No More Learning

No Nature-worship, please 1 Her father had warned her against
Nature-worship She had heard him preach more than one sermon against it; it
was, he said, mere pantheism, and, what seemed to offend him even more, a
disgusting modem fad Dorothy took a thorn of the wild rose, and pricked her
arm three times, to remind herself of the Three Persons of the Trinity, before



288 A Clergyman's Daughter

climbing over the gate and remounting her bicycle

A black, very dusty shovel hat was approaching round the corner of the
hedge It was Father McGuire, the Roman Catholic priest, also bicycling his
rounds He was a very large, rotund man, so large that he dwarfed the bicycle
beneath him and seemed to be balanced on top of it like a golf-ball on a tee His
face was rosy, humorous, and a little sly

Dorothy looked suddenly unhappy She turned pink, and her hand moved
instinctively to the neighbourhood of the gold cross beneath her dress Father
McGuire was riding towards her with an untroubled, faintly amused air She
made an endeavour to smile, and murmured unhappily, ‘Good morning 1 But
he rode on without a sign, his eyes swept easily over her face and then beyond
her into vacancy, with an admirable pretence of not having noticed her
existence It was the Cut Direct Dorothy-by nature, alas' unequal to
delivering the Cut Direct- got on to her bicycle and rode away, struggling with
the uncharitable thoughts which a meeting with Father McGuire never failed
to arouse m her

Five or six years earlier, when Father McGuire was holding a funeral in St
Athelstan’s churchyard (there was no Roman Catholic cemetery at Knype
Hill), there had been some dispute with the Rector about the propriety of
Father McGuire robing in the church, or not robing in the church, and the two
priests had wrangled disgracefully over the open grave Since then they had
not been on speaking terms It was better so, the Rector said

As to the other ministers of religion m Knype Hill-Mr Ward the
Congregationalist minister, Mr Foley the Wesleyan pastor, and the braying
bald-headed elder who conducted the orgies at Ebenezer Chapel-the Rector
called them a pack of vulgar Dissenters and had forbidden Dorothy on pain of
his displeasure to have anything to do with them


5


It was twelve o’clock In the large, dilapidated conservatory, whose roof-
panes, from the action of time and dirt, were dim, green, and iridescent like old
Roman glass, they were having a hurried and noisy rehearsal of Charles I
Dorothy was not actually taking part in the rehearsal, but was busy making
costumes She made the costumes, or most of them, for all the plays the
schoolchildren acted- The production and stage management were m the
hands of Victor Stone-Victor, Dorothy called him-the Church school-
master He was a small-boned, excitable, black-haired youth of twenty-seven,
dressed in dark sub-clerical clothes, and at this moment he was gesturing
fiercely with a roll of manuscript at six dense-lookmg children On a long
bench against the wall four more children were alternately practising ‘noises



A Clergyman’s Daughter 289

off’ by clashing fire-irons together, and squabbling over a grimy little bag of
Spearmint Bouncers, forty a penny

It was horribly hot in the conservatory, and there was a powerful smell of
glue and the sour sweat of children Dorothy was kneeling on the floor, with
her mouth full of pms and a pair of shears in her hand, rapidly slicing sheets of
brown paper into long narrow strips The glue-pot was bubbling on an oil-
stove beside her, behind her, on the rickety, ink-stained work-table, were a
tangle of half-finished costumes, more sheets of brown paper, her sewing-
machine, bundles of tow, shards of dry glue, wooden swords, and open pots of
paint With half her mmd Dorothy was meditating upon the two pairs of
seventeenth-century jackboots that had got to be made for Charles I and
Oliver Cromwell, and with the other half listening to the angry shouts of
Victor, who was working himself up into a rage, as he invariably did at
rehearsals He was a natural actor, and withal thoroughly bored by the
drudgery of rehearsing half-witted children He strode up and down,
haranguing the children m a vehement slangy style, and every now and then
breaking off to lunge at one or other of them with a wooden sword that he had
grabbed from the table

Tut a bit of life into it, can’t you 5 ’ he cried, plodding an ox-faced boy of
eleven in the belly ‘Don’t drone 1 Say it as if it meant something' You look like
a corpse that’s been buried and dug up again What’s the good of gurgling it
down m your inside like that 5 Stand up and shout at him Take off that second
murderer expression' 5

‘Come here, Percy' 5 cried Dorothy through her pins ‘Quick 1 ’

She was making the armour-the worst job of the lot, except those wretched
jackboots-out of glue and brown paper From long practice Dorothy could
make very nearly anything out of glue and brown paper, she could even make a
passably good periwig, with a brown paper skull-cap and dyed tow for the hair
Taking the year through, the amount of time she spent m struggling with glue,
brown paper, butter muslin, and all the other paraphernalia of amateur
theatricals was           So chronic was the need of money for all the church
funds that hardly a month ever passed when there was not a school play or a
pageant or an exhibition of tableaux vivants on hand-not to mention the
bazaars and jumble sales

As Percy-Percy Jowett, the blacksmith’s son, a small curly-headed boy-got
down from the bench and stood wriggling unhappily before her, Dorothy
seized a sheet of brown paper, measured it against him, snipped out the
neckhole and armholes, draped it round his middle and rapidly pinned it into
the shape of a rough breastplate There was a confused dm of voices.