could not answer it. I tried—but could not frame a sentence. But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of the day. If you _can_ pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was _then_. With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy lover to another woman! Those three or four weeks were worse than all. Well, at last, as I need not tell you, you were forced on me; and what a sweet figure I cut! what an evening of agony it was! Marianne, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me Willoughby in such a tone! Oh, God! holding out her hand to me, asking me for an explanation, with those bewitching eyes fixed in such speaking solicitude on my face! and Sophia, jealous as the devil on the other hand, looking all that was—Well, it does not signify; it is over now. Such an evening! I ran away from you all as soon as I could; but not before I had seen Marianne’s sweet face as white as death. _That_ was the last, last look I ever had of her; the last manner in which she appeared to me. It was a horrid sight! yet when I thought of her to-day as really dying, it was a kind of comfort to me to imagine that I knew exactly how she would appear to those, who saw her last in this world. She was before me, constantly before me, as I travelled, in the same look and hue.” A short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded. Willoughby first rousing himself, broke it thus:

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “It was necessary to my own pride. I could not bear to leave the country in a manner that might lead you, or the rest of the neighbourhood, to suspect any part of what had really passed between Mrs. Smith and myself—and I resolved therefore on calling at the cottage, in my way to Honiton. The sight of your dear sister, however, was really dreadful; and, to heighten the matter, I found her alone. You were all gone I do not know where. I had left her only the evening before, so fully, so firmly resolved within my self on doing right! A few hours were to have engaged her to me for ever; and I remember how happy, how gay were my spirits, as I walked from the cottage to Allenham, satisfied with myself, delighted with every body! But in this, our last interview of friendship, I approached her with a sense of guilt that almost took from me the power of dissembling. Her sorrow, her disappointment, her deep regret, when I told her that I was obliged to leave Devonshire so immediately—I never shall forget it—united too with such reliance, such confidence in me!—Oh, God!—what a hard-hearted rascal I was!” They were both silent for a few moments. Elinor first spoke. “Did you tell her that you should soon return?” “I do not know what I told her,” he replied, impatiently; “less than was due to the past, beyond a doubt, and in all likelihood much more than was justified by the future. I cannot think of it.—It won’t do.—Then came your dear mother to torture me farther, with all her kindness and confidence. Thank Heaven! it _did_ torture me. I was miserable. Miss Dashwood, you cannot have an idea of the comfort it gives me to look back on my own misery. I owe such a grudge to myself for the stupid, rascally folly of my own heart, that all my past sufferings under it are only triumph and exultation to me now. Well, I went, left all that I loved, and went to those to whom, at best, I was only indifferent. My journey to town—travelling with my own horses, and therefore so tediously—no creature to speak to—my own reflections so cheerful—when I looked forward every thing so inviting!—when I looked back at Barton, the picture so soothing!—oh, it was a blessed journey!” He stopped. “Well, sir,” said Elinor, who, though pitying him, grew impatient for his departure, “and this is all?” “All!—no:—have you forgot what passed in town? That infamous letter? Did she show it you?” “Yes, I saw every note that passed.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Mrs. Dashwood could think of no other question, and Thomas and the tablecloth, now alike needless, were soon afterwards dismissed. Marianne had already sent to say, that she should eat nothing more. Mrs. Dashwood’s and Elinor’s appetites were equally lost, and Margaret might think herself very well off, that with so much uneasiness as both her sisters had lately experienced, so much reason as they had often had to be careless of their meals, she had never been obliged to go without her dinner before. When the dessert and the wine were arranged, and Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor were left by themselves, they remained long together in a similarity of thoughtfulness and silence. Mrs. Dashwood feared to hazard any remark, and ventured not to offer consolation. She now found that she had erred in relying on Elinor’s representation of herself; and justly concluded that every thing had been expressly softened at the time, to spare her from an increase of unhappiness, suffering as she then had suffered for Marianne. She found that she had been misled by the careful, the considerate attention of her daughter, to think the attachment, which once she had so well understood, much slighter in reality, than she had been wont to believe, or than it was now proved to be. She feared that under this persuasion she had been unjust, inattentive, nay, almost unkind, to her Elinor;—that Marianne’s affliction, because more acknowledged, more immediately before her, had too much engrossed her tenderness, and led her away to forget that in Elinor she might have a daughter suffering almost as much, certainly with less self-provocation, and greater fortitude. CHAPTER XLVIII. Elinor now found the difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told to consider it, and certainty itself. She now found, that in spite of herself, she had always admitted a hope, while Edward remained single, that something would occur to prevent his marrying Lucy; that some resolution of his own, some mediation of friends, or some more eligible opportunity of establishment for the lady, would arise to assist the happiness of all. But he was now married; and she condemned her heart for the lurking flattery, which so much heightened the pain of the intelligence. That he should be married soon, before (as she imagined) he could be in orders, and consequently before he could be in possession of the living, surprised her a little at first. But she soon saw how likely it was that Lucy, in her self-provident care, in her haste to secure him, should overlook every thing but the risk of delay. They were married, married in town, and now hastening down to her uncle’s. What had Edward felt on being within four miles from Barton, on seeing her mother’s servant, on hearing Lucy’s message!

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  She felt all the force of that comparison; but not as her sister had hoped, to urge her to exertion now; she felt it with all the pain of continual self-reproach, regretted most bitterly that she had never exerted herself before; but it brought only the torture of penitence, without the hope of amendment. Her mind was so much weakened that she still fancied present exertion impossible, and therefore it only dispirited her more. Nothing new was heard by them, for a day or two afterwards, of affairs in Harley Street, or Bartlett’s Buildings. But though so much of the matter was known to them already, that Mrs. Jennings might have had enough to do in spreading that knowledge farther, without seeking after more, she had resolved from the first to pay a visit of comfort and inquiry to her cousins as soon as she could; and nothing but the hindrance of more visitors than usual, had prevented her going to them within that time. The third day succeeding their knowledge of the particulars, was so fine, so beautiful a Sunday as to draw many to Kensington Gardens, though it was only the second week in March. Mrs. Jennings and Elinor were of the number; but Marianne, who knew that the Willoughbys were again in town, and had a constant dread of meeting them, chose rather to stay at home, than venture into so public a place. An intimate acquaintance of Mrs. Jennings joined them soon after they entered the Gardens, and Elinor was not sorry that by her continuing with them, and engaging all Mrs. Jennings’s conversation, she was herself left to quiet reflection. She saw nothing of the Willoughbys, nothing of Edward, and for some time nothing of anybody who could by any chance whether grave or gay, be interesting to her. But at last she found herself with some surprise, accosted by Miss Steele, who, though looking rather shy, expressed great satisfaction in meeting them, and on receiving encouragement from the particular kindness of Mrs. Jennings, left her own party for a short time, to join their’s. Mrs. Jennings immediately whispered to Elinor, “Get it all out of her, my dear. She will tell you any thing if you ask. You see I cannot leave Mrs. Clarke.” It was lucky, however, for Mrs. Jennings’s curiosity and Elinor’s too, that she would tell any thing without being asked; for nothing would otherwise have been learnt. “I am so glad to meet you;” said Miss Steele, taking her familiarly by the arm—“for I wanted to see you of all things in the world.” And then lowering her voice, “I suppose Mrs. Jennings has heard all about it. Is she angry?” “Not at all, I believe, with you.” “That is a good thing. And Lady Middleton, is she angry?” “I cannot suppose it possible that she should be.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “She taxed me with the offence at once, and my confusion may be guessed. The purity of her life, the formality of her notions, her ignorance of the world—every thing was against me. The matter itself I could not deny, and vain was every endeavour to soften it. She was previously disposed, I believe, to doubt the morality of my conduct in general, and was moreover discontented with the very little attention, the very little portion of my time that I had bestowed on her, in my present visit. In short, it ended in a total breach. By one measure I might have saved myself. In the height of her morality, good woman! she offered to forgive the past, if I would marry Eliza. That could not be—and I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house. The night following this affair—I was to go the next morning—was spent by me in deliberating on what my future conduct should be. The struggle was great—but it ended too soon. My affection for Marianne, my thorough conviction of her attachment to me—it was all insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty, or get the better of those false ideas of the necessity of riches, which I was naturally inclined to feel, and expensive society had increased. I had reason to believe myself secure of my present wife, if I chose to address her, and I persuaded myself to think that nothing else in common prudence remained for me to do. A heavy scene however awaited me, before I could leave Devonshire;—I was engaged to dine with you on that very day; some apology was therefore necessary for my breaking this engagement. But whether I should write this apology, or deliver it in person, was a point of long debate. To see Marianne, I felt, would be dreadful, and I even doubted whether I could see her again, and keep to my resolution. In that point, however, I undervalued my own magnanimity, as the event declared; for I went, I saw her, and saw her miserable, and left her miserable—and left her hoping never to see her again.” “Why did you call, Mr. Willoughby?” said Elinor, reproachfully; “a note would have answered every purpose. Why was it necessary to call?”

• From The City of God

  339 Lecture 16 Transcript—The Two Cities and the Two Loves (Book 14) but living by the rule of flesh, attuned exclusively or primarily to this world, that is bad. So the cause of sin does not lie in our meat but in the soul, not fundamentally in our flesh, but in our attitude toward our flesh. What, then, is sin? Sin is, most fundamentally, to live according to the self, to live by the standard of man, which standard is self- destructive and self-deceptive. It was not flesh that dragged down and entrapped the material soul; rather, it was the sinful soul which made flesh corruptible. In fact, Augustine insists that the flesh itself is intrinsically good, not surprising giving his metaphysics of Creation. Even the pagans saw this, he said, in the Aeneid, he points out, souls return to bodies, and thinkers even like Cicero saw that turbulent emotions, the passions, are not the fault of the flesh, but of the soul’s wrong attachment to flesh. Even pain itself is due fundamentally to the soul, and not to the body, Augustine says, for it is caused by the soul’s misconnection to the body. His is not, then, a condemnation of human nature in its physicality, but an analysis of how that nature has gone wrong in itself, against itself. Human nature was changed in the Fall, Augustine says, and in rebelling against God humanity has rebelled as well against God’s order, and thus against itself. So what we are looking at, when we are looking at a descendant of Adam and Eve, is a self-harming creature, one literally doing its damnedest to escape the conditions of its own wholly gratuitous existence. Augustine unpacks this by his exposition of psychology of fallen humanity. As the first note of this exposition, Augustine insists that we are adoring beings. Humans are all alike in the fact that we love; even as we differ dramatically in the facts of what we love. The central organizing principle for ordering and differentiating all of humanity then is not belief, not action, not thinking; what differentiates the citizens of the two cities is their different objects of love and how they

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  I felt the tension rising in my right arm, and my right hand began to shake. I watched as the pot slowly rose from the edge of the sink, and the boiling water poured over the lip of the pot in slow motion onto my left hand as it rested upon the teapot. The water cascaded down, bounced off the back of my hand and flowed down the drain. I watched the brown skin cloud with steam, then turn red and shiny, and the poison began to run out of me like water as I fumbled at the buttons of my shirt cuff and peeled back the wet cloth from my scalded wrist. The steamed flesh had already started to blister. Walking into the staff room next door where the rest of my colleagues sat discussing book orders. “I’ve burned myself by mistake.” Then pain erupting into the space left empty by the draining away of the poison. Someone took me home in a taxi from the doctor’s office. It was Muriel who opened the door for me, and helped me off with my clothes. She did not ask what had happened. Next to the pain in my hand and wrist, everything else felt like it had never been. I fell immediately asleep. The next day I went to St. Vincent’s burn clinic, where the snake ring had to be cut away from the scalded swollen flesh. During the next few days, when I felt anything at all other than pain, it was guilt and embarrassment, as if I’d done an unforgivable and unmentionable act. Self-mutilation. Displaying a rage that was neither cool nor hip. Otherwise, I was quite empty of passion. Muriel and I never spoke of Jill nor of the accident. We were very guarded and tender with each other, and a little bit mournful, as if we were both acknowledging with our silence what was irretrievable. Jill had gone, to appear again some other time when one least expected her. She was not really important here, only what she represented. Now, most of all, when we needed the words between us, Muriel and I were both silent. What was lying between us had moved beyond our old speech, and we were both too lost and too frightened to attempt a new language. We went out with Joan and Nicky to celebrate Nicky’s birthday. My burns were healing. Luckily, there was no infection, and I had returned to work, wearing a white glove to hide the ugly scarring around my wrist and the back of my hand, oddly intertwined with new high-pink flesh. My mother had told me that cotton gloves and daily rubs with cocoa butter would keep the heavy keloid scars from forming, and she was right. Muriel and I made love for the last time on May 20th. It was the night before my final exams at college. The house was empty when I got home the next day. I’d come home early to study.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  She had placed him in the hands of the Lord, and she waited with patience to see how He would work the matter. For she would live to see the promise of the Lord fulfilled. She would not go to her rest until her son, the last of her children, he who would place her in the winding-sheet, should have entered the communion of the saints. Now she, who had been impatient once, and violent, who had cursed and shouted and contended like a man, moved into silence, contending only, and with the last measure of her strength, with God. And this, too, she did like a man: knowing that she had kept the faith, she waited for Him to keep His promise. Gabriel knew that when he entered she would not ask him where he had been; she would not reproach him; and her eyes, even when she closed her lids to sleep, would follow him everywhere. Later, since it was Sunday, some of the brothers and sisters would come to her, to sing and pray around her bed. And she would pray for him, sitting up in bed unaided, her head lifted, her voice steady; while he, kneeling in a corner of the room, trembled and almost wished that she would die; and trembled again at this testimony to the desperate wickedness of his heart; and prayed without words to be forgiven. For he had no words when he knelt before the throne. And he feared to make a vow before Heaven until he had the strength to keep it. And yet he knew that until he made the vow he would never find the strength. For he desired in his soul, with fear and trembling, all the glories that his mother prayed he should find. Yes, he wanted power—he wanted to know himself to be the Lord’s anointed, His well-beloved, and worthy, nearly, of that snow-white dove which had been sent down from Heaven to testify that Jesus was the son of God. He wanted to be master, to speak with that authority which could only come from God. It was later to become his proud testimony that he hated his sins—even as he ran towards sin, even as he sinned. He hated the evil that lived in his body, and he feared it, as he feared and hated the lions of lust and longing that prowled the defenceless city of his mind.

• From The City of God

  451 Lecture 21 Transcript—Augustine’s Vision of Hell (Book 21) pray for the souls of those whom you know will not be saved. It would be a waste of breath in a way. In short, Augustine thinks, there is such a thing—and think about this idea—there is such a thing as bad mercy. The danger of this bad mercy is that our innate sympathy can see only the person set before us, the person suffering in Hell, and lure us to forget what brought them there. What are the crimes they committed? Who are their victims? It can make us forget, that is, the details of the crimes committed.It can silence the victims, erase them from the situation. It can overlook, in other words, the real problem, which is the wickedness that is intrinsic to the damned. This kind of bad mercy, this kind of spectatorial pity is actually, Augustine suggests, morally lazy. It does not compel itself to gather an honest assessment of the moral situation at hand; it simply finds unpleasant the idea that these people, so much like us, are suffering, and it wishes to stop them from suffering. In doing so, it implies that God somehow is making them suffer and that the cause of this suffering lies somehow most fundamentally outside of themselves. In this way, it is a kind of whining, much like the fruitless repentance suffered by the damned in Hell themselves. Well, if there is no way of getting out of Hell, what about the possibility that Hell is empty? What about the possibility of universal salvation? Can God’s anger last? So the various church practices that the merciful think might sponsor a belief in universalism, for Augustine, do not in fact sponsor that belief, he argues. There are distinct limits on God’s mercy, though they are unknown to us. But God knows them. The limits on mercy are in a way a part of God’s love for Creation, extended across time; for those limits give Creation a space to be what it will be, and not to be undone by God. That is a terrible honor that God gives to some creatures, to let them be whom they will be.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  He stood watching her, thinking of the many times he had watched her before, when her walk had been so different and her laughter had come ringing back to mock him. He stole the money while Deborah slept. And he gave it to Esther in the morning. She gave notice that same day, and a week later she was gone—to Chicago, said her parents, to find a better job and to have a better life. Deborah became more silent than ever in the weeks that followed. Sometimes he was certain she had discovered that the money was missing and knew that he had taken it—sometimes he was certain that she knew nothing. Sometimes he was certain that she knew everything: the theft, and the reason for the theft. But she did not speak. In the middle of the spring he went out into the field to preach, and was gone three months. When he came back he brought the money with him and put it in the box again. No money had been added in the meanwhile, so he still could not be certain whether Deborah knew or not. He decided to let it all be forgotten, and begin his life again. But the summer brought him a letter, with no return name or address, but postmarked from Chicago. Deborah gave it to him at breakfast, not seeming to have remarked the hand or the postmark, along with the bundle of tracts from a Bible house which they both distributed each week through the town. She had a letter, too, from Florence, and it was perhaps this novelty that distracted her attention. Esther’s letter ended: What I think is, I made a mistake, that’s true, and I’m paying for it now. But don’t you think you ain’t going to pay for it—I don’t know when and I don’t know bow, but I know you going to be brought low one of these fine days. I ain’t holy like you are, but I know right from wrong. I’m going to have my baby and I’m going to bring him up to be a man. And I ain’t going to read to him out of no Bibles and I ain’t going to take him to hear no preaching. If he don’t drink nothing but moonshine all his natural days he be a better man than his Daddy. ‘What Florence got to say?’ he asked dully, crumpling his letter in his fist. Deborah looked up with a faint smile. ‘Nothing much, honey. But she sound like she going to get married.’ Near the end of that summer he went out again into the field.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  And the hands of death caressed her shoulders, the voice whispered and whispered in her ear: ‘God’s got your number, knows where you live, death’s got a warrant out for you.’ GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN 2 GABRIEL’S PRAYER Now I been introduced To the Father and the Son, And I ain’t No stranger now. W HEN Florence cried, Gabriel was moving outward in fiery darkness, talking to the Lord. Her cry came to him from afar, as from unimaginable depths; and it was not his sister’s cry he heard, but the cry of the sinner when he is taken in his sin. This was the cry he had heard so many days and nights, before so many altars, and he cried to-night, as he had cried before: ‘Have your way, Lord! Have your way!’ Then there was only silence in the church. Even Praying Mother Washington had ceased to moan. Soon someone would cry again, and the voices would begin again; there would be music by and by, and shouting, and the sound of the tambourines. But now in this waiting, burdened silence it seemed that all flesh waited—paused, transfixed by something in the middle of the air—for the quickening power. This silence, continuing like a corridor, carried Gabriel back to the silence that had preceded his birth in Christ. Like a birth indeed, all that had come before this moment was wrapped in darkness, lay at the bottom of the sea of forgetfulness, and was not now counted against him, but was related only to that blind, and doomed, and stinking corruption he had been before he was redeemed. The silence was the silence of the early morning, and he was returning from the harlot’s house. Yet all around him were the sounds of the morning: of birds, invisible, praising God; of crickets in the vines, frogs in the swamp, of dogs miles away and close at hand, roosters on the porch. The sun was not yet half awake; only the utmost tops of trees had begun to tremble at his turning; and the mist moved sullenly before Gabriel and all around him, falling back before the light that rules by day. Later, he said of that morning that his sin was on him; then he knew only that he carried a burden and that he longed to lay it down. This burden was heavier than the heaviest mountain and he carried it in his heart. With each step that he took his burden grew heavier, and his breath became slow and harsh, and, of a sudden, cold sweat stood out on his brow and drenched his back. All alone in the cabin his mother lay waiting; not only for his return this morning, but for his surrender to the Lord. She lingered only for this, and he knew it, even though she no longer exhorted him as she had in days but shortly gone by.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AMBROSE. Or our adversary is the devil, who lays his baits for sin, that he may have those his partners in punishment who were his accomplices in crime; our adversary is also every vicious practice. Lastly, our adversary is an evil conscience, which affects us both in this world, and will accuse and betray us in the next. Let us then give heed, while we are in this life’s course, that we may be delivered from every bad act as from an evil enemy. Nay, while we are going with our adversary to the magistrate, as we are in the way, we should condemn our fault. But who is the magistrate, but He in whose hands is all power? But the Magistrate delivers the guilty to the Judge, that is, to Him, to whom He gives the power over the quick and dead, namely, Jesus Christ, through Whom the secrets are made manifest, and the punishment of wicked works awarded. He delivers to the officer, and the officer casts into prison, for He says, Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into outer darkness. (Matt. 22:12.) And he shews that His officers are the angels, of whom he says, The angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; (Matt. 13:49.) but it is added, I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence till thou hast paid the very last mite. For as they who pay money on interest do not get rid of the debt of interest before that the amount of the whole principal is paid even up to the least sum in every kind of payment, so by the compensation of love and the other acts, or by each particular kind of satisfaction the punishment of sin is cancelled.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  He could not stand his home, his job, the town itself—he could not endure, day in, day out, facing the scenes and the people he had known all his life. They seemed suddenly to mock him, to stand in judgment on him; he saw his guilt in everybody’s eyes. When he stood in the pulpit to preach they looked at him, he felt, as though he had no right to be there, as though they condemned him as he had once condemned the twenty-three elders. When souls came weeping to the altar he scarce dared to rejoice, remembering that soul who had not bowed, whose blood, it might be, would be required of him at judgment. So he fled from these people, and from these silent witnesses, to tarry and preach elsewhere—to do, as it were, in secret, his first works over, seeking again the holy fire that had so transformed him once. But he was to find, as the prophets had found, that the whole earth became a prison for him who fled before the Lord. There was peace nowhere, and healing nowhere, and forgetfulness nowhere. In every church he entered, his sin had gone before him. It was in the strange, the welcoming faces, it cried up to him from the altar, it sat, as he mounted the pulpit steps, waiting for him in his seat. It stared upward from his Bible: there was no word in all that holy book which did not make him tremble. When he spoke of John on the isle of Patmos, taken up in the spirit on the Lord’s day, to behold things past, present, and to come, saying: ‘he which is filthy, let him be filthy still,’ it was he who, crying these words in a loud voice, was utterly confounded; when he spoke of David, the shepherd boy, raised by God’s power to be the King of Israel, it was he who, while they shouted: ‘Amen!’ and: ‘Hallelujah!’ struggled once more in his chains; when he spoke of the day of Pentecost when the Holy Ghost had come down on the apostles who tarried in the upper room, causing them to speak in tongues of fire, he thought of his own baptism and how he had offended the Holy Ghost. No: though his name was writ large on placards, though they praised him for the great work God worked through him, and though they came, day and night, before him to the altar, there was no word in the Book for him.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  Rhea ran interference, making excuses to Bea as she went in and out of the apartment to work. Luckily, I had already quit my job at the Health Center, for Bea had gone there first. Bea sat on the landing for two days, with quick forays downstairs to the corner foodshop for Cokes and trips to the john. She finally gave up and went back to Philadelphia. She left me a note saying that what she really wanted to know was why, this way. I couldn’t tell her; I didn’t know why myself. But I felt like a monster. I had made a desperate bid for self-preservation—or what felt like self-preservation—in the only way I knew how. I hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. But I had. I promised myself never to get involved like that again. Guilt can be very useful. For the three days this went on in the hallway, Rhea was her usual quizzical and accepting self. I had to tell her about the affair, couched in the fact that it was now over. What she thought about Bea I never stopped long enough to ask, but what she said made good sense to me. “Just because you’re strong doesn’t mean you can let other people depend on you too much. It’s not fair to them, because when you can’t be what they want they’re disappointed, and you feel bad.” Rhea was sometimes very wise, just not for herself. I never forgot that conversation, and we never discussed Bea again. I left for Mexico a week later. It was eleven months after I had come back from Stamford, and two weeks before my nineteenth birthday. I leaned back in my airplane seat, in the first skirt I’d bought in two years. The Air France night flight to Mexico City was half-empty. Rhea had made a surprise going-away party for me the night before, but even so I had been hounded by nightmares of arriving at the airport with no clothes on, or having forgotten my suitcases, or my passport, or neglected to buy a ticket. Not until I looked down and saw the lights of the city spread like electric lace across the night, did I actually believe I had gotten out of New York in one piece and under my own steam. Alive. In the back of my head, I could hear Bea sobbing disconsolately in the stairwell. I felt like I was fleeing New York with the hounds of hell at my heels. The stewardess was very solicitous of me.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Look like I couldn’t nohow forget… how they done me way back there when I weren’t nothing but a girl.’ She paused and looked away. ‘But, Gabriel, if you’d said something even when that poor girl was buried, if you’d wanted to own that poor boy, I wouldn’t nohow of cared what folks said, or where we might of had to go, or nothing. I’d have raised him like my own, I swear to my God I would have—and he might be living now.’ ‘Deborah,’ he asked, ‘what you been thinking all this time?’ She smiled. ‘I been thinking,’ she said, ‘how you better commence to tremble when the Lord, He gives you your heart’s desire.’ She paused. ‘I’d been wanting you since I wanted anything. And then I got you.’ He walked back to the window, tears rolling down his face. ‘Honey,’ she said, in another, stronger voice, ‘you better pray God to forgive you. You better not let go until He make you know you been forgiven.’ ‘Yes,’ he sighed, ‘I’m waiting on the Lord.’ Then there was only silence, except for the rain. The rain came down in buckets; it was raining, as they said, pitchforks and nigger babies. Lightning flashed again across the sky and thunder rolled. ‘Listen,’ said Gabriel. ‘God is talking.’ Slowly now, he rose from his knees, for half the church was standing: Sister Price, Sister McCandless, and Praying Mother Washington; and the young Ella Mae sat in her chair watching Elisha where he lay. Florence and Elizabeth were still on their knees; and John was on his knees. And, rising, Gabriel thought of how the Lord had led him to this church so long ago, and how Elizabeth, one night after he had preached, had walked this long aisle to the altar, to repent before God her sin. And then they had married, for he believed her when she said that she was changed—and she was the sign, she and her nameless child, for which he had tarried so many dark years before the Lord. It was as though, when he saw them, the Lord had returned to him again that which was lost. Then, as he stood with the others over the fallen Elisha, John rose from his knees. He bent a dazed, sleepy, frowning look on Elisha and the others, shivering a little as though he were cold; and then he felt his father’s eyes and looked up at his father. At the same moment, Elisha, from the floor, began to speak in a tongue of fire, under the power of the Holy Ghost. John and his father stared at each other, struck dumb and still and with something come to life between them—while the Holy Ghost spoke.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  And there was silence again. Then: ‘And you sent that girl away, didn’t you? With the money outen that box?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes.’ ‘Gabriel,’ she asked, ‘why did you do it? Why you let her go off and die, all by herself? Why ain’t you never said nothing?’ And now he could not answer. He could not raise his head. ‘Why?’ she insisted. ‘Honey, I ain’t never asked you. But I got a right to know—and when you wanted a son so bad?’ Then, shaking, he rose from the table and walked slowly to the window, looking out. ‘I asked my God to forgive me,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t want no harlot’s son.’ ‘Esther weren’t no harlot,’ she said quietly. ‘She weren’t my wife. I couldn’t make her my wife. I already had you ’—and he said the last words with venom—‘Esther’s mind weren’t on the Lord—she’d of dragged me right on down to Hell with her.’ ‘She mighty near has,’ said Deborah. ‘The Lord He held me back,’ he said, hearing the thunder, watching the lightning. ‘He put out His hand and held me back.’ Then, after a moment, turning back into the room: ‘I couldn’t of done nothing else,’ he cried, ‘what else could I of done? Where could I of gone with Esther, and me a preacher, too? And what could I of done with you?’ He looked at her, old and black and patient, smelling of sickness and age and death. ‘Ah,’ he said, his tears still falling, ‘I bet you was mighty happy to-day, old lady, weren’t you? When she told you he, Royal, my son, was dead. You ain’t never had no son.’ And he turned again to the window. Then: ‘How long you been knowing about this?’ ‘I been knowing,’ she said, ‘ever since that evening, way back there, when Esther come to church.’ ‘You got a evil mind,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t never touched her then.’ ‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘but you had already done touched me. ’ He moved a little from the window and stood looking down at her from the foot of the bed. ‘Gabriel,’ she said, ‘I been praying all these years that the Lord would touch my body, and make me like them women, all them women, you used to go with all the time.’ She was very calm; her face was very bitter and patient. ‘Look like it weren’t His will.

• From The City of God

  [723] Gen. vi. 6, and 1 Sam. xv. 11. [724] Eccles. vii. 29. [725] 1 John viii. 36. [726] 1 Tim. ii. 14. [727] Rom. v. 12. [728] Gen. iii. 12. Chapter 12. --Of the Nature of Man's First Sin. If any one finds a difficulty in understanding why other sins do not alter human nature as it was altered by the transgression of those first human beings, so that on account of it this nature is subject to the great corruption we feel and see, and to death, and is distracted and tossed with so many furious and contending emotions, and is certainly far different from what it was before sin, even though it were then lodged in an animal body,--if, I say, any one is moved by this, he ought not to think that that sin was a small and light one because it was committed about food, and that not bad nor noxious, except because it was forbidden; for in that spot of singular felicity God could not have created and planted any evil thing. But by the precept He gave, God commended obedience, which is, in a sort, the mother and guardian of all the virtues in the reasonable creature, which was so created that submission is advantageous to it, while the fulfillment of its own will in preference to the Creator's is destruction. And as this commandment enjoining abstinence from one kind of food in the midst of great abundance of other kinds was so easy to keep,--so light a burden to the memory,--and, above all, found no resistance to its observance in lust, which only afterwards sprung up as the penal consequence of sin, the iniquity of violating it was all the greater in proportion to the ease with which it might have been kept.