’
That was fatal, of course Never, never, never throw yourself on the mercy
of a child* There was an instant’s hush, and then one child cried out, loudly
and derisively, ‘Mill-iee 1 ’ The next moment the whole class had taken it up.
That was fatal, of course Never, never, never throw yourself on the mercy
of a child* There was an instant’s hush, and then one child cried out, loudly
and derisively, ‘Mill-iee 1 ’ The next moment the whole class had taken it up.
Orwell - A Clergyman's Daughter
Sets up a kmd of a ’umming inside of ’im,
’e says
daddy When I was a boy we didn’t live on this ’ere bread and marg and tea
and suchlike trash Good solid tommy we ’ad in them days Beefstoo Black
pudden Bacon dumpling Pig’s ’ead Fed like a fighting-cock on a tanner a
3 50 A Clergyman' s Daughter
day And now fifty year I’ve ’ad of it on the toby Spud-grabbing, pea-
pickmg, lambing, turnip-toppmg-everythink And sleeping m wet straw
and not once in a year you don’t fill your guts right full Well-! [Retires
mthvn his coat ]
mrs mcelligot But he was real bold, Michael was He’d go m anywhere
Many’s de time we’ve broke into an empty house an’ kipped m de best bed
‘Other people got homes,’ he’d say ‘Why shouln’t we have’m too*’
ginger [singing] But I’m dan-cing with tears-m my eyes-
mr tallboys [ to himself] Absumet haeres Caecuba digmor 1 To think that there
were twenty-one bottles of Clos St Jacques 1911m my cellar still, that night
when the baby was born and I left for London on the milk train!
mrs wayne And as for the wreaths we ’as sent us when our mother died- well,
you wouldn’t believe' ’Uge, they was
mrs Bendigo If I’ad my time over again I’d marry for bloody money
ginger [singing]
But I’m dan-cing with tears-in my eyes-
’Cos the girl-m my arms-isn’t you-o-ou'
nosy watson Some of you lot think you got a bloody lot to howl about, don’t
you? What about a poor sod like me? You wasn’t narked into the stir when
you was eighteen year old, was you?
the kike OhJ e-e-eeeze'
Charlie Ginger, you can’t smg no more’n a perishing tomcat with the guts-
ache Just you listen to me I’ll give y’a treat [Singing] Jesu, lover of my
soul-
mr tallboys [to himself] Et ego in Crockford With Bishops and
Archbishops and with all the Company of Heaven
nosy watson D’you know how I got m the stir the first time? Narked by my
own sister-yes, my own bloody sister' My sister’s a cow if ever there was
one She got married to a religious maniac-he’s so bloody religious that
she’s got fifteen kids now-well, it was him put her up to narking me But I
got back on ’em, I can tell you First thing, I done when I come out of the
stir, I buys a hammer and goes round to my sister’s house, and smashed her
piano to bloody matchwood ‘There 1 ’ I says, ‘that’s what you get for narking
me' You nosing mare ' 5 1 says
dorothy This cold, this cold! I don’t know whether my feet are there or not
mrs mcelligot Bloody tea don’t warm you for long, do it? I’m fair froze
myself,
mr tallboys [to himself] My curate days, my curate days' My fancy work
bazaars and morris-dancers in aid of on the village green, my lectures to the
Mothers’ Union-missionary work in Western China with fourteen magic
lantern slides' My Boys’ Cricket Club, teetotallers only, my Confirmation
classes -purity lecture once monthly in the Parish Hall-my Boy Scout
orgies' The Wolf Cubs will deliver the Grand Howl Household Hints for
the Parish Magazine, ‘Discarded fountain-pen fillers can be used as enemas
for canaries ’
Charlie [singing] Jesu, lover of my soul-
A Clergyman’s Daughter 351
GINGER ’Ere comes the bleeding flattie' Get up off the ground, all of you
[Daddy emerges from his overcoat ]
the policeman [shaking the sleepers on the next bench ] Now then, wake up,
wake up' Rouse up, you' Got to go home if you want to sleep This isn’t a
common lodging house Get up, there' [etc , etc ]
mrs Bendigo It’s that nosy young sod as wants promotion Wouldn’t let you
bloody breathe if ’e ’ad ’is way
charlie [ singing ]
Jesu, lover of my soul,
' Let me to Thy bosom fly-
the policeman Now then, you' What you think this is? Baptist prayer
meeting? [To the Kike ] Up you get, and look sharp about it'
charlie I can’t ’elp it, sergeant It’s my toonful nature It comes out of me
natural-like
the policeman [shaking Mrs Bendigo ] Wake up, mother, wake up'
mrs Bendigo Mother? Mother , is it? Well, if I am a mother, thank God I ain’t
got a bloody son like you' And I’ll tell you another little secret, constable
Next time I want a man’s fat ’ands feeling round the back of my neck, I
won’t ask you to do it I’ll ’ave someone with a bit more sex-appeal
the policeman Now then, now then' No call to get abusive, you know We got
our orders to carry out [Exit majestically ]
snouter [sotto voce] — off, you — son of a — 1
CHARLIE [singing]
While the gathering waters roll.
While the tempest still is ’igh>
Sung bass m the choir my last two years in Dartmoor, I did
mrs Bendigo I’ll bloody mother ’im' [Shouting after the policeman] ’I' Why
don’t you get after them bloody cat burglars ’stead of coming nosing round a
respectable married woman?
ginger Kip down, blokes ’E’s jacked, [Daddy retires within his coat ]
nosy watson Wassit like m Dartmoor now? D’they give you jam now?
mrs wayne Of course, you can see as they couldn’t reely allow people to sleep
m the streets-I mean, it wouldn’t be qmte mce-and then you’ve got to
remember as it’d be encouraging of all the people as haven’t got homes of
their own-the kind of riff-raff, if you take my meaning
mr tallboys [to himself] Happy days, happy days! Outings with the Girl
Guides m Epping Forest-hired brake and sleek roan horses, and I on the
box m my grey flannel suit, speckled straw hat, and discreet layman’s neck-
tie Buns and ginger pop under the green elms Twenty Girl Guides pious
yet susceptible frisking in the breast-high bracken, and I a happy curate
sporting among them, in loco parentis pinching the girls’ backsides
mrs mcelligot Well, you may talk about kippm’ down, but begod dere won’t
be much sleep for my poor ole bloody bones tonight I can’t skipper it now
de way me and Michael used to.
charlie Not jam Gets cheese, though, twice a week
the kike Oh Jeezi I can’t stand it no longer I going down to the M A. B
3$2 A Clergyman's Daughter
[Dorothy stands up, and then , her knees having stiffened with the cold, almost
falls ]
ginger Only send you to the bleeding Labour Home What you say we all go
up to Covent Garden tomorrow morning? Bum a few pears if we get there
early enough
Charlie I’ve ’ad my perishing bellyful of Dartmoor, b’lieve me Forty on us
went through ’ell for getting off with the ole women down on the allotments
Ole trots seventy years old they was-spud-grabbers Didn’t we cop it just 1
Bread and water, chained to the wall-penshmg near murdered us
mrs bendigo No fear 1 Not while my bloody husband’s there One black eye m
a week’s enough for me, thank you
mr tallboys [chanting, reminiscently] As for our harps, we hanged them up,
upon the willow trees of Babylon'
mrs mcelligot Hold up, kiddie' Stamp your feet an’ get de blood back into
’m I’ll take y’a walk up to Paul’s m a coupla minutes
deafie [singing] With my willy willy-
[Big Ben strikes eleven ]
snouter Six more — hours' Cnpes'
[An hour passes Big Ben stops striking The mist thins and the cold increases
A grubby-faced moon is seen sneaking among the clouds of the southern
sky A dozen hardened old men remain on the benches, and still contrive to
sleep, doubled up and hidden in their greatcoats Occasionally they groan in
their sleep The others set out m all directions , intending to walk all night and
so keep then blood flowing, but nearly all of them have drifted back to the
Square by midnight A new policeman comes on duty He strolls through the
Square at intervals of half an hour, scrutinizing the faces of the sleepers but
letting them alone when he has made sure that they are only asleep and not
dead Round each bench revolves a knot of people who take it in turns to sit
down and are driven to their feet by the cold after a few minutes Ginger and
Charlie fill two drums at the fountains and set out m the desperate hope of
boiling some tea over the navvies' clinker fire in Chandos Street, but a
policeman is warming himself at the fire, and orders them away The Kike
suddenly vanishes, probably to beg a bed at the M A B Towards one o'clock a
rumour goes round that a lady is distributing hot coffee, ham sandwiches, and
packets of cigarettes under Charing Cross Bridge, there is a rush to the spot,
but the rumour turns out to be unfounded As the Square fills again the
ceaseless changing of places upon the benches quickens until it is a game of
musical chairs Sitting down, with one's hands under one's armpits, it is
possible to get into a kind of sleep, or doze, for two or three minutes on end In
this state, enormous ages seem to pass One sinks into a complex, troubling
dreams which leave one conscious of one's surroundings and of the bitter cold
The night is growing clearer and colder every minute There is a chorus of
varying sound— groans, curses, bursts of laughter, and singing , and through
them all the uncontrollable chattering of teeth ]
mr tallboys [chanting] I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of
joint'
A Clergyman's Daughter 353
mrs mcelligot Ellen an’ me bm wanderin’ round de City dis two hours
Begod it’s like a bloody tomb wid dem great lamps glarin’ down on you an’
not a soul stirren’ excep’ de flatties strollin’ two an’ two
snouter Five past — one and I ain’t ’ad a bite since dinner 1 Course it ’ad to
’appen to us on a — night like this 1
mr tallboys A drinking night I should have called it But every man to his
taste [ Chanting ] ‘My strength is dried like a potsherd, and my tongue
cleaveth to my gums 1 ’
Charlie Say, what you think? Nosy and me done a smash jest now Nosy sees a
tobacconist’s show-case full of them fancy boxes of Gold Flake, and ’e says,
‘By cnpes I’m gomg to ’ave some of them fags if they give me a perishing
stretch for it 1 ’ ’e says So ’e wraps ’is scarf round ’is ’and, and we waits till
there’s a perishing great van passing as’ll drown the noise, and then Nosy
lets fly-biff We nipped a dozen packets of fags, and then I bet you didn’t see
our a — s for dust And when we gets round the corner and opens them, there
wasn’t no perishing fags inside 1 Perishmg dummy boxes I ’ad to laugh
Dorothy My knees are giving way I can’t stand up much longer
mrs Bendigo Oh, the sod, the sod 1 To turn a woman out of doors on a night
like bloody this! You wait’ll I get ’im drunk 0’ Saturday night and ’e can’t ’it
back I’ll mash ’im to bloody shin of beef, I will ’E’ll look like two pennorth
of pieces after I’ve swiped ’im with the bloody flat-iron
mrs mcelligot Here, make room’n let de kid sit down- Press up agen ole
Daddy, dear. Put his arm round you He’s chatty, but he’ll keep you warm
ginger [double marking time ] Stamp your feet on the ground-only bleeding
thing to do Strike up a song, someone, and less all stamp our bleeding feet m
time to it
daddy [ waking and emerging ] Wassat? [Still half asleep, he lets his head fall
back, with mouth open and Adam's apple protruding from his withered throat
like the blade of a tomahawk . ]
MRS Bendigo There’s women what if they’d stood what I've stood, they’d ave
put spirits of salts m ’is cup of bloody tea
mr tallboys [beating an imaginary drum and singing] Onward, heathen
so-oldiers-
mrs wayne Well, reely now 1 If any of us’d ever of thought, m the dear old days
when we used to sit round our own Silkstone coal fire, with the kettle on the
hob and a nice dish of toasted crumpets from the baker’s over the way
[The chattering of her teeth silences her ]
charlie. No perishing church trap now, matie I’ll give y’a bit of
smut-something as we can perishing dance to You listen t’me
mrs mcelligot Don’t you get talkin’ about crumpets, Missis Me bloody
belly’s rubbm’ agen me backbone already
[Charlie draws himself up, clears his throat, and in an enormous voice roars
out a song entitled Rollicking Bill the Sailor 3 . A laugh that is partly a
shudder bursts from the people on, the bench They smg the song through ogam*
with increasing volume of noise, stamping and clapping m time Those sitting
down, packed elbow to elbow, sweep grotesquely foam side to side, working their
354 A Clergyman's Daughter
feet as though stamping on the pedals of a harmonium Even Mrs Wayne joins
in after a moment, laughing in spite of herself They are all laughing, though
with chattering teeth Mr Tallboys marches up and down behind his vast swag
belly, pretending to carry a banner or crozier m front of him The night is now
quite clear, and an icy wind comes shuddering at intervals through the
Square The stamping and clapping rise to a kind of frenzy as the people feel
the deadly cold penetrate to their bones Then the policeman is seen wandering
into the Square from the eastern end, and the singing ceases abruptly ]
Charlie There 1 You can’t say as a bit of music don’t warm you up
mrs bendigo This bloody wind 1 And I ain’t even got any drawers on, the
bastard kicked me out in such a ’urry
mrs mcelligot Well, glory be to Jesus, ’twon’t be long before dat dere church
in de Gray’s Inn Road opens up for de winter Dey gives you a roof over
your head of a night, ’t any rate
the policeman Now then, now then ' D’you think this is the time of night to
begin singing like a blooming bear garden? I shall have to send you back to
your homes if you can’t keep quiet
snouter [sotto voce ] You — son of a — 1
ginger Yes-they lets you kip on the bleeding stone floor with three
newspaper posters ’stead of blankets Might as well be in the Square and
’ave done with it God, I wish I was in the bleeding spike
mrs mcelligot Still, you gets a cup of Horlicks an’ two slices I bin glad to kip
dere often enough
mr tallboys [ chanting ] I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the
house of the Lord*
dorothy [starting up] Oh, this cold, this cold' I don’t know whether it’s worse
when you’re sittmg down or when you’re standing up Oh, how can you all
stand it? Surely you don’t have to do this every night of your lives?
mrs wayne You mustn’t think, dearie, as there isn’t some of us wasn’t brought
up respectable
Charlie [singing] Cheer up, cully, you’ll soon be dead' Brrh 1 Perishing Jesus'
Ain’t my fish-hooks blue' [Double marks time and beats his arms against his
sides ]
dorothy Oh, but how can you stand it? How can you go on like this, night
after mght, year after year? It’s not possible that people can live so' It’s so
absurd that one wouldn’t believe it if one didn’t know it was true It’s
impossible'
snouter — possible if you ask me
MR tallboys [stage curate-wise]' With God, all things are possible
[Dorothy sinks back on to the bench, her knees still being unsteady ]
Charlie. Well, it’s jest on ’ar-parse one Either we got to get moving, or else
make a pyramid on that perishing bench Unless we want to perishing turn
up our toes ’Oo’s for a little constitootional up to the Tower of London?
mrs mcelligot ’Twon’t be me dat’ll walk another step tomght Me bloody
legs’ve given out on me.
ginger: What-o for the pyramid' This is a bit too bleeding nme-day-old for
A Clergyman's Daughter 355
me Less scrum into that bench-beg pardon, Ma !
daddy [sleepily] Wassa game’ Can’t a man get a bit of kip but what you must
come worriting ’im and shaking of ’im’
charlie That’s the stuff 1 Shove in' Shift yourself. Daddy, and make room for
my little sit-me-down Get one atop of each other That’s right Nevermind
the chats Jam all together like pilchards m a perishing tin
mrs wayne Here 1 1 didn’t ask you to sit on my lap, young man'
ginger Sit on mine, then, mother- ’sail the same What-o 1 First bit of stuff
I’ve ’ad my arm round since Easter
[They pile themselves m a monstrous shapeless clot , men and women clinging
indiscriminately together , like a bunch of toads at spawning time There is a
writhing movement as the heap settles down , and a sour stench of clothes
diffuses itself Only Mr Tallboys remains marching up and down ]
mr tallboys [declaiming] O ye nights and days, ye light and darkness, ye
lightnings and clouds, curse ye the Lord 1
[. Deafie , someone having sat on his diaphragm , utters a strange ,
unreproducible sound ]
mrs Bendigo Get off my bad leg, can’t you’ What you think I am’ Bloody
drawing-room sofa’
charlie Don’t ole Daddy stink when you get up agen ’im’
ginger Bleeding Bank ’oliday for the chats this’ll be
DOROTHY Oh, God, God'
MR tallboys [halting] Why call on God, you puling deathbed penitent’ Stick
to your guns and call on the Devil as I do Hail to thee, Lucifer, Prince of the
Air 1 [Singing to the tune of ( Holy, holy holy *J Incubi and Succubi, falling
down before Theei
mrs Bendigo Oh, shut up, you blarsphemous old sod 1 ’E’s too bloody fat to
feel the cold, that’s what’s wrong with ’im
charlie Nice soft be’md you got, Ma Keep an eye out for the penshmg
flattie. Ginger
MR tallboys Malecidite 3 omnia opera 1 The Black Mass 1 Why not’ Once a
priest always a priest Hand me a chunk of toke and I will work the miracle
Sulphur candles. Lord’s Prayer backwards, crucifix upside down [To
Dorothy] If we had a black he-goat you would come in useful
[ The animal heat of the piled bodies had already made itself felt A drowsiness
is descending upon everyone ]
mrs wayne You mustn’t think as I’m accustomed to sittmg on a gentleman’s
knee, you know
mrs mcelligot [drowsily] . It took my sacraments reg’lar till de bloody priest
wouldn’t give me absolution along 0’ my Michael, De ole get, de ole
getsie 1
mr tallboys [striking an attitude] Per aquam sacratam quam nunc spargo ,
signumque crucis quod nunc facto
ginger ’Oo’s got a fill of ’ard-up’ I’ve smoked by last bleeding fag-end,
MR tallboys [as at the altar]. Dearly beloved brethren we are gathered
together m the sight of God for the solemnization of unholy blasphemy. He
556 A Clergyman’s Daughter
has afflicted us with dirt and cold, with hunger and solitude, with the pox
and the itch, with the headlouse and the crablouse Our food is damp crusts
and slimy meat-scraps handed out m packets from hotel doorways Our
pleasure is stewed tea and sawdust cakes bolted m reeking cellars, bar-
rinsing sand spittle of common ale, the embrace of toothless hags Our
destiny is the pauper’s grave, twenty-feet deep in deal coffins, the kip-house
of underground It is very meet, right and our bounden duty at all times and
in all places to curse Him and revile Him Therefore with Demons and
Archdemons [etc , etc , etc ]
mrs mcelligot [drowsily] By holy Jesus, I’m half asleep right now, only some
b — ’s lyin’ across my legs and crushin’ ’em
mr tallboys Amen Evil from us deliver, but temptation into not us lead [etc ,
etc , etc ]
[As he reaches the first word of the prayer he tears the consecrated bread
across The blood runs out of it There is a rolling sound , as of thunder , and the
landscape changes Dorothy’s feet are very cold Monstrous winged shapes of
Demons and Archdemons are dimly visible , moving to and fro Something ,
beak or claw , closes upon Dorothy’s shoulder, reminding her that her feet and
hands are aching with cold ]
the policeman [shaking Dorothy by the shoulder ] Wake up, now, wake up,
wake up 1 Haven’t you got an overcoat? You’re as white as death Don’t
you know better than to let yourself sprawl about m the cold like that?
[Dorothy finds that she is stiff with cold The sky is now quite clear, with
gritty little stars twinkling like electric lamps enormously remote The
pyramid has unrolled itself ]
mrs mcelligot De poor kid, she ain’t used to roughin’ it de way us others are
ginger [beating his arms ] Brr ! Woo* ’Taters in the bleeding mould*
mrs wayne She’s a lady bom and bred
the policeman Is that so? -See here. Miss, you best come down to the M A B
with me They’ll give you a bed all right Anyone can see with half an eye as
you’re a cut above these others here
mrs bfndigo Thank you, constable, thank you* ’Ear that, girls? ‘A cut above
us,’ ’e says Nice, ain’t it? [To the policeman j Proper bloody Ascot swell
yourself, ain’t you?
Dorothy No, no* Leave me. I’d rather stay here
the policeman Well, please yourself You looked real bad just now I’ll be
along later and take a look at you [Moves off doubtfully ]
Charlie Wait’ll the perisher’s round the corner and then pile up agen Only
perishing way we’ll keep warm
mrs mcelligot Come on, kid Get underneath an’ let’m warm you
snouter Ten mmutes to — two Can’t last for ever, I s’pose
MR tallboys [chanting]: I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of
joint My heart also in the midst of my body is like unto melting wax*
[Once more the people pile themselves on the bench But the temperature is
now not many degrees above freezing-point, and the wind is blowing more
cuttingly. The people wriggle their zmnd-mpped faces into the heap like
A Clergyman’s Daughter 357
sucking pigs struggling for their mother’s teats One’s interludes of sleep shrink
to a few seconds, and one’s dreams grow more monstrous, troubling , and
undreamlike There are times when the nine people are talking almost
normally , times when they can even laugh at their situation, and times when
they press themselves together in a kind of frenzy, with deep groans of pain
Mi Tallboys suddenly becomes exhausted and his monologue degenerates into
a stream of nonsense He drops his vast bulk on top of the others, almost
suffocating them The heap rolls apart Some remain on the bench, some slide
to the ground and collapse against the parapet or against the others’ knees
The policeman enters the Square and orders those on the ground to their feet
They get up, and collapse again the moment he is gone There is no sound from
the ten people save of snores that are partly groans Their heads nod like those
of joined porcelain Chinamen as they fall asleep and reawake as rhythmically
as the ticking of a clock Three strikes somewhere A voice yells like a trumpet
from the eastern end of the Square ‘Boys 1 Up you get 1 The noospapers is
come’’]
Charlie [starting from his sleep ] The perishing papers’ C’m on. Ginger' Run
like Hell'
[They run, or shamble, as fast as they can to the corner of the Square , where
three youths are distributing surplus posters given away m charity by the
morning newspapers Charlie and Ginger come back with a thick wad of
posters The five largest men now jam themselves together on the bench , Deafie
and the four women sitting across their knees, then, with infinite difficulty ( as
it has to be done from the inside), they wrap themselves m a monstrous cocoon
of paper, several sheets thick, tucking the loose ends into their necks or breasts
or between their shoulders and the back of the bench Finally nothing is
uncovered save their heads and the lower part of their legs For their heads
they fashion hoods of paper The paper constantly comes loose and lets in cold
shafts of wind, but it is now possible to sleep for as much as five minutes
consecutively At this time-between three and five m the mormng~it is
customary with the police not to disturb the Square sleepers A measure of
warmth steals through everyone and extends even to their feet There is some
furtive fondling of the women under cover of the paper Dorothy is too far gone
to care
By a quarter past four the paper is all crumpled and torn to nothing, and it is
far too cold to remain sitting down The people get up, swear, find their legs
somewhat rested, and begin to slouch to and fro m couples, frequently halting
from mere lassitude Every belly is now contorted with hunger Ginger’s tin of
condensed milk is tom open and the contents devoured, everyone dipping their
fingers into it and licking them. Those who have no money at all leave the
Square for the Green Park, where they will be undisturbed till seven . Those
who can command even a halfpenny make for Wilkins’s cafe not far from the
Charing Cross Road It is known that the cafe will not open till five o’clock;
nevertheless , a crowd is waiting outside the door by twenty to five ]
mrs mcelligot Got your halfpenny, dearie-* Dey won’t let more’n four of us
in on one cup o’tea, de stingy ole gets'
3 $8 A Clergyman’s Daughter
mr tallboys [singing] The roseate hu-ues of early da-awn—
ginger God, that bit of sleep we ’ad under the newspapers done me some
good [Singing] But I’m dan-cmg with tears-m my eyes-
charlie Oh, boys, boys' Look through that perishing window, will you’ Look
at the ’eat steaming down the window pane' Look at the tea-urns jest on the
boil, and them great piles of ’ot toast and ’am sandwiches, and them there
sausages sizzling m the pan' Don’t it make your belly turn perishing
summersaults to see ’em’
Dorothy I’ve got a penny I can’t get a cup of tea for that, can I’
snouter — lot of sausages we’ll get this morning with fourpence between us
’Alf a cup of tea and a — doughnut more likely There’s a breakfus’ for you'
mrs mcelligot You don’t need buy a cup o’ tea all to yourself I got a
halfpenny an’ so’s Daddy, an’ we’ll put’m to your penny an’ have a cup
between de t’ree of us He’s got sores on his lip, but Hell' who cares’ Drink
near de handle an’ dere’s no harm done
[A quarter to five strikes ]
mrs bendigo I’d bet a dollar my ole man’s got a bit of ’addock to ’is breakfast I
’ope it bloody chokes ’im
ginger [singing] But I’m dan-cing with tears-m my eyes-
mr tallboys [singing] Early m the morning my song shall rise to Thee!
mrs mcelligot You gets a bit o’ kip m dis place, dat’s one comfort Dey lets
you sleep wid your head on de table till seven o’clock It’s a bloody godsend
to us Square Tobies
Charlie [slavering like a dog] Sausages' Perishing sausages' Welsh rabbit! ’Ot
dripping toast' And a rump-steak two inches thick with chips and a pint of
Ole Burton' Oh, perishing Jesus'
[He bounds forward, pushes his way through the crowd and rattles the handle
of the glass door The whole crowd of people, about forty strong, surge forward
and attempt to storm the door, which is stoutly held within by Mr Wilkins, the
proprietor of the cafe He menaces them through the glass. Some press their
breasts and faces against the window as though warming themselves With a
whoop and a rush Florry and four other girls , comparatively fresh from
having spent part of the night m bed, debouch from a neighbouring alley,
accompanied by a gang of youths m blue suits They hurl themselves upon the
rear of the crowd with such momentum that the door is almost broken Mr
Wilkins pulls it furiously open and shoves the leaders back A fume of
sausages, kippers , coffee, and hot bread streams into the outer cold ]
youths’ voices from the rear Why can’t he — open before five’ We’re
starving for our — tea' Ram the — door in' [etc , etc ]
mr wilkins Get out' Get out, the lot of you' Or by God not one of you comes
m this morning'
girls’ voices from the rear Mis-ter Wil-kins' Mis-ter Wil-kms' Be a sport
and let us ini I’ll give y’a kiss all free for nothing Be a sport now* [etc , etc ]
mr wilkins Get on out of it' We don’t open before five, and you know it
[Slams the door,]
mrs mcelligot Oh, holy Jesus, if dis ain’t de longest ten minutes o’ de whole
A Clergyman's Daughter 359
bloody night’ Well, I’ll give me poor ole legs a rest, anyway [Squats on her
heels coal-mtner-fashion Many others do the same ]
ginger ’Oo’s got a ’alfpenny? I’m ripe to go fifty-fifty on a doughnut
youths’ voices [imitating military music , then singing]
‘ — ’’ was all the band could play,
‘ — ' — ’ And the same to you’
dorothy [to Mrs McElligot ] Look at us all’ Just look at us' What clothes’
What faces'
mrs Bendigo You’re no Greta Garbo yourself, if you don’t mind my
mentiomng it
mrs wayne Well, now, the time do seem to pass slowly when you’re waiting for
a nice cup of tea, don’t it now?
mr tallboys [chanting] For our soul is brought low, even unto the dust our
belly cleaveth unto the ground’
Charlie Kippers' Perishing piles of ’em’ I can smell ’em through the
perishing glass
ginger [singing]
But I’m dan-cmg with tears-m my eyes-
’Cos the girl-m my arms-isn’t you-o-ou’
[Much time passes Five strikes Intolerable ages seem to pass Then the door
is suddenly wrenched open and the people stampede m to fight for the corner
seats Almost swooning m the hot air , they fling themselves down and sprawl
across the tables, drinking m the heat and the smell of food through all their
pores ]
mr wilkins Now then, all’ You know the rules, I s’pose No hokey-pokey this
morning' Sleep till seven if you like, but if I see any man asleep after that,
out he goes on his neck Get busy with that tea, girls'
a deafening chorus of yells Two teas ’ere' Large tea and a doughnut
between us four' Kippers' Mis-ter Wil-kms' ’Ow much them sausages?
Two slices' Mis-ter Wil-kins' Got any fag papers? Kipp -erf [etc , etc ]
mr wilkins Shut up, shut up! Stop that hollering or I don’t serve any of you
mrs mcelligot D’you fell de blood runmn’ back mto your toes, dearie?
mrs wayne He do speak rough to you, don’t he? Not what I’d call a reely
gentlemanly kind of man
snouter This is — starvation Corner, this is Cripes' Couldn’t I do a couple
of them sausages'
the tarts [in chorus] Kippers ’ere' ’Urry up with them kippers' Mis-ter Wil-
kins' Kippers all round' And a doughnut'
charlie Not ’alf ' Got to fill up on the smell of ’em this morning Sooner be
’ere than on the perishing Square, all the same
ginger ’Ere, Deafie' You’ve ’ad your ’alf Gimme me that bleeding cup
mr tallboys [chanting]' Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our
tongue with joy!
mrs mcelligot Begod I’m half asleep already It’s de heat o’ de room as does
it
mr WILKINS’ Stop that singing there' You know the rules.
g6o A Clergyman’s Daughter
the tarts [ in chorus] Kipp-m’
snouter — doughnuts’ Cold prog' It turns my belly sick
daddy Even the tea they give you ain’t no more than water with a bit of dust in
it [ Belches ]
charlie Bes’ thing- ’ave a bit of shut-eye and forget about it Dream about
perishing cut off the joint and two veg Less get our ’eads on the table and
pack up comfortable
mrs mcelligot Lean up agen me shoulder, dearie I’ve got more flesh on me
bones’n what you have
ginger I’d give a tanner for a bleeding fag, if I ’ad a bleeding tanner
charlie Pack up Get your ’ead agenst mine, Snouter That’s right Jesus,
won’t I perishing sleep’
[A dish of smoking kippers is borne past to the tarts 3 table ]
snouter [drowsily] More — kippers Wonder ’ow many times she’s bin on ’er
back to pay for that lot
mrs mcelligot [half-asleep] ’Twas a pity, ’twas a real pity, when Michael
went off on his jack an’ left me wid de bloody baby an’ all
mrs bendigo [furiously , following the dish of kippers with accusing finger ] Look
at that, girls’ Look at that’ Kippers' Don’t it make you bloody wild^ We
don’t get kippers for breakfast, do we, girls ? Bloody tarts swallermg down
kippers as fast as they can turn ’em out of the pan, and us ’ere with a cup of
tea between four of us and lucky to get that’ Kippers’
MR Tallboys [stage curate-wise ] The wages of sin is kippers
ginger Don’t breathe in my face, Deafie I can’t bleeding stand it
charlie [in his sleep ] Charles- Wisdom-drunk-and-mcapable-drunk^-yes-six-
shillings-move-on-wexi'
dorothy [on Mrs McElligot’s bosom] Oh, joy, joy’
[They are asleep ]
2
And so it goes on
Dorothy endured this life for ten days-to be exact, nine days and ten nights
It was hard to see what else she could do Her father, seemingly, had
abandoned her altogether, and though she had friends in London who would
readily have helped her, she did not feel that she could face them after what
had happened, or what was supposed to have happened And she dared not
apply to organized charity because it would almost certainly lead to the
discovery of her name, and hence, perhaps, to a fresh hullabaloo about the
‘Rector’s Daughter’
So she stayed m London, and became one of that curious tribe, rare but
A Clergyman's Daughter 36 1
never quite extinct-the tribe of women who are penniless and homeless, but
who make such desperate efforts to hide it that they very nearly succeed,
women who wash their faces at drinking fountains m the cold of the dawn, and
carefully uncrumple their clothes after sleepless nights, and carry themselves
with an air of reserve and decency, so that only their faces, pale beneath
sunburn, tell you for certain that they are destitute It was not m her to become
a hardened beggar like most of the people about her Her first twenty-four
hours on the Square she spent without any food whatever, except for the cup of
tea that she had had overnight and a third of a cup more that she had had at
Wilkins’s caffe m the morning But in the evening, made desperate by hunger
and the others’ example, she walked up to a strange woman, mastered her voice
with an effort, and said ‘Please, Madam, could you give me twopence^ I have
had nothing to eat smce yesterday ’ The woman stared, but she opened her
purse and gave Dorothy threepence Dorothy did not know it, but her
educated accent, which had made it impossible to get work as a servant, was an
invaluable asset to her as a beggar
After that she found that it was really very easy to beg the daily shilling or so
that was needed to keep her alive And yet she never begged~it seemed to her
that actually she could not do lt-except when hunger was past bearing or when
she had got to lay m the precious penny that was the passport to Wilkins’s caffe
m the morning With Nobby, on the way to the hopfields, she had begged
without fear or scruple But it had been different then; she had not known what
she was doing Now, it was only under the spur of actual hunger that she could
screw her courage to the point, and ask for a few coppers from some woman
whose face looked friendly It was always women that she begged from, of
course She did once try begging from a man-but only once
For the rest, she grew used to the life that she was leading-used to the
enormous sleepless nights, the cold, the dirt, the boredom, and the horrible
communism of the Square After a day or two she had ceased to feel even a
flicker of surprise at her situation. She had come, like everyone about her, to
accept this monstrous existence almost as though it were normal The dazed,
witless feeling that she had known on the way to the hopfields had come back
upon her more strongly than before It is the common effect of sleeplessness
and still more of exposure To live continuously in the open air, never going
under a roof for more than an hour or two, blurs your perceptions like a strong
light glaring in your eyes or a noise drumming in your ears. You act and plan
and suffer, and yet all the while it is as though everything were a little out of
focus, a little unreal The world, inner and outer, grows dimmer till it reaches
almost the vagueness of a dream
Meanwhile, the police were getting to know her by sight On the Square
people are perpetually coming and going, more or less unnoticed They arrive
from nowhere with their drums and their bundles, camp for a few days and
nights, and then disappear as mysteriously as they come If you stay for more
than a week or thereabouts, the police will mark you down as an habitual
beggar, and* they will arrest you sooner or later It is impossible for them to
enforce th©' begging laws at all regularly, but from time to time they make a
362 A Clergyman’s Daughter
sudden raid and capture two or three of the people they have had their eye on
And so it happened in Dorothy’s case
One evening she was ‘knocked off’, in company with Mrs McElligot and
another woman whose name she did not know They had been careless and
begged off a nasty old lady with a face like a horse, who had promptly walked
up to the nearest policeman and given them in charge
Dorothy did not mind very much Everything was dreamlike now- the face
of the nasty old lady, eagerly accusing them, and the walk to the station with a
young policeman’s gentle, almost deferential hand on her arm, and then the
white-tiled cell, with the fatherly sergeant handing her a cup of tea through the
grille and telling her that the magistrate wouldn’t be too hard on her if she
pleaded guilty In the cell next door Mrs McElligot stormed at the sergeant,
called him a bloody get, and then spent half the night in bewailing her fate But
Dorothy had no feeling save vague relief at being m so clean and warm a place
She crept immediately on to the plank bed that was fixed like a shelf to the wall,
too tired even to pull the blankets about her, and slept for ten hours without
stirring It was only on the following morning that she began to grasp the
reality of her situation, as the Black Maria rolled briskly up to Old Street
Police Court, to the tune of ‘Adeste fideles’ shouted by five drunks inside
CHAPTER 4
I
Dorothy had wronged her father in supposing that he was willing to let her
starve to death in the street He had, as a matter of fact, made efforts to get m
touch with her, though in a roundabout and not very helpful way
His first emotion on learning of Dorothy’s disappearance had been rage pure
and simple At about eight in the morning, when he was beginning to wonder
what had become of his shaving water, Ellen had come into his bedroom and
announced in a vaguely panic-stricken tone
‘Please, Sir, Miss Dorothy ain’t m the house, Sir I can’t find her nowhere 1 ’
‘What >! said the Rector
‘She ain’t in the house. Sir 1 And her bed don’t look as if it hadn’t been slept
m, neither It’s my belief as she’s gorn, Sir 1 ’
‘Gone 1 ’ exclaimed the Rector, partly sitting up in bed ‘What do you
mean-gone^’
‘Well, Sir, I believe she’s run away from ’ome, Sir! ’
■ ‘Run away from home' At this hour of the mornmg> And what about my
breakfast, pray>’
By the time the Rector got downstairs-unshaven, no hot water having
appeared— Ellen had gone down into the town to make fruitless inquiries for
Dorothy, An hour passed, and she did not return Whereupon there occurred a
A Clergyman’s Daughter 36 3
frightful, unprecedented thing-a thing never to be forgotten this side of the
grave, the Rector was obliged to prepare his own breakfast-yes, actually to
mess about with a vulgar black kettle and rashers of Danish bacon-with his
own sacerdotal hands
After that, of course, his heart was hardened against Dorothy for ever For
the rest of the day he was far too busy raging over unpunctual meals to ask
himself why she had disappeared and whether any harm had befallen her The
point was that the confounded girl (he said several times ’confounded girl’, and
came near to saying something stronger) had disappeared, and had upset the
whole household by doing so Next day, however, the question became more
urgent, because Mrs Sempnll was now publishing the story of the elopement
far and wide Of course, the Rector demed it violently, but in his heart he had a
sneaking suspicion that it might be true It was the kind of thing, he now
decided, that Dorothy would do A girl who would suddenly walk out of the
house without even taking thought for her father’s breakfast was capable of
anything
Two days later the newspapers got hold of the story, and a nosy young
reporter came down to Knype Hill and began asking questions The Rector
made matters worse by angrily refusing to interview the reporter, so that Mrs
Sempnll’s version was the only one that got into print For about a week, until
the papers got tired of Dorothy’s case and dropped her m favour of a
plesiosaurus that had been seen at the mouth of the Thames, the Rector
enjoyed a horrible notoriety He could hardly open a newspaper without
seeing some flaming headline about ‘Rector’s Daughter Further Revelations’,
or ‘Rector’s Daughter Is she in Vienna^ Reported seen in Low-class Cabaret’
Finally there came an article m the Sunday Spyhole , which began, ‘Down m a
Suffolk Rectory a broken old man sits staring at the wall’, and which was so
absolutely unbearable that the Rector consulted his solicitor about an action
for libel However, the solicitor was against it; it might lead to a verdict, he
said, but it would certainly lead to further publicity So the Rector did
nothing, and his anger against Dorothy, who had brought this disgrace upon
him, hardened beyond possibility of forgiveness
After this there came three letters from Dorothy, explaining what had
happened Of course the Rector never really believed that Dorothy had lost her
memory It was too thin a story altogether He believed that she either had
eloped with Mr Warburton, or had gone off on some similar escapade and had
landed herself penniless in Kent, at any rate-this he had settled once and for
all, and no argument would ever move him from lt-whatever had happened to
her was entirely her own fault The first letter he wrote was not to Dorothy
herself but to his cousin Tom, the baronet. For a man of the Rector’s
upbringing it was second nature, in any serious trouble, to turn to a rich
relative for help. He had not exchanged a word with his cousin for the last
fifteen years, since they had' quarrelled over a little matter of a borrowed fifty
pounds; still, he wrote fairly confidently,' asking Sir Thomas to get m touch
with Dorothy if it could be done; and to find her some kind of job m London
For of course, after What had happened* there could be no question of letting
364 A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
her come back to Knype Hill
Shortly after this there came two despairing letters from Dorothy, telling
him that she was m danger of starvation and imploring him to send her some
money The Rector was disturbed It occurred to him-it was the first time m
his life that he had seriously considered such a thing-that it is possible to
starve if you have no money So, after thinking it over for the best part of a
week, he sold out ten pounds’ worth of shares and sent a cheque for ten pounds
to his cousin, to be kept for Dorothy till she appeared At the same time he sent
a cold letter to Dorothy herself, telling her that she had better apply to Sir
Thomas Hare But several more days passed before this letter was posted,
because the Rector had qualms about addressing a letter to ‘Ellen
Millborough’-he dimly imagined that it was against the law to use false
names-and, of course, he had delayed far too long Dorothy was already m the
streets when the letter reached ‘Mary’s’
Sir Thomas Hare was a widower, a good-hearted, chuckle-headed man of
about sixty-five, with an obtuse rosy face and curling moustaches He dressed
by preference in checked overcoats and curly brimmed bowler hats that were
at once dashingly smart and four decades out of date At a first glance he gave
the impression of having carefully disguised himself as a cavalry major of the
’nineties, so that you could hardly look at him without thinking of devilled
bones with a b and s, and the tinkle of hansom bells, and the Pink ’Un in its
great ‘Pitcher’ days, and Lottie Collins and ‘Tarara-BOOM-deay’ But his chief
characteristic was an abysmal mental vagueness He was one of those people
who say ‘Don’t you know 5 ’ and ‘What 1 What 1 ’ and lose themselves m the
middle of their sentences When he was puzzled or in difficulties, his
moustaches seemed to bristle forward, giving him the appearance of a well-
meaning but exceptionally brainless prawn
So far as his own inclinations went Sir Thomas was not m the least anxious
to help his cousins, for Dorothy herself he had never seen, and the Rector he
looked on as a cadging poor relation of the worst possible type But the fact was
that he had had just about as much of this ‘Rector’s Daughter’ business as he
could stand The accursed chance that Dorothy’s surname was the same as his
own had made his life a misery for the past fortnight, and he foresaw further
and worse scandals if she were left at large any longer So, just before leaving
London for the pheasant shooting, he sent for his butler, who was also his
confidant and intellectual guide, and held a council of war
‘Look here, Blyth, dammit,’ said Sir Thomas prawnishly (Blyth was the
butler’s name), ‘I suppose you’ve seen all this damn’ stuff in the newspapers,
hey? This “Rector’s Daughter” stuff? About this damned niece of mine ’
Blyth was a small sharp-featured man with a voice that never rose above a
whisper It was as nearly silent as a voice can be while still remaining a voice
Only by watching his bps as well as listening closely could you catch the whole
of what he said In this case his lips signalled something to the effect that
Dorothy was Sir Thomas’s cousin, not his mece
‘What, my cousin, is she? ’ said Sir Thomas ‘So she is, by Jove 1 Well, look
here, Blyth, what I mean to say-it’s about time we got hold of the damn’ girl
A Clergyman' s Daughter 36$
and locked her up somewhere See what I mean? Get hold of her before there’s
any more trouble She’s knocking about somewhere m London, I believe
What’s the best way of getting on her track? Police? Private detectives and all
that? D’you think we could manage it? ’
Blyth’s lips registered disapproval It would, he seemed to be saying, be
possible to trace Dorothy without calling m the police and having a lot of
disagreeable publicity
‘Good man*’ said Sir Thomas ‘ Get to it, then Never mind what it costs I’d
give fifty quid not to have that “Rector’s Daughter” business over again And
for God’s sake, Blyth,’ he added confidentially, ‘once you’ve got hold of the
damn’ girl, don’t let her out of your sight Bring her back to the house and
damn’ well keep her here See what I mean? Keep her under lock and key till I
get back Or else God knows what she’ll be up to next ’
Sir Thomas, of course, had never seen Dorothy, and it was therefore
excusable that he should have formed his conception of her from the
newspaper reports
It took Blyth about a week to track Dorothy down On the morning after she
came out of the police-court cells (they had fined her six shillings, and, m
default of payment, detained her for twelve hours Mrs McElligot, as an old
offender, got seven days), Blyth came up to her, lifted his bowler hat a quarter
of an inch from his head, and inquired noiselessly whether she were not Miss
Dorothy Hare At the second attempt Dorothy understood what he was
saying, and admitted that she was Miss Dorothy Hare, whereupon Blyth
explained that he was sent by her cousm, who was anxious to help her, and that
she was to come home with him immediately
Dorothy followed him without more words said It seemed queer that her
cousm should take this sudden interest m her, but it was no queerer than the
other things that had been happening lately They took the bus to Hyde Park
Corner, Blyth paying the fares, and then walked to a large, expensive-looking
house with shuttered windows, on the borderland between Kmghtsbridge and
Mayfair They went down some steps, and Blyth produced a key and they went
in So, after an absence of something over six weeks, Dorothy returned to
respectable society, by the area door
She spent three days in the empty house before her cousin came home It
was a queer, lonely time There were several servants in the house, but she saw
nobody except Blyth, who brought her her meals and talked to her, noiselessly,
with a mixture of deference and disapproval He could not quite make up his
mmd whether she was a young lady of family or a rescued Magdalen, and so
treated her as something between the two The house had that hushed, corpse-
like air peculiar to houses whose master is away, so that you instinctively went
about on tiptoe and kept the blmds over the windows. Dorothy did not even
dare to enter any of the mam rooms She spent all the daytime lurking m a
dusty, forlorn room at the top of the house which was a sort of museum of bric-
a-brac dating from 1880 onwards. Lady Hare, dead these five years, had been
an industrious collector of rubbishf, and most of it had been stowed away m this
room when she died. It was a doubtful point whether the queerest object in the
$ 66 A Clergyman's Daughter
room was a yellowed photograph of Dorothy’s father, aged eighteen but with
respectable side-whiskers, standing self-consciously beside an ‘ordinary’
bicycle-this was m 1888, or whether it was a little sandalwood box labelled
‘Piece of Bread touched by Cecil Rhodes at the City and South Africa
Banquet, June 1897’ The sole books m the room were some grisly school
prizes that had been won by Sir Thomas’s children-he had three, the youngest
being the same age as Dorothy
It was obvious that the servants had orders not to let her go out of doors
However, her father’s cheque for ten pounds had arrived, and with some
difficulty she induced Blyth to get it cashed, and, on the third day, went out
and bought herself some clothes She bought herself a ready-made tweed coat
and skirt and a jersey to go with them, a hat, and a very cheap frock of artificial
printed silk, also a pair of passable brown shoes, three pairs of lisle stockings, a
nasty, cheap little handbag, and a pair of grey cotton gloves that would pass for
suCde at a little distance That came to eight pounds ten, and she dared not
spend more As for underclothes, nightdresses, and handkerchiefs, they would
have to wait After all, it is the clothes that show that matter
Sir Thomas arrived on the following day, and never really got over the
surprise that Dorothy’s appearance gave him He had been expecting to see
some rouged and powdered siren who would plague him with temptations to
which alas* he was no longer capable of succumbing, and this countrified,
spinsterish girl upset all his calculations Certain vague ideas that had been
floating about his mind, of finding her a job as a manicurist or perhaps as a
private secretary to a bookie, floated out of it agam From time to time Dorothy
caught him studying her with a puzzled, prawmsh eye, obviously wondering
how on earth such a girl could ever have figured in an elopement It was very
little use, of course, telling him that she had not eloped She had given him her
version of the story, and he had accepted it with a chivalrous ‘Of course,
m’dear, of course 1 ’ and thereafter, m every other sentence, betrayed the fact
that he disbelieved her
So for a couple of days nothmg definite was done Dorothy continued her
solitary life in the room upstairs, and Sir Thomas went to his club for most of
his meals, and in the evening there were discussions of the most unutterable
vagueness Sir Thomas was genuinely anxious to find Dorothy a job, but he
had great difficulty m remembering what he was talking about for more than a
few minutes at a time ‘Well, m’dear,’ he would start off, ‘you’ll understand, of
course, that I’m very keen to do what I can for you Naturally, bemg your
uncle and all that-what? What’s that? Not your uncle? No, I suppose I’m not,
by Jove 1 Cousm-that’s it, cousin. Well, now, m’dear, being your cousin-now,
what was I saying’’ Then, when Dorothy had guided him back to the subject,
he would throw out some such suggestion as, ‘Well, now, for instance, m’dear,
how would you like to be companion to an old lady? Some dear old girl, don’t
yqu know-black mittens and rheumatoid arthritis. Die and leave you ten
thousand quid and care of the parrot What, what? ’ which did not get them
very much further Dorothy repeated a number of times that she would rather
be a housemaid or a parlourmaid* but Sir Thomas would not hear of it. The
A Clergyman's Daughter 367
very idea awakened in him a class-instinct which he was usually too vague-
mmded to remember ‘What 1 ’ he would say ‘A dashed skivvy? Girl of your
upbringing? No, m’dear-no, no 1 Can’t do that kind of thing, dash nT
But m the end everything was arranged, and with surprising ease, not by Sir
Thomas, who was incapable oftarrangmg anything, but by his solicitor, whom
he had suddenly thought of consulting And the solicitor, without even seeing
Dorothy, was able to suggest a job for her She could, he said, almost certainly
find a job as a schoolmistress Of all jobs, that was the easiest to get
Sir Thomas came home very pleased with this suggestion, which struck him
as highly suitable (Privately, he thought that Dorothy had just the kind of face
that a schoolmistress ought to have ) But Dorothy was momentarily aghast
when she heard of it
‘A schoolmistress 1 ’ she said ‘But I couldn’t possibly 1 I’m sure no school
would give me a job There isn’t a single subject I can teach ’
‘What? What’s that? Can’t teach? Oh, dash it 1 Of course you can 1 Where’s
the difficulty? ’
‘But I don’t know enough 1 I’ve never taught anybody anything, except
cooking to the Girl Guides You have to be properly qualified to be a teacher ’
‘Oh, nonsensei Teaching’s the easiest job m the world Good thick
ruler-rap ’em over the knuckles They’ll be glad enough to get hold of a
decently brought up young woman to teach the youngsters their abc That’s
the line for you, m’ dear-schoolmistress You’re just cut out for it ’
And sure enough, a schoolmistress Dorothy became The invisible solicitor
had made all the arrangements in less than three days It appeared that a
certain Mrs Creevy, who kept a girls’ day school m the suburb of Southbndge,
was m need of an assistant, and was quite willing to give Dorothy the job How
it had all been settled so quickly, and what kind of school it could be that would
take on a total stranger, and unqualified at that, in the middle of the term,
Dorothy could hardly imagine She did not know, of course, that a bribe of five
pounds, miscalled a premium, had changed hands
So, just ten days after her arrest for begging, Dorothy set out for Ringwood
House Academy, Brough Road, Southbndge, with a small trunk decently full
of clothes and four pounds ten in her purse-for Sir Thomas had made her a
present of ten pounds When she thought of the ease with which this job had
been found for her, and then of the miserable struggles of three weeks ago, the
contrast amazed her It brought home to her, as never before, the mysterious
power of money In fact, it remmded her of a favourite saying of Mr
Warburton’s, that if you took 1 Corinthians, chapter thirteen, and in every
verse wrote ‘money’ instead of ‘charity’, the chapter had ten times as much
meaning as before
2
Southbndge was a repellent suburb ten or a dozen miles from London
Brough Road lay somewhere at the heart of it, amid labyrinths of meanly
decent streets, all so mdistinguishably alike, with their ranks of semi-detached
houses, their privet and laurel hedges and plots of ailing shrubs at the
crossroads, that you could lose yourself there almost as easily as m a Brazilian
forest Not only the houses themselves, but even their names were the same
over and over again Readmg the names on the gates as you came up Brough
Road, you were conscious of being haunted by some half-remembered passage
of poetry, and when you paused to identify it, you realized that it was the first
two lines of Lycidas
Rmgwood House was a dark-looking, semi-detached house of yellow brick,
three storeys high, and its lower windows were hidden from the road by ragged
and dusty laurels Above the laurels, on the front of the house, was a board
inscribed in faded gold letters
RINGWOOD HOUSE ACADEMY FOR GIRLS
Ages 5 to 1 8
Music and Dancing Taught
Apply within for Prospectus
Edge to edge with this board, on the other half of the house, was another
board which read
RUSHINGTON GRANGE HIGH SCHOOL FOR BOYS
Ages 6 to 1 6
Book-keeping and Commercial Arithmetic a Speciality
Apply within for Prospectus
The district pullulated with small private schools, there were four of them in
Brough Road alone Mrs Creevy, the Principal of Rmgwood House, and Mr
Boulger, the Principal of Rushington Grange, were in a state of warfare,
though their interests m no way clashed with one another Nobody knew what
the feud was about, not even Mrs Creevy or Mr Boulger themselves, it was a
feud that they had inherited from earlier proprietors of the two schools In the
mormngs after breakfast they would stalk up and down their respective back
gardens, beside the very low wall that separated them, pretending not to see
one another and grinning with hatred,
Dorothy’s heart sank at the sight of Rmgwood House She had not been
expecting anything very magnificent or attractive, but she had expected
A Clergyman’s Daughter 36 9
something a little better than this mean, gloomy house, not one of whose
windows was lighted, though it was after 8 o’clock m the evening She knocked
at the door, and it was opened by a woman, tall and gaunt-lookmg m the dark
hallway, whom Dorothy took for a servant, but who was actually Mrs Creevy
herself Without a word, except to inquire Dorothy’s name, the woman led the
way up some dark stairs to a twilit, fireless drawing-room, where she turned up
a pinpoint of gas, revealing a black piano, stuffed horsehair chairs, and a few
yellowed, ghostly photos on the walls
Mrs Creevy was a woman somewhere in her forties, lean, hard, and angular,
with abrupt decided movements that indicated a strong will and probably a
vicious temper Though she was not m the least dirty or untidy there was
something discoloured about her whole appearance, as though she lived all her
life in a bad light, and the expression of her mouth, sullen and ill-shaped with
the lower lip turned down, recalled that of a toad She spoke in a sharp,
commanding voice, with a bad accent and occasional vulgar turns of speech
You could tell her at a glance for a person who knew exactly what she wanted,
and would grasp it as ruthlessly as any machine, not a bully exactly-you could
somehow infer from her appearance that she would not take enough interest in
you to want to bully you— but a person who would make use of you and then
throw you aside with no more compunction than if you had been a worn-out
scrubbing-brush
Mrs Creevy did not waste any words on greetings She motioned Dorothy to
a chair, with the air rather of commanding than of inviting her to sit down, and
then sat down herself, with her hands clasped on her skinny forearms
‘I hope you and me are gomg to get on well together. Miss Millborough,’ she
began m her penetrating, subhectoring voice (On the advice of Sir Thomas’s
everwise solicitor, Dorothy had stuck to the name of Ellen Millborough ) ‘And
I hope I’m not going to have the same nasty business with you as I had with my
last two assistants You say you haven’t had an experience of teaching before
this^’
‘Not in a school,’ said Dorothy-there had been a tarradiddle in her letter of
introduction, to the effect that she had had experience of ‘private teaching’
Mrs Creevy looked Dorothy over as though wondering whether to induct
her into the inner secrets of school-teaching, and then appeared to decide
against it
‘Well, we shall see,’ she said, ‘I must say,’ she added complainmgly, ‘it’s not
easy to get hold of good hardworking assistants nowadays You give them good
wages and good treatment, and you get no thanks for it The last one I had-the
one I’ve just had to get rid of-Miss Strong, wasn’t so bad so far as the teaching
part went, intact* she was a B A , and I don’t know what you could have better
than aB A , unless it’s an M A You don’t happen to be a B A, or an M A. , do
you, Miss Millborough? ’
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ said 4 Dorothy ' • • u *
‘Well, that’s a pity It looks so much-better on the prospectus- if you’re gota
few letters after your name. ^elllTerhaps it doesn’t matter, I don’t suppose
many of our parents’d know wfeatB Aj. stands for, and aren’t 80 Oh
3 jo A Clergyman's Daughter
showing their ignorance I suppose you can talk French, of course? ’
‘Well-I’ve learnt French *
‘Oh, that’s all right, then Just so as we can put it on the prospectus Well,
now, to come back to what I was saying, Miss Strong was all right as a teacher,
but she didn’t come up to my ideas on what I call the moral side We’re very
strong on the moral side at Ringwood House It’s what counts most with the
parents, you’ll find And the one before Miss Strong, Miss Brewer- well, she
had what I call a weak nature You don’t get on with girls if you’ve got a weak
nature The end of it all was that one morning one little girl crept up to the desk
with a box of matches and set fire to Miss Brewer’s skirt Of course I wasn’t
going to keep her after that In fact I had her out of the house the same
afternoon-and I didn’t give her any refs either, I can tell you 1 ’
‘You mean you expelled the girl who did it? ’ said Dorothy, mystified
‘What? The girP Not likely 1 You don’t suppose I’d go and turn fees away
from my door, do you? I mean I got rid of Miss Brewer, not the girl It’s no
good having teachers who let the girls get saucy with them We’ve got twenty-
one in the class just at present, and you’ll find they need a strong hand to keep
them down ’
‘You don’t teach yourself? ’ said Dorothy
‘Oh dear, no 1 ’ said Mrs Creevy almost contemptuously ‘I’ve got a lot too
much on my hands to waste my time teaching There’s the house to look after,
and seven of the children stay to dinner- I’ve only a daily woman at present
Besides, it takes me all my time getting the fees out of the parents After all, the
fees are what matter, aren’t they? ’
‘Yes I suppose so,’ said Dorothy
‘Well, we’d better settle about your wages,’ continued Mrs Creevy ‘In term
time I’ll give you your board and lodging and ten shillings a week, in the
holidays it’ll just be your board and lodging You can have the use of the
copper m the kitchen for your laundering, and I light the geyser for hot baths
every Saturday night, or at least most Saturday nights. You can’t have the use
of this room we’re in now, because it’s my reception-room, and I don’t want
you to go wasting the gas m your bedroom But you can have the use of the
mormng-room whenever you want it ’
‘Thank you,’ said Dorothy
‘Well, I should think that’ll be about all I expect you’re feeling ready for
bed You’ll have had your supper long ago, of course? ’
This was clearly intended to mean that Dorothy was not going to get any
food tonight, so she answered Yes, untruthfully, and the conversation was at
an end That was always Mrs Creevy’ s way- she never kept you talking an
instant longer than was necessary Her conversation was so very definite, so
exactly to the point, that it was not really conversation at all Rather, it was the
skeleton of conversation, like the dialogue m a badly written novel where
everyone talks a little too much in character But indeed, m the proper sense of
the word she did not talk, she merely said, in her brief shrewish way, whatever
it was necessary to say* and then got rid of you as promptly as possible She
now showed Dorothy along the passage to her bedroom, and lighted a gas-jot
A Clergyman’s Daughter gji
no bigger than an acorn, revealing a gaunt bedroom with a narrow white-
quilted bed, a rickety wardrobe, one chair and a wash-hand-stand with a frigid
white china basin and ewer It was very like the bedrooms in seaside lodging
houses, but it lacked the one thing that gives such rooms their air of homeliness
and decency-the text over the bed
‘This is your room/ Mrs Creevy said, ‘and I just hope you’ll keep it a bit
tidier than what Miss Strong used to And don’t go burning the gas half the
night, please, because I can tell what time you turn it off by the crack under the
door ’
With this parting salutation she left Dorothy to herself The room was
dismally cold, indeed, the whole house had a damp, chilly feeling, as though
fires were rarely lighted in it Dorothy got into bed as quickly as possible,
feeling bed to be the warmest place On top of the wardrobe, when she was
putting her clothes away, she found a cardboard box containing no less than
nine empty whisky bottles-relics, presumably, of Miss Strong’s weakness on
the moral side
At eight in the morning Dorothy went downstairs and found Mrs Creevy
already at breakfast in what she called the ‘morning-room’ This was a smallish
room adjoining the kitchen, and it had started life as the scullery; but Mrs
Creevy had converted it into the ‘morning-room’ by the simple process of
removing the sink and copper into the kitchen The breakfast table, covered
with a cloth of harsh texture, was very large and forbiddingly bare Up at Mrs
Creevy’ s end were a tray with a very small teapot and two cups, a plate on
which were two leathery fried eggs, and a dish of marmalade, in the middle,
just within Dorothy’s reach if she stretched, was a plate of bread and butter,
and beside her plate-as though it were the only thing she could be trusted
with-a cruet stand with some dried-up, clotted stuff inside the bottles
‘Good morning. Miss Millborough,’ said Mrs Creevy ‘It doesn’t matter
this morning, as this is the first day, but just remember another time that I
want you down here in time to help me get breakfast ready ’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Dorothy
‘I hope you’re fond of fried eggs for your breakfast^’ went on Mrs Creevy
Dorothy hastened to assure her that she was very fond of fried eggs
‘Well, that’s a good thing, because you’ll always have to have the same as
what I have So I hope you’re not going to be what I call dainty about your
food I always think,’ she added, picking up her knife and fork, ‘that a fried egg
tastes a lot better if you cut it well up before you eat it ’
She sliced the two eggs into thin strips, and then served them in such a way
that Dorothy received about two-thirds of an egg With some difficulty
Dorothy spun out her fraction of egg so as to make half a dozen mouthfuls of it,
and then, when she had taken a slice of bread and butter, she could not help
glancing hopefully in the direction of the dish of marmalade. But Mrs Creevy
was sitting with her lean left arm-not exactly round the marmalade, but in a
protective position on its' left flank, as though she suspected that Dorothy was
going to make an attack upon it Dorothy’s nerve failed her, and she had no
marmalade that mornmg-nor, indeed, for many mornings to come
3j2 A Clergyman's Daughter
Mrs Creevy did not speak again during breakfast, but presently the sound of
feet on the gravel outside, and of squeaky voices m the schoolroom, announced
that the girls were beginning to arrive They came m by a side-door that was
left open for them Mrs Creevy got up from the table and banged the breakfast
things together on the tray She was one of those women who can never move
anything without banging it about, she was as full of thumps and raps as a
poltergeist Dorothy carried the tray into the kitchen, and when she returned
Mrs Creevy produced a penny notebook from a drawer m the dresser and laid
it open on the table
‘Just take a look at this,’ she said ‘Here’s a list of the girls’ names that I’ve
got ready for you I shall want you to know the whole lot of them by this
evemng ’ She wetted her thumb and turned over three pages ‘Now, do you see
these three lists here? ’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy
‘Well, you’ll just have to learn those three lists by heart, and make sure you
know what girls are on which Because I don’t want you to go thinking that all
the girls are to be treated alike They aren’t- not by a long way, they aren’t
Different girls, different treatment-that’s my system Now, do you see this lot
on the first page? ’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy agam
‘Well, the parents of that lot are what I call the good payers You know what I
mean by that? They’re the ones that pay cash on the nail and no jibbing at an
extra half-guinea or so now and again You’re not to smack any of that lot, not
on any account This lot over here are the medium payers Their parents do pay
up sooner or later, but you don’t get the money out of them without you worry
them for it night and day You can smack that lot if they get saucy, but don’t go
and leave a mark their parents can see If you’ll take my advice, the best thing
with children is to twist their ears Have you ever tried that? ’
‘No,’ said Dorothy
‘Well, I find it answers better than anything It doesn’t leave a mark, and the
children can’t bear it Now these three over here are the bad payers Their
fathers are two terms behind already, and I’m thinking of a solicitor’s letter I
don’t care what you do to that lot-well, short of a police-court case, naturally
Now, shall I take you m and start you with the girls? You’d better bring that
book along with you, and just keep your eye on it all the time so as there’ll be no
mistakes ’
They went mto the schoolroom It was a largish room, with grey-papered
walls that were made yet greyer by the dullness of the light, for the heavy laurel
bushes outside choked the windows, and no direct ray of the sun ever
penetrated into the room There was a teacher’s desk by the empty fireplace,
and there were a dozen small double desks, a light blackboard, and, on the
mantelpiece, a black clock that looked like a miniature mausoleum, but there
were no maps, no pictures, nor even, as far as Dorothy could see, any books
The sole objects in the room that could be called ornamental were two sheets of
black paper pinned to the walls, with writing on them in chalk m beautiful
copperplate On one was ‘ Speech is Silver. Silence is Golden’, and on the other
A Clergyman’s Daughter 57 3
‘Punctuality is the Politeness of Princes’
The girls, twenty-one of them, were already sitting at their desks They had
grown very silent when they heard footsteps approaching, and as Mrs Creevy
came in they seemed to shrink down m their places like partridge chicks when a
hawk is soaring For the most part they were dull-lookmg, lethargic children
with bad complexions, and adenoids seemed to be remarkably common among
them The eldest of them might have been fifteen years old, the youngest was
hardly more than a baby The school had no uniform, and one or two of the
children were verging on raggedness
‘Stand up, girls,’ said Mrs Creevy as she reached the teacher’s desk ‘We’ll
start off with the morning prayer ’
The girls stood up, clasped their hands in front of them, and shut their eyes
They repeated the prayer in unison, m weak piping voices, Mrs Creevy leading
them, her sharp eyes darting over them all the while to see that they were
attending
‘Almighty and everlasting Father,’ they piped, ‘we beseech Thee that our
studies this day may be graced by Thy divine guidance Make us to conduct
ourselves quietly and obediently, look down upon our school and make it to
prosper, so that it may grow m numbers and be a good example to the
neighbourhood and not a disgrace like some schools of which Thou knowest,
O Lord Make us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, industrious, punctual, and
ladylike, and worthy m all possible respects to walk in Thy ways for Jesus
Christ’s sake, our Lord, Amen ’
This prayer was of Mrs Creevy’ s own composition When they had finished
it, the girls repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and then sat down
‘Now, girls,’ said Mrs Creevy, ‘this is your new teacher. Miss Millborough
As you know. Miss Strong had to leave us all of a sudden after she was taken so
bad in the middle of the arithmetic lesson, and I can tell you I’ve had a hard
week of it looking for a new teacher I had seventy-three applications before I
took on Miss Millborough, and I had to refuse them all because their
qualifications weren’t high enough Just you remember and tell your parents
that, all of you-seventy-three applications' Well, Miss Millborough is gomg
to take you m Latin, French, history, geography, mathematics, English
literature and composition, spelling, grammar, handwriting, and freehand
drawing, and Mr Booth will take you m chemistry as usual on Thursday
afternoons Now, what’s the first lesson on your time-table this morning? ’
‘History, Ma’am,’ piped one or two voices
‘Very well I expect Miss Millborough’ll start off by asking you a few
questions about the history you’ve been learning So just you do your best, all
of you, and let her see that all the trouble we’ve taken over you hasn’t been
wasted You’ll find they can be quite a sharp lot of girls when they try, Miss
Millborough ’
‘I’m sure they are, 9 said Dorothy.
‘Well, I’ll be leaving you, then And just you behave yourselves, girls' Don’t
you get trying it on with Miss Millborough like you did with Miss Brewer,
because I warn you she won’t stand it If I hear any noise coming from this
374 A Clergyman's Daughter
room, there’ll be trouble for somebody 5
She gave a glance round which included Dorothy and indeed suggested that
Dorothy would probably be the ‘somebody’ referred to, and departed
Dorothy faced the class She was not afraid of them-she was too used to
dealing with children ever to be afraid of them-but she did feel a momentary
qualm The sense of being an impostor (what teacher has not felt it at times*)
was heavy upon her It suddenly occurred to her, what she had only been
dimly aware of before, that she had taken this teaching job under flagrantly
false pretences, without having any kind of qualification for it The subject she
was now supposed to be teaching was history, and, like most ‘educated’ people,
she knew virtually no history How awful, she thought, if it turned out that
these girls knew more history than she did 1 She said tentatively
‘What period exactly were you doing with Miss Strong*’
Nobody answered Dorothy saw the older girls exchanging glances, as
though asking one another whether it was safe to say anything, and finally
deciding not to commit themselves
‘Well, whereabouts had you got to*’ she said, wondering whether perhaps
the word ‘period’ was too much for them
Again no answer
‘Well, now, surely you remember something about it* Tell me the names of
some of the people you were learning about m your last history lesson ’
More glances were exchanged, and a very plain little girl in the front row, m
a brown jumper and skirt, with her hair screwed into two tight pigtails,
remarked cloudily, ‘It was about the Ancient Britons ’ At this two other girls
took courage, and answered simultaneously One of them said, ‘Columbus’,
and the other ‘Napoleon’
Somehow, after that, Dorothy seemed to see her way more clearly It was
obvious that instead of being uncomfortably knowledgeable as she had feared,
the class knew as nearly as possible no history at all With this discovery her
stage-fright vanished She grasped that before she could do anything else with
them it was necessary to find out what, if anything, these children knew So,
instead of following the time-table, she spent the rest of the morning m
questioning the entire class on each subject m turn, when she had finished with
history (and it took about five minutes to get to the bottom of their historical
knowledge) she tried them with geography, with English grammar, with
French, with anthmetic-with everything, m fact, that they were supposed to
have learned By twelve o’clock she had plumbed, though not actually
explored, the frightful abysses of their ignorance
For they knew nothing, absolutely nothing-nothing, nothing, nothing, like
the Dadaists It was appalling that even children could be so ignorant. There
were only two girls in the class who knew whether the earth went round the
sun or the sun round the earth, and not a single one of them could tell Dorothy
who was the last king before George V, or who wrote Hamlet , or what was
meant by a vulgar fraction, or which ocean you crossed to get to America, the
Atlantic or the Pacific And the big girls of fifteen were not much better than
the tiny infants of eight, except that the former could at least read
A Clergyman's Daughter 375
consecutively and write neat copperplate That was the one thing that nearly
all of the older girls could do-they could write neatly Mrs Creevy had seen to
that And of course, here and there in the midst of their ignorance, there were
small, disconnected islets of knowledge, for example, some odd stanzas from
‘pieces of poetry’ that they had learned by heart, and a few Ollendorffian
French sentences such as c . Passez-moi le beurre , sM vous plait ’ and ( Lefils du
jar dimer a perdu son chapeau* 3 which they appeared to have learned as a parrot
learns ‘Pretty Poll’ As for their arithmetic, it was a little better than the other
subjects Most of them knew how to add and subtract, about half of them had
some notion of how to multiply, and there were even three or four who had
struggled as far as long division But that was the utmost limit of their
knowledge, and beyond, in every direction, lay utter, impenetrable night
Moreover, not only did they know nothing, but they were so unused to
being questioned that it was often difficult to get answers out of them at all It
was obvious that whatever they knew they had learned m an entirely
mechanical manner, and they could only gape m a sort of dull bewilderment
when asked to think for themselves However, they did not seem unwilling,
and evidently they had made up their minds to be ‘good’ -children are always
‘good’ with a new teacher, and Dorothy persisted, and by degrees the children
grew, or seemed to grow, a shade less lumpish She began to pick up, from the
answers they gave her, a fairly accurate notion of what Miss Strong’s rdgime
had been like
It appeared that, though theoretically they had learned all the usual school
subjects, the only ones that had been at all seriously taught were handwriting
and arithmetic Mrs Creevy was particularly keen on handwriting And
besides this they had spent great quantities of time-an hour or two out of every
day, it seemed-m drudging through a dreadul routine called ‘copies ’ ‘Copies’
meant copying things out of textbooks or off the blackboard Miss Strong
would write up, for example, some sententious little ‘essay’ (there was an essay
entitled ‘Spring’ which recurred m all the older girls’ books, and which began,
‘Now, when girlish April is tripping through the land, when the birds are
chanting gaily on the boughs and the dainty flowerets bursting from their
buds’, etc , etc ), and the girls would make fair copies of it in their copybooks,
and the parents, to whom the copybooks were shown from time to time, were
no doubt suitably impressed Dorothy began to grasp that everything that the
girls had been taught was in reality aimed at the parents Hence the ‘copies’,
the insistence on handwriting, and the parroting of ready-made French
phrases, they were cheap and easy ways of creating an impression Meanwhile,
the little girls at the bottom of the class seemed barely able to read and write,
and one of them-her name was Mavis Williams, and she was a rather sinister-
looking child of eleven, with eyes too far apart-could not even count This
child seemed to have done nothing at all during the past term and a half except
to write pothooks She had quite a pile of books filled with pothooks-page
after page of pothooks, looping on and on like the mangrove roots in some
tropical swamp
Dorothy tried not to hurt the children’s feelings by exclaiming at their
3j6 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
ignorance, but in her heart she was amazed and horrified She had not known
that schools of this description still existed m the civilized world The whole
atmosphere of the place was so curiously antiquated-so reminiscent of those
dreary little private schools that you read about in Victorian novels As for the
few textbooks that the class possessed, you could hardly look at them without
feeling as though you had stepped back into the mid nineteenth century There
were only three textbooks of which each child had a copy One was a shilling
arithmetic, pre Great War but fairly serviceable, and another was a horrid little
book called The Hundred Page History of Britain -a nasty little duodecimo
book with a gritty brown cover, and, for frontispiece, a portrait of Boadicea
with a Umon Jack draped over the front of her chariot Dorothy opened this
book at random, came to page 91, and read
After the French Revolution was over, the self-styled Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte
attempted to set up his sway, but though he won a few victories against continental troops, he soon
found that in. the ‘thm red line’ he had more than met his match Conclusions were tried upon the
field of Waterloo, where 50,000 Britons put to flight 70,000 Frenchmen— for the Prussians, our
allies, arrived too late for the battle With a ringing British cheer our men charged down the slope
and the enemy broke and fled We now come on to the great Reform Bill of 1 832, the first of those
beneficent reforms which have made British liberty what it is and marked us off from the less
fortunate nations [etc , etc ]
The date of the book was 1888 Dorothy, who had never seen a history book
of this description before, examined it with a feeling approaching horror
There was also an extraordinary little ‘reader’, dated 1863 It consisted mostly
of bits out of Fenimore Cooper, Dr Watts, and Lord T ennyson, and at the end
there were the queerest little ‘Nature Notes’ with woodcut illustrations There
would be a woodcut of an elephant, and underneath m small print ‘The
elephant is a sagacious beast He rejoices m the shade of the Palm Trees, and
though stronger than six horses he will allow a little child to lead him His food
is Bananas ’ And so on to the Whale, the Zebra, and Porcupine, and the
Spotted Camelopard There were also, in the teacher’s desk, a copy of
Beautiful Joe 3 a forlorn book called Peeps at Distant Lands } and a French
phrase-book dated 1891. It was called All you will need on your Parisian Trip ,
and the first phrase given was ‘Lace my stays, but not too tightly’ In the whole
room there was not such a thing as an atlas or a set of geometrical instruments
At eleven there was a break of ten minutes, and some of the girls played dull
little games at noughts and crosses or quarrelled over pencil-cases, and a few
who had got over their first shyness clustered round Dorothy’s desk and talked
to her They told her some more about Miss Strong and her methods of
teachings and how she used to twist their ears when they made blots on their
copybooks It appeared that Miss Strong had been a very strict teacher except
when she was ‘taken bad’, which happened about twice a week And when she
was taken bad she used to drink some medicine out of a little brown bottle, and
after drinking it she would grow quite jolly for a while and talk to them about
hex brother in Canada But on her last day- the time when she was taken so bad
during the arithmetic lesson-the medicine seemed to make her worse than
A Clergyman's Daughter 377
ever, because she had no sooner drunk it than she began sinking and fell across
a desk, and Mrs Creevy had to carry her out of the room
After the break there was another period of three quarters of an hour, and
then school ended for the morning Dorothy felt stiff and tired after three '
hours in the chilly but stuffy room, and she would have liked to go out of doors
for a breath of fresh air, but Mrs Creevy had told her beforehand that she must
come and help get dinner ready The girls who lived near the school mostly
went home for dinner, but there were seven who had dinner in the ‘morning-
room’ at tenpence a time It was an uncomfortable meal, and passed in almost
complete silence, for the girls were frightened to talk under Mrs Creevy’s eye
The dinner was stewed scrag end of mutton, and Mrs Creevy showed
extraordinary dexterity in serving the pieces of lean to the ‘good payers’ and
the pieces of fat to the ‘medium payers’ As for the three ‘bad payers’, they ate a
shamefaced lunch out of paper bags m the school-room
School began again at two o’clock Already, after only one morning’s
teaching, Dorothy went back to her work with secret shrinking and dread She
was beginning to realize what her life would be like, day after day and week
after week, m that sunless room, trying to drive the rudiments of knowledge
into unwilling brats But when she had assembled the girls and called their
names over, one of them, a little peaky child with mouse-coloured hair, called
Laura Firth, came up to her desk and presented her with a pathetic bunch of
browny-yellow chrysanthemums, ‘from all of us’ The girls had taken a liking
to Dorothy, and had subscribed fourpence among themselves, to buy her a
bunch of flowers
Something stirred m Dorothy’s heart as she took the ugly flowers She
looked with more seeing eyes than before at the anaemic faces and shabby
clothes of the children, and was all of a sudden horribly ashamed to think that
in the morning she had looked at them with indifference, almost with dislike
Now, a profound pity took possession of her The poor children, the poor
children 1 How they had been stunted and maltreated' And with it all they had
retained the childish gentleness that could make them squander their few
pennies on flowers for their teacher.
She felt quite differently towards her job from that moment onwards A
feeling of loyalty and affection had sprung up in her heart This school was her
school, she would work for it and be proud of it, and make every effort to turn it
from a place of bondage into a place human and decent. Probably it was very
little that she could do She was so inexperienced and unfitted for her job that
she must educate herself before she could even begin to educate anybody else
Still, she would do her best, she would do whatever willingness and energy
could do to rescue these children from the horrible darkness in which they bad
been kept.
3
During the next few weeks there were two things that occupied Dorothy to the
exclusion of all others One, getting her class into some kind of order, the
other, establishing a concordat with Mrs Creevy
The second of the two was by a great deal the more difficult Mrs Creevy’ s
house was as vile a house to live m as one could possibly imagine It was always
more or less cold, there was not a comfortable chair in it from top to bottom,
and the food was disgusting Teaching is harder work than it looks, and a
teacher needs good food to keep him going It was horribly dispiriting to have
to work on a diet of tasteless mutton stews, damp boiled potatoes full of little
black eyeholes, watery rice puddings, bread and scrape, and weak tea-and
never enough even of these Mrs Creevy, who was mean enough to take a
pleasure m skimping even her own food, ate much the same meals as Dorothy,
but she always had the lion’s share of them Every morning at breakfast the two
fried eggs were sliced up and unequally partitioned, and the dish of marmalade
remained for ever sacrosanct Dorothy grew hungrier and hungrier as the term
went on On the two evenings a week when she managed to get out of doors she
dipped into her dwindling store of money and bought slabs of plain chocolate,
which she ate in the deepest secrecy-for Mrs Creevy, though she starved
Dorothy more or less intentionally, would have been mortally offended if she
had known that she bought food for herself
The worst thing about Dorothy’s position was that she had no privacy and
very little time that she could call her own Once school was over for the day
her only refuge was the ‘morning-room’, where she was under Mrs Creevy’ s
eye, and Mrs Creevy’s leading idea was that Dorothy must never be left m
peace for ten minutes together She had taken it into her head, or pretended to
do so, that Dorothy was an idle person who needed keeping up to the mark
And so it was always, ‘Well, Miss Millborough, you don’t seem to have very
much to do this evening, do you? Aren’t there some exercise books that want
correcting? Or why don’t you get your needle and do a bit of sewing? I’m sure I
couldn’t bear to just sit in my chair doing nothing like you do 1 ’ She was for ever
finding household jobs for Dorothy to do, even making her scrub the
schoolroom floor on Saturday mornings when the girls did not come to school,
but this was done out of pure ill nature, for she did not trust Dorothy to do the
work properly, and generally did it again after her One evening Dorothy was
unwise enough to bring back a novel from the public library Mrs Creevy
flared up at the very sight of it ‘Well, really. Miss Millborough! I shouldn’t
A Clergyman’s Daughter 579
have thought you’d have had time to read 1 ’ she said bitterly She herself had
never read a book right through in her life, and was proud of it
Moreover, even when Dorothy was not actually under her eye, Mrs Creevy
had ways of making her presence felt She was for ever prowling in the
neighbourhood of the schoolroom, so that Dorothy never felt quite safe from
her intrusion, and when she thought there was too much noise she would
suddenly rap on the wall with her broom-handle in a way that made the
children jump and put them off their work At all hours of the day she was
restlessly, noisily active When she was not cooking meals she was banging
about with broom and dustpan, or harrying the charwoman, or pouncing down
upon the schoolroom to ‘have a look round’ in hopes of catching Dorothy or
the children up to mischief, or ‘doing a bit of gardemng’-that is, mutilating
with a pair of shears the unhappy little shrubs that grew amid wastes of gravel
m the back garden On only two evenings a week was Dorothy free of her, and
that was when Mrs Creevy sallied forth on forays which she called ‘going after
the girls’, that is to say, canvassing likely parents These evenings Dorothy
usually spent in the public library, for when Mrs Creevy was not at home she
expected Dorothy to keep out of the house, to save fire and gaslight On other
evenings Mrs Creevy was busy writing dunning letters to the parents, or
letters to the editor of the local paper, haggling over the price of a dozen
advertisements, or poking about the girls’ desks to see that their exercise books
had been properly corrected, or ‘doing a bit of sewing’ Whenever occupation
failed her for even five minutes she got out her workbox and ‘did a bit of
sewing’-generally restitchmg some bloomers of harsh white linen of which she
had pairs beyond number They were the most chilly looking garments that
one could possibly imagine, they seemed to carry upon them, as no nun’s coif
or anchorite’s hair shirt could ever have done, the impress of a frozen and
awful chastity The sight of them set you wondermg about the late Mr Creevy,
even to the point of wondering whether he had ever existed
Looking with an outsider’s eye at Mrs Creevy’ s manner of life, you would
have said that she had no pleasures whatever She never did any of the things
that ordinary people do to amuse themselves-never went to the pictures, never
looked at a book, never ate sweets, never cooked a special dish for dinner or
dressed herself in any kmd of finery Social life meant absolutely nothing to
her. She had no friends, was probably incapable of imagining such a thing as
friendship, and hardly ever exchanged a word with a fellow being except on
business Of religious belief she had not the smallest vestige Her attitude
towards religion, though she went to the Baptist Chapel every Sunday to
impress the parents with her piety, was a mean anti-clericalism founded on the
notion that the clergy are ‘only after your money’ She seemed a creature
utterly joyless, utterly submerged by the dullness of her existence. But in
reality it was not so There were several things from which she derived acute
and inexhaustible pleasure.
For instance, there was her avarice over money , It was the leading interest of
her life There are two kinds of avaricious person— Hie belch grasping type who
will ruin you lfhecan, but who never looks twice at, twopence^ and the petty
380 A Clergyman's Daughter
miser who has not the enterprise actually to make money, but who will always,
as the saying goes, take a farthing from a dunghill with his teeth Mrs Creevy
belonged to the second type By ceaseless canvassing and impudent bluff she
had worked her school up to twenty-one pupils, but she would never get it
much further, because she was too mean to spend money on the necessary
equipment and to pay proper wages to her assistant The fees the girls paid, or
didn’t pay, were five guineas a term with certain extras, so that, starve and
sweat her assistant as she might, she could hardly hope to make more than a
hundred and fifty pounds a year clear profit But she was fairly satisfied with
that. It meant more to her to save sixpence than to earn a pound So long as she
could think of a way of docking Dorothy’s dinner of another potato, or getting
her exercise books a halfpenny a dozen cheaper, or shoving an unauthorized
half guinea on to one of the ‘good payers” bills, she was happy after her
fashion
And again, m pure, purposeless maligmty-m petty acts of spite, even when
there was nothing to be gained by them- she had a hobby of which she never
weaned She was one of those people who experience a kind of spiritual orgasm
when they manage to do somebody else a bad turn Her feud with Mr Boulger
next door-a one-sided affair, really, for poor Mr Boulger was not up to Mrs
Creevy’s fighting weight-was conducted ruthlessly, with no quarter given or
expected So keen was Mrs Creevy’s pleasure in scoring off Mr Boulger that
she was even willing to spend money on it occasionally A year ago Mr Boulger
had written to the landlord (each of them was for ever writing to the landlord,
complaining about the other’s behaviour), to say that Mrs Creevy’s kitchen
chimney smoked mto his back windows, and would she please have it
heightened two feet The very day the landlord’s letter reached her, Mrs
Creevy called in the bricklayers and had the chimney lowered two feet It cost
her thirty shillings, but it was worth it After that there had been the long
guerrilla campaign of throwing things over the garden wall during the night,
and Mrs Creevy had finally won with a dustbinful of wet ashes thrown on to
Mr Boulger’s bed of tulips As it happened, Mrs Creevy won a neat and
bloodless victory soon after Dorothy’s arrival Discovering by chance that the
roots of Mr Boulger’s plum tree had grown under the wall into her own
garden, she promptly injected a whole tm of weed-killer mto them and killed
the tree This was remarkable as being the only occasion when Dorothy ever
heard Mrs Creevy laugh
But Dorothy was too busy, at first, to pay much attention to Mrs Creevy and
her nasty characteristics She saw quite clearly that Mrs Creevy was an odious
woman and that her own position was virtually that of a slave, but it did not
greatly worry her Her work was too absorbing, too all-important In
comparison with it, her own comfort and even her future hardly seemed to
matter.
It did not take her more than a couple of days to get her class mto running
order It was curious, but though she had no experience of teaching and no
preconceived theories about it, yet from the very first day she found herself, as
though by mstinct, rearranging, scheming, innovating There was so much
A Clergyman 3 s Daughter 381
that was crying out to be done The first thing, obviously, was to get rid of the
grisly routine of ‘copies’, and after Dorothy’s second day no more ‘copies’ were
done m the class, m spite of a sniff or two from Mrs Creevy The handwriting
lessons, also, were cut down Dorothy would have liked to do away with
handwriting lessons altogether so far as the older girls were concerned-it
seemed to her ridiculous that girls of fifteen should waste time m practising
copperplate-but Mrs Creevy would not hear of it She seemed to attach an
almost superstitious value to handwriting lessons And the next thmg, of
course, was to scrap the repulsive Hundred Page History and the preposterous
little ‘readers’ It would have been worse than useless to ask Mrs Creevy to buy
new books for the children, but on her first Saturday afternoon Dorothy
begged leave to go up to London, was grudgingly given it, and spent two
pounds three shillings out of her precious four pounds ten on a dozen second-
hand copies of a cheap school edition of Shakespeare, a big second-hand atlas,
some volumes of Hans Andersen’s stories for the younger children, a set of
geometrical instruments, and two pounds of plasticine With these, and
history books out of the public library, she felt that she could make a start
She had seen at a glance that what the children most needed, and what they
had never had, was individual attention So she began by dividing them up
into three separate classes, and so arranging things that two lots could be
working by themselves while she ‘went through’ something with the third It
was difficult at first, especially with the younger girls, whose attention
wandered as soon as they were left to themselves, so that you could never really
take your eyes off them And yet how wonderfully, how unexpectedly, nearly
all of them improved durmg those first few weeks' For the most part they were
not really stupid, only dazed by a dull, mechanical rigmarole For a week,
perhaps, they continued unteachable, and then, quite suddenly, their warped
little minds seemed to spring up and expand like daisies when you move the
garden roller off them
Quite quickly and easily Dorothy broke them in to the habit of thinking for
themselves She got them to make up essays out of their own heads instead of
copying out drivel about the birds chanting on the boughs and the flowerets
bursting from their buds She attacked their arithmetic at the foundations and
started the little girls on multiplication and piloted the older ones through long
division to fractions, she even got three of them to the point where there was
talk of starting on decimals She taught them the first rudiments of French
grammar in place of c Passez-moi le beurre , shl vous plait' and l Lefilsdujardmier
a perdu son chapeau ’ Finding that not a girl in the class knew what any of the
countries of the world looked like (though several of them knew that Quito was
the capital of Ecuador), she set them to making a large contour-map of Europe
in plasticine, on a piece of three-ply wood, copying it in scale from the atlas
The children adored making the map, they were always clamouring to be
allowed to go on with it. And she started the whole class, except the six
youngest girls and Mavis Williams, the pothook specialist, on reading
Macbeth Not a child among them had ever voluntarily read anything m her
life before, except perhaps the Girl's Own Paper ; but they tpok readily to
382 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
Shakespeare, as all children do when he is not made horrible with parsing and
analysing
History was the hardest thing to teach them Dorothy had not realized till
now how hard it is for children who come from poor homes to have even a
conception of what history means Every upper-class person, however lll-
mformed, grows up with some notion of history, he can visualize a Roman
centurion, a medieval knight, an eighteenth-century nobleman, the terms
Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution evoke some
meaning, even if a confused one, m his mind But these children came from
bookless homes and from parents who would have laughed at the notion that
the past has any meaning for the present They had never heard of Robin
Hood, never played at being Cavaliers and Roundheads, never wondered who
built the English churches or what Fid Def on a penny stands for There were
just two historical characters of whom all of them, almost without exception,
had heard, and those were Columbus and Napoleon Heaven knows
why-perhaps Columbus and Napoleon get into the newspapers a little oftener
than most historical characters They seemed to have swelled up m the
children’s minds, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, till they blocked out the
whole landscape of the past Asked when motor-cars were invented, one child,
aged ten, vaguely hazarded, ‘About a thousand years ago, by Columbus ’
Some of the older girls, Dorothy discovered, had been through the Hundred
Page History as many as four times, from Boadicea to the first Jubilee, and
forgotten practically every word of it Not that that mattered greatly, for most
of it was lies She started the whole class over again at Julius Caesar’s invasion,
and at first she tried taking history books out of the public library and reading
them aloud to the children, but that method failed, because they could
understand nothing that was not explained to them in words of one or two
syllables So she did what she could in her own words and with her own
inadequate knowledge, making a sort of paraphrase of what she read and
delivering it to the children; striving all the while to drive into their dull little
minds some picture of the past, and what was always more difficult, some
interest m it But one day a brilliant idea struck her. She bought a roll of cheap
plain wallpaper at an upholsterer’s shop, and set the children to making an
historical chart. They marked the roll of paper mto centuries and years, and
stuck scraps that they cut out of illustrated papers-pictures of kmghts in
armour and Spanish galleons and printing-presses and railway trains-at the
appropriate places Pinned round the walls of the room, the chart presented, as
the scraps grew in number, a Sort of panorama of English history The children
were even fonder of the chart than of the contour map. They always, Dorothy
found, showed more intelligence when it was a question of making something
instead of merely learning. There was even talk of making a contour map of the
world, four feet by four, m papierm&ch 6 , if Dorothy could ‘get round’ Mrs
Creevy to allow die preparation of the papierm&ch 6 -a messy process needing
buckets of wafer*
, Mrs Creevy watched Dorothy’s innovations with a jealous eye, but she did
. pot inferfere actively at first She was not going to show it, of course, but she
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 383
was secretly amazed and delighted to find that she had got hold of an assistant
who was actually willing to work When she saw Dorothy spending her own
money on textbooks for the children, it gave her the same delicious sensation
that she would have had m bringing off a successful swindle She did, however,
sniff and grumble at everything that Dorothy did, and she wasted a great deal
of time by insisting on what she called ‘thorough correction’ of the girls’
exercise books But her system of correction, like everything else m the school
curriculum, was arranged with one eye on the parents Periodically the
children took their books home for their parents’ inspection, and Mrs Creevy
would never allow anything disparaging to be written in them Nothing was to
be marked ‘bad’ or crossed out or too heavily underlined, mstead, m the
evenings, Dorothy decorated the books, under Mrs Creevy’s dictation, with
more or less applauding comments m red ink ‘A very creditable performance’,
and ‘Excellent 1 You are making great strides Keep it up 1 ’ were Mrs Creevy’s
favourites All the children in the school, apparently, were for ever ‘making
great strides’, in what direction they were stridmg was not stated The parents,
however, seemed willing to swallow an almost unlimited amount of this kind of
thing
There were times, of course, when Dorothy had trouble with the girls
themselves The fact that they were all of different ages made them difficult to
deal with, and though they were fond of her and were very ‘good’ with her at
first, they would not have been children at all if they had been invariably
‘good’ Sometimes they were lazy and sometimes they succumbed to that most
damnable vice of schoolgirls-giggling For the first few days Dorothy was
greatly exercised over little Mavis Williams, who was stupider than one would
have believed it possible for any child of eleven to be Dorothy could do
nothing with her at all At the first attempt to get her to do anything beyond
pothooks a look of almost subhuman blankness would come into her wide-set
eyes Sometimes, however, she had talkative fits in which she would ask the
most amazing and unanswerable questions For instance, she would open her
‘reader’, find one of the lllustrations-the sagacious Elephant, perhaps-and ask
Dorothy
‘Please, Miss, wass ’at thing there’’ (She mispronounced her words m a
cunous manner )
‘That’s an elephant, Mavis ’
‘Wass a elephant’’
‘An elephant’s a kind of wild animal ’
‘Wass a animal’’
‘Well-a dog’s an animal ’
‘Wass a dog? ’
And so on, more or less indefinitely About half-way through the fourth
morning Mavis held up her hand and said with a sly politeness that ought to
have put Dorothy on her guard
‘Please, Miss, may I be ’scused’’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy
One of the bigger girls put up her hand, blushed, and put her hand down
384 A Clergyman’s Daughter
again as though too bashful to speak On being prompted by Dorothy, she said
shamefacedly
‘Please, Miss, Miss Strong didn’t used to let Mavis go to the lavatory alone
She locks herself m and won’t come out, and then Mrs Creevy gets angry.
Miss ’
Dorothy dispatched a messenger, but it was too late Mavis remained in
latebra pudenda till twelve o’clock Afterwards, Mrs Creevy explained
privately to Dorothy that Mavis was a congenital idiot- or, as she put it, ‘not
right m the head’ It was totally impossible to teach her anything Of course,
Mrs Creevy didn’t ‘let on’ to Mavis’s parents, who believed that their child
was only ‘backward’ and paid their fees regularly Mavis was quite easy to deal
with You just had to give her a book and a pencil and tell her to draw pictures
and be quiet But Mavis, a child of habit, drew nothing but pothooks
-remaining quiet and apparently happy for hours together, with her tongue
hanging out, amid festoons of pothooks
But in spite of these minor difficulties, how well everything went during
those first few weeks 1 How ominously well, indeed 1 About the tenth of
November, after much grumbling about the price of coal, Mrs Creevy started
to allow a fire m the schoolroom The children’s wits brightened noticeably
when the room was decently warm And there were happy hours, sometimes,
when the fire crackled in the grate, and Mrs Creevy was out of the house, and
the children were working quietly and absorbedly at one of the lessons that
were their favourites Best of all was when the two top classes were reading
Macbeth , the girls squeaking breathlessly through the scenes, and Dorothy
pulling them up to make them pronounce the words properly and to tell them
who Bellona’s bridegroom was and how witches rode on broomsticks, and the
girls wanting to know, almost as excitedly as though it had been a detective
story, how Birnam Wood could possible come to Dunsinane and Macbeth be
killed by a man who was not of woman born Those are the times that make
teaching worth while-the times when the children’s enthusiasm leaps up, like
an answering flame, to meet your own, and sudden unlooked-for gleams of
intelligence reward your earlier drudgery No job is more fascinating than
teaching if you have a free hand at it Nor did Dorothy know, as yet, that that
‘if’ is one of the biggest ‘ifs’ m the world
Her job suited her, and she was happy in it She knew the minds of the
children intimately by this time, knew their individual peculiarities and the
special stimulants that were needed before you could get them to think She
was more fond of them, more interested in their development, more anxious to
do her best for them, than she would have conceived possible a short while ago
The complex, never-ended labour of teaching filled her life just as the round of
parish jobs had filled it at home She thought and dreamed of teaching, she
took books out of the public library and studied theories of education. She felt
that quite willingly she would go on teaching all her life, even at ten shillings a
week and her keep, if it could always be like this It was her vocation, she
thought*
' Almost an^ job that fully occupied her would have been a relief after the
A Clergyman’s Daughter 38 5
horrible futility of the time of her destitution But this was more than a mere
job, it was-so it seemed to her-a mission, a life-purpose Trying to awaken the
dulled minds of these children, trying to undo the swindle that had been
worked upon them in the name of education-that, surely, was something to
which she could give herself heart and souP So for the time being, in the
interest of her work, she disregarded the beastlmess of living in Mrs Creevy’s
house, and quite forgot her strange, anomalous position and the uncertainty of
her future
4
But of course, it could not last
Not many weeks had gone by before the parents began interfering with
Dorothy’s programme of work That-- trouble with the parents-is part of the
regular routine of life in a private school All parents are tiresome from a
teacher’s point of view, and the parents of children at fourth-rate private
schools are utterly impossible On the one hand, they have only the dimmest
idea of what is meant by education, on the other hand, they look on ‘schooling’
exactly as they look on a butcher’s bill or a grocer’s bill, and are perpetually
suspicious that they are being cheated They bombard the teacher with lll-
wntten notes making impossible demands, which they send by hand and
which the child reads on the way to school At the end of the first fortnight
Mabel Briggs, one of the most promising girls m the class, brought Dorothy
the following note
Dear Miss,-Would you please give Mabel a bit more arithmetic* I feel that what your givmg her
is not practacle enpugh All these maps and that She wants practacle work, not all this fancy stuff
So more arithmetic, please And remain,
Yours Faithfully,
Geo Briggs
p s Mabel says your talking of starting her on something called decimals I don’t want her taught
decimals, I want her taught arithmetic
So Dorothy stopped Mabel’s geography and gave her extra arithmetic
instead, whereat Mabel wept, More letters followed One lady was disturbed
to hear that her child was being given Shakespeare to read ‘She had heard’,
she wrote, ‘that this Mr Shakespeare was a writer of stage-plays, and was Miss
Millborough quite certain that he wasn’t a very immoral writer? For her own
part she had never so much as been to the pictures in her life, let alone to a
stage-play, and she felt that even in readmg stage-plays there was a very grave
danger,’ etc , etc She gave way, however, on being informed that Mr
Shakespeare was dead This seemed to reassure her Another parent wanted
y86 A Clergyman’s Daughter
more attention to his child’s handwriting, and another thought French was a
waste of time, and so it went on, until Dorothy’s carefully arranged time-table
was almost m ruins Mrs Creevy gave her clearly to understand that whatever
the parents demanded she must do, or pretend to do In many cases it was next
door to impossible, for it disorganized everything to have one child studying,
for instance, arithmetic while the rest of the class were doing history or
geography But m private schools the parents’ word is law Such schools exist,
like shops, by flattering their customers, and if a parent wanted his child taught
nothing but cat’s-cradle and the cuneiform alphabet, the teacher would have to
agree rather than lose a pupil
The fact was that the parents were growing perturbed by the tales their
children brought home about Dorothy’s methods They saw no sense
whatever in these new-fangled ideas of making plasticine maps and reading
poetry, and the old mechamcal routine which had so horrified Dorothy struck
them as eminently sensible They became more and more restive, and their
letters were peppered with the word ‘practical’, meaning m effect more
handwriting lessons and more arithmetic And even their notion of arithmetic
was limited to addition, subtraction, multiplication and ‘practice’, with long
division thrown m as a spectacular tour deforce of no real value Very few of
them could have worked out a sum in decimals themselves, and they were not
particularly anxious for their children to be able to do so either
However, if this had been all, there would probably never have been any
serious trouble The parents would have nagged at Dorothy, as all parents do,
but Dorothy would finally have learned-as, again, all teachers finally
learn- that if one showed a certain amount of tact one could safely ignore them
But there was one fact that was absolutely certain to lead to trouble, and that
was the fact that the parents of all except three children were Nonconformists,
whereas Dorothy was an Anglican It was true that Dorothy had lost her
faith-mdeed, for two months past, m the press of varying adventures, had
hardly thought either of her faith or of its loss But that made very little
difference, Roman or Anglican, Dissenter, Jew, Turk or infidel, you retain the
habits of thought that you have been brought up with Dorothy, born and bred
m the precmcts of the Church, had no understanding of the Nonconformist
mind With the best will in the world, she could not help doing things that
would cause offence to some of the parents
Almost at the beginning there was a skirmish over the Scripture
lessons-twice a week the children used to read a couple of chapters from the
Bible Old Testament and New Testament alternately- several of the parents
writing to say, would Miss Millborough please not answer the children when
they asked questions about the Virgin Msary, texts about the Virgin Mary were
to be passed over m silence, or, if possible, missed out altogether But it was
Shakespeare, that immoral writer, who brought things to a head The girls had
worked their way through Macbeth , pining to know how the witches’ prophecy
was to be fulfilled. They reached the closing scenes Birnam Wood had come to
Dunsinane-that part was settled, anyway, now what about the man who was
not of woman born* They came to the fatal passage
A Clergyman' s Daughter 387
macbeth Thou losest labour.
As easy may’st thou the intrenchant air
With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests,
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born
MACDUFF Despair thy charm.
And let the Angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb
Untimely ripp’d
The girls looked puzzled There was a momentary silence, and then a chorus
of voices round the room,
‘Please, Miss, what does that mean? ’
Dorothy explained She explained haltingly and incompletely, with a
sudden horrid misgivmg-a premonition that this was going to lead to
trouble-but still, she did explain. And after that, of course, the fun began
About half the children m the class went home and asked their parents the
meaning of the word ‘womb’ There was a sudden commotion, a flying to
and fro of messages, an electric thrill of horror through fifteen decent
Nonconformist homes That night the parents must have held some kmd of
conclave, for the following evening, about the time when school ended, a
deputation called upon Mrs Creevy Dorothy heard them arriving by ones and
twos, and guessed what was going to happen As soon as she had dismissed the
children, she heard Mrs Creevy call sharply down the stairs
‘Come up here a minute. Miss Millborough 1 ’
Dorothy went up, trying to control the trembling of her knees In the gaunt
drawing-room Mrs Creevy was standing grimly beside the piano, and six
parents were sitting round on horsehair chairs like a circle of inquisitors
There was the Mr Geo Briggs who had written the letter about Mabel’s
anthmetic-he was an alert-looking greengrocer with a dried-up, shrewish
wife-and there was a large, buffalo -like man with drooping moustaches and a
colourless, peculiarly flat wife who looked as though she had been flattened out
by the pressure of some heavy object-her husband, perhaps The names of
these two Dorothy did not catch There was also Mrs Williams, the mother of
the congenital idiot, a small, dark, very obtuse woman who always agreed with
the last speaker, and there was a Mr Poynder, a commerical traveller He was a
youngish to middle-aged man with a grey face, mobile lips, and a bald scalp
across which some strips of rather nasty-looking damp hair were carefully
plastered In honour of the parents’ visit, a fire composed of three large coals
was sulking in the grate
‘Sit down there, Miss Millborough,’ said Mrs Creevy, pointing to a hard
chair which stood like a stool of repentance in the middle of the ring of parents
Dorothy sat down
‘And now/ said Mrs Creevy, ‘just you hsten to what Mr Poynder’s got to say
to you,’
Mr Poynder had a great deal to say The other parents had evidently chosen
$88 A Clergyman's Daughter
him as their spokesman, and he talked till flecks of yellowish foam appeared at
the corners of his mouth And what was remarkable, he managed to do it all-so
nice was his regard for the decencies -without ever once repeating the word
that had caused all the trouble
‘I feel that I’m voicing the opinion of all of us,’ he said with his facile
bagman’s eloquence, ‘in saying that if Miss Millborough knew that this
play- Macduff, or whatever its name is- contained such words as- well, such
words as we’re speaking about, she never ought to have given it to the children
to read at all To my mind it’s a disgrace that schoolbooks can be printed with
such words in them I’m sure if any of us had ever known that Shakespeare was
that kind of stuff, we’d have put our foot down at the start It surprises me, I
must say Only the other morning I was reading a piece m my News Chronicle
about Shakespeare being the father of English Literature, well, if that’s
Literature, let’s have a bit less Literature, say I' I think everyone’ll agree with
me there And on the other hand, if Miss Millborough didn’t know that the
word- well, the word I’m referring to- was coming, she just ought to have gone
straight on and taken no notice when it did come There wasn’t the slightest
need to go explaining it to them Just tell them to keep quiet and not get asking
questions-that’s the proper way with children ’
‘But the children wouldn’t have understood the play if I hadn’t explained 1 ’
protested Dorothy for the third or fourth time
‘Of course they wouldn’t 1 You don’t seem to get my point, Miss
Millborough 1 We don’t want them to understand Do you think we want them
to go picking up dirty ideas out of books 1 * Quite enough of that already with all
these dirty films and these twopenny girls’ papers that they get hold of-all
these filthy, dirty love-stories with pictures of-well, I won’t go into it We
don’t send our children to school to have ideas put into their heads I’m
speaking for all the parents in saying this We’re all of decent God-fearing
folk-some of us are Baptists and some of us are Methodists, and there’s even
one or two Church of England among us, but we can sink our differences when
it comes to a case like this- and we try to bring our children up decent and save
them from knowing anything about the Facts of Life If I had my way, no
child-at any rate, no girl- would know anything about the Facts of Life till she
was twenty-one ’
There was a general nod from the parents, and the buffalo-like man added,
‘Yer, yer' I’m with you there, Mr Poynder Yer, yer*’ deep down m his inside
After dealing with the subject of Shakespeare, Mr Poynder added some
remarks about Dorothy’s new-fangled methods of teaching, which gave Mr
Geo Briggs the opportunity to rap out from time to time, ‘That’s it 1 Practical
work-that’s what we want-practical work 1 Not all this messy stuff like po’try
and making maps and sticking scraps of paper and such like Give ’em a good
bit of figuring and handwriting and bother the rest Practical work! You’ve
said it>’
This went on for about twenty minutes At first Dorothy attempted to
argue, but she saw Mrs Creevy angrily shaking her head at her over the
buffalo-like man’s shoulder, which she rightly took as a signal to be quiet By
A Clergyman's Daughter 389
the time the parents had finished they had reduced Dorothy very nearly to
tears, and after this they made ready to go But Mrs Creevy stopped them
‘ Just a minute, ladies and gentlemen,’ she said ‘Now that you’ve all had
your say-and I’m sure I’m most glad to give you the opportumty-I’d just like
to say a little something on my own account Just to make things clear, in case
any of you might think I was to blame for this nasty business that’s happened
And you stay here too, Miss Millborough 1 ’ she added
She turned on Dorothy, and, m front of the parents, gave her a venomous
‘talking to’ which lasted upwards of ten minutes The burden of it all was that
Dorothy had brought these dirty books into the house behind her back, that it
was monstrous treachery and ingratitude, and that if anything like it happened
again, out Dorothy would go with a week’s wages m her pocket She rubbed it
in and in and in Phrases like ‘girl that I’ve taken into my house’, ‘eating my
bread’, and even ‘living on my charity’, recurred over and over again The
parents sat round watching, and m their crass faces-faces not harsh or evil,
only blunted by ignorance and mean virtues-you could see a solemn approval,
a solemn pleasure in the spectacle of sm rebuked Dorothy understood this,
she understood that it was necessary that Mrs Creevy should give her her
‘talking to’ m front of the parents, so that they might feel that they were gettmg
their money’s worth and be satisfied But still, as the stream of mean, cruel
reprimand went on and on, such anger rose m her heart that she could with
pleasure have stood up and struck Mrs Creevy across the face Again and again
she thought, ‘I won’t stand it, I won’t stand it any longer 1 I’ll tell her what I
think of her and then walk straight out of the house 1 ’ But she did nothing of the
kind She saw with dreadful clarity the helplessness of her position Whatever
happened, whatever insults it meant swallowing, she had got to keep her job
So she sat still, with pink humiliated face, amid the circle of parents, and
presently her anger turned to misery, and she realized that she was going to
begin crying if she did not struggle to prevent it But she realized, too, that if
she began crying it would be the last straw and the parents would demand her
dismissal To stop herself, she dug her nails so hard into the palms that
afterwards she found that she had drawn a few drops of blood
Presently the ‘talking to’ wore itself out m assurances from Mrs Creevy that
this should never happen again and that the offending Shakespeares should be
burnt immediately The parents were now satisfied Dorothy had had her
lesson and would doubtless profit by it, they did not bear her any malice and
were not conscious of having humiliated her They said good-bye to Mrs
Creevy, said good-bye rather more coldly to Dorothy, and departed Dorothy
also rose to go, but Mrs Creevy signed to her to stay where she was
‘Just you wait a minute,’ she said ominously as the parents left the room ‘I
haven’t finished yet, not by a long way I haven’t ’
Dorothy sat down again She felt very weak at the knees, and nearer to tears
than ever Mrs Creevy, having shown the parents out by the front door, came
back with a bowl of water and threw it over the fire-for where was the sense of
burning good coals after the parents had gone^ Dorothy supposed that the
‘talking to’ was going to begin afresh. However, Mrs Creevy’s wrath seemed to
3yo A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
have cooled-at any rate, she had laid aside the air of outraged virtue that it had
been necessary to put on m front of the parents
‘I just want to have a bit of a talk with you. Miss Millborough,’ she said ‘It’s
about time we got it settled once and for all how this school’s going to be run
and how it’s not going to be run ’
c Yes,’ said Dorothy
‘Well, I’ll be straight with you When you came here I could see with half an
eye that you didn’t know the first thing about school-teaching, but I wouldn’t
have minded that if you’d just had a bit of common sense like any other girl
would have had Only it seems you hadn’t I let you have your own way for a
week or two, and the first thing you do is to go and get all the parents’ backs up
Well, I’m not going to have that over again From now on I’m going to have
things done my way, not your way Do you understand that? ’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy again
‘You’re not to think as I can’t do without you, mind,’ proceeded Mrs
Creevy ‘I can pick up teachers at two a penny any day of the week, M A s and
BAs and all Only the M A s and BAs mostly take to drink, or else
they-well, no matter what-and I will say for you you -don’t seem to be given to
the drink or anything of that kind I dare say you and me can get on all right if
you’ll drop these new-fangled ideas of yours and understand what’s meant by
practical school-teaching So just you listen to me ’
Dorothy listened With admirable clarity, and with a cynicism that was all
the more disgusting because it was utterly unconscious, Mrs Creevy explained
the technique of the dirty swindle that she called practical school-teaching
‘What you’ve got to get hold of once and for all,’ she began, ‘is that there’s
only one thing that matters m a school, and that’s the fees As for all this stuff
about “developing the children’s minds”, as you call it, it’s neither here nor
there It’s the fees I’m after, not developing the children's minds After all, it’s no
more than common sense It’s not to be supposed as anyone’d go to all the
trouble of keeping school and having the house turned upside down by a pack
of brats, if it wasn’t that there’s a bit of money to be made out of it The fees
come first, and everything else comes afterwards Didn’t I tell you that the
very first day you came here? ’
‘Yes,’ admitted Dorothy humbly
‘Well, then, it’s the parents that pay the fees, and it’s the parents you’ve got
to think about. Do what the parents want-that’s our rule here. I dare say all
this messing about with plasticine and paper-scraps that you go in for doesn’t
do the children any particular harm, but the parents don’t want it, and there’s
an end of it Well, there’s just two subjects that they do want their children
taught, and that’s handwriting and arithmetic Especially handwriting. That’s
something they can see the sense of And so handwriting’s the thing you’ve got
to keep on and on at Plenty of nice neat copies that the girls can take home, and
that the parents’ll show off to the neighbours and give us a bit of a free advert I
want you to give the children two hours a day just at handwriting and nothing
else,’
‘Two hours a day just at handwriting,’ repeated Dorothy obediently
A Clergyman's Daughter 391
‘Yes And plenty of arithmetic as well The parents are very keen on
arithmetic especially money-sums Keep your eye on the parents all the time
If you meet one of them m the street, get hold of them and start talking to them
about their own girl Make out that she’s the best girl in the class and that if she
stays just three terms longer she’ll be working wonders You see what I mean?
Don’t go and tell them there’s no room for improvement, because if you tell
them that , they generally take their girls away Just three terms longer-that’s
the thing to tell them And when you make out the end of term reports, just you
bring them to me and let me have a good look at them I like to do the marking
myself ’
Mrs Creevy’s eye met Dorothy’s She had perhaps been about to say that she
always arranged the marks so that every girl came out somewhere near the top
of the class, but she refrained Dorothy could not answer for a moment
Outwardly she was subdued, and very pale, but m her heart were anger and
deadly repulsion against which she had to struggle before she could speak She
had no thought, however, of contradicting Mrs Creevy The ‘talking to’ had
quite broken her spirit She mastered her voice, and said
‘I’m to teach nothing but handwriting and arithmetic-is that it? ’
‘Well, I didn’t say that exactly There’s plenty of other subjects that look
well on the prospectus French, for instance- French looks very well on the
prospectus But it’s not a subject you want to waste much time over Don’t go
filling them up with a lot of grammar and syntax and verbs and all that That
kind of stuff doesn’t get them anywhere so far as I can see Give them a bit of
“Parley vous Francey”, and “Passey moi le beurre”, and so forth, that’s a lot
more use than grammar And then there’s Latin-I always put Latin on the
prospectus But I don’t suppose you’re very great on Latm, are you? ’
‘No,’ admitted Dorothy
‘Well, it doesn’t matter You won’t have to teach it None of our parents’d
want their children to waste time over Latm But they like to see it on the
prospectus. It looks classy Of course there’s a whole lot of subjects that we
can’t actually teach, but we have to advertise them all the same Book-keeping
and typing and shorthand, for instance, besides music and dancing It all looks
well on the prospectus ’
‘Arithmetic, handwriting, French-is there anything else? ’ Dorothy said
‘Oh, well, history and geography and English Literature, of course. But just
drop that map-making business at once-it’s nothing but waste of time The
best geography to teach is lists of capitals Get them so that they can rattle off
the capitals of all the English counties as if it was the multiplication table
Then they’ve got something to show for what they’ve learnt, anyway And as
for history, keep on with the Hundred Page History of Bntian I won’t have
them taught out of those big history books you keep bringing home from the
library I opened one of those books the other day, and the first thing I saw was
a piece where it said the English had been beaten in some battle or other
There’s amice thing to go teaching children' The parents won’t stand for that
kind of dung, I can tell you'’
‘And Literature? ’ said Dorothy,
3$2 A Clergyman's Daughter
‘Well, of course they’ve got to do a bit of reading, and I can’t think why you
wanted to turn up your nose at those nice little readers of ours Keep on with
the readers They’re a bit old, but they’re quite good enough for a pack of
children, I should have thought And I suppose they might as well learn a few
pieces of poetry by heart Some of the parents like to hear their children say a
piece of poetry “The Boy stood on the Burning Deck”-that’s a very good
piece-and then there’s “The Wreck of the Steamer”-now, what was that ship
called^ “The Wreck of the Steamer Hesperus” A little poetry doesn’t hurt
now and again But don’t let’s have any more Shakespeare , please 1 ’
Dorothy got no tea that day It was now long past tea-time, but when Mrs
Creevy had finished her harangue she sent Dorothy away without saying
anything about tea Perhaps this was a little extra punishment for Vaffaire
Macbeth
Dorothy had not asked permission to go out, but she did not feel that she
could stay m the house any longer She got her hat and coat and set out down
the ill-lit road, for the public library It was late into November Though the
day had been damp the night wind blew sharply, like a threat, through the
almost naked trees, making the gas-lamps flicker in spite of their glass
chimneys, and stirring the sodden plane leaves that littered the pavement
Dorothy shivered slightly The raw wind sent through her a bone-deep
memory of the cold of T rafalgar Square And though she did not actually think
that if she lost her job it would mean going back to the sub-world from which
she had come-mdeed, it was not so desperate as that, at the worst her cousin or
somebody else would help her-still, Mrs Creevy’s ‘talking to’ had made
Trafalgar Square seem suddenly very much nearer It had driven into her a far
deeper understanding than she had had before of the great modern
commandment-the eleventh commandment which has wiped out all the
others ‘Thou shalt not lose thy job ’
But as to what Mrs Creevy had said about ‘practical school-teaching’, it had
been no more than a realistic facing of the facts She had merely said aloud
what most people in her position think but never say Her oft-repeated phrase,
‘It’s the fees I’m after’, was a motto that might be-mdeed, ought to
be- written over the doors of every private school m England.
There are, by the way, vast numbers of private schools in England Second-
rate, third-rate, and fourth-rate (Rmgwood House was a specimen of the
fourth-rate school), they exist by the dozen and the score m every London
suburb and every provincial town At any given moment there are somewhere
m the neighbourhood of ten thousand of them, of which less than a thousand
are subject to Government mspection And though some of them are better
than others, and a certain number, probably, are better than the council
schools with which they compete, there is the same fundamental evil in all of
them, that is, that they have ultimately no purpose except to make money.
Often, except that there is nothing illegal about them, they are started in
exactly the same spirit as one would start a brothel or a bucket shop Some
snuffy little man of business (it is quite usual for these schools to be owned by
people who don’t teach themselves) says one morning to his wife
A Clergyman's Daughter 393
‘Emma, I got a notion 1 What you say to us two keeping school, eh? There’s
plenty of cash m a school, you know, and there ain’t the same work m it as what
there is m a shop or a pub Besides, you don’t risk nothing, no over’ead to
worry about, ’cept jest your rent and few desks and a blackboard But we’ll do
it in style Get in one of these Oxford and Cambridge chaps as is out of a job
and’ll come cheap, and dress ’im up in a gown and-what do they call them
little square ’ats with tassels on top? That ’ud fetch the parents, eh? You jest
keep your eyes open and see if you can’t pick on a good district where there’s
not too many on the same game already ’
He chooses a situation in one of those middle-class districts where the
people are too poor to afford the fees of a decent school and too proud to send
their children to the council schools, and ‘sets up’ By degrees he works up a
connexion m very much the same manner as a milkman or a greengrocer, and if
he is astute and tactful and has not too many competitors, he makes his few
hundreds a year out of it
Of course, these schools are not all alike Not every principal is a grasping
low-minded shrew like Mrs Creevy, and there are plenty of schools where the
atmosphere is kindly and decent and the teaching is as good as one could
reasonably expect for fees of five pounds a term On the other hand, some of
them are crying scandals Later on, when Dorothy got to know one of the
teachers at another private school in Southbndge, she heard tales of schools
that were worse by far than Ringwood House She heard of a cheap boarding-
school where travelling actors dumped their children as one dumps luggage m
a railway cloakroom, and where the children simply vegetated, doing
absolutely nothing, reachmg the age of sixteen without learning to read, and
another school where the days passed m a perpetual not, with a broken-down
old hack of a master chasing the boys up and down and slashing at them with a
cane, and then suddenly collapsing and weeping with his head on a desk, while
the boys laughed at him So long as schools are run primarily for money, things
hke this will happen The expensive private schools to which the rich send
their children are not, on the surface, so bad as the others, because they can
afford a proper staff, and the Public School examination system keeps them up
to the mark, but they have the same essential taint
It was only later, and by degrees, that Dorothy discovered these facts about
private schools. At first, she used to suffer from an absurd fear that one day the
school mspectors would descend upon Ringwood House, find out what a sham
and a swindle it all was, and raise the dust accordingly Later on, however, she
learned that this could never happen Ringwood House was not ‘recognized’,
and therefore was not liable to be inspected One day a Government inspector
did, indeed, visit the school, but beyond measuring the dimensions of the
schoolroom to see whether each girl had her right number of cubic feet of air,
he did nothing; he had no power to do more Only the tiny minority of
‘recognized’ schools— less than one in ten-are officially tested to decide
whether they keep up a reasonable educational standard As for the others,
they are free to teach or not teach exactly as they choose No one controls or
inspects them except the children’s parents- the blind leading the blind.
5
Next day Dorothy began altering her programme in accordance with Mrs
Creevy’s orders The first lesson of the day was handwriting, and the second
was geography
‘That’ll do, girls,’ said Dorothy as the funereal clock struck ten ‘We’ll start
our geography lesson now ’
The girls flung their desks open and put their hated copybooks away with
audible sighs of relief There were murmurs of ‘Oo, jography 1 Good 1 ’ It was
one of their favourite lessons The two girls who were ‘monitors’ for the week,
and whose job it was to clean the blackboard, collect exercise books and so
forth (children will fight for the privilege of doing jobs of that kind), leapt from
their places to fetch the half-finished contour map that stood against the wall
But Dorothy stopped them
‘Wait a moment Sit down, you two We aren’t going to go on with the map
this morning ’
There was a cry of dismay ‘Oh, Miss 1 Why can’t we, Miss? Please let’s go on
with it •*
‘No I’m afraid we’ve been wasting a little too much time over the map
lately We’re going to start learning some of the capitals of the English
counties I want every girl in the class to know the whole lot of them by the end
of the term ’
The children’s faces 'fell Dorothy saw it, and added with an attempt at
bnghtness-that hollow, undeceiving brightness of a teacher trying to palm off
a boring subject as an interesting one
‘Just think how pleased your parents will be when they can ask you the
capital of any county in England and you can tell it them 1 ’
The children were not m the least taken in They writhed at the nauseous
prospect
‘Oh, capitals' Learning capitals'. That’s just what we used to do with Miss
Strong, Please, Miss, why can’t we go on with the map? ’
‘Now don’t argue Get your notebooks out and take them down as I give
them to you And afterwards we’ll say them all together ’
Reluctantly, the children fished out their notebooks, still groaning ‘Please,
Miss, can we go on with the map next time? ’
‘I don’t know. We’ll see ’
That afternoon the map was removed from the schoolroom, and Mrs Creevy
scraped the plasticine off the board and threw it away It was the same with all
A Clergyman's Daughter 395
the other subjects, one after another All the changes that Dorothy had made
were undone They went back to the routine of interminable ‘copies’ and
interminable ‘practice’ sums, to the learmng parrot-fashion of c Passez-moi le
beurre 3 and c Le fils du jar dimer a perdu son chapeau' , to the Hundred Page
History and the insufferable little ‘reader’ (Mrs Creevy had impounded the
Shakespeares, ostensibly to burn them The probability was that she had sold
them ) Two hours a day were set apart for handwriting lessons The two
depressing pieces of black paper, which Dorothy had taken down from the
wall, were replaced, and their proverbs written upon them afresh m neat
copperplate As for the historical chart, Mrs Creevy took it away and burnt it
When the children saw the hated lessons, from which they had thought to
have escaped for ever, coming back upon them one by one, they were first
astonished, then miserable, then sulky But it was far worse for Dorothy than
for the children After only a couple of days the rigmarole through which she
was obliged to drive them so nauseated her that she began to doubt whether
she could go on with it any longer Again and again she toyed with the idea of
disobeying Mrs Creevy Why not, she would think, as the children whined and
groaned and sweated under their miserable bondage-why not stop it and go
back to proper lessons, even if it was only for an hour or two a day? Why not
drop the whole pretence of lessons and simply let the children play? It would
be so much better for them than this Let them draw pictures or make
something out of plasticine or begm making up a fairy tale-anythmg real,
anything that would interest them, instead of this dreadful nonsense But she
dared not At any moment Mrs Creevy was liable to come m, and if she found
the children ‘messing about’ instead of getting on with their routine work,
there would be fearful trouble So Dorothy hardened her heart, and obeyed
Mrs Creevy’s instructions to the letter, and things were very much as they had
been before Miss Strong was ‘taken bad’
The lessons reached such a pitch of boredom that the brightest spot m the
week was Mr Booth’s so-called chemistry lecture on Thursday afternoons Mr
Booth was a seedy, tremulous man of about fifty, with long, wet, cowdung-
coloured moustaches He had been a Public School master once upon a time,
but nowadays he made just enough for a life of chrome sub-drunkenness by
delivering lectures at two and sixpence a time The lectures were unrelieved
drivel Even m his palmiest days Mr Booth had not been a particularly brilliant
lecturer, and now, when he had had his first go of delirium tremens and lived m
a daily dread of his second, what chemical knowledge he had ever had was fast
deserting him He would stand dithering in front of the class, saymg the same
thing over and over again and trying vainly to remember what he was talking
about ‘Remember, girls,’ he would say in his husky, would-be fatherly voice,
‘the number of the elements is ninety-three-ninety-three elements, girls-you
all of you know what an element is, don’t you? -there are just ninety-three of
them-remember that number, girls-nmety-three,’ until Dorothy (she had to
stay in the schoolroom during the chemistry lectures, because Mrs Creevy
considered that it didn't do to leave the girls alone with a man) was miserable
with vicarious shame All the lectures* started with the ninety-three elements,
396 A Clergyman’s Daughter
and never got very much further There was also talk of ‘a very interesting
little experiment that I’m going to perform for you next week, girls- very
interesting you’ll find it- we’ll have it next week without fail-a very interesting
little experiment’, which, needless to say, was never performed Mr Booth
possessed no chemical apparatus, and his hands were far too shaky to have
used it even if he had had any The girls sat through his lectures m a suety
stupor of boredom, but even he was a welcome change from handwriting
lessons
The children were never quite the same with Dorothy after the parents’
visit They did not change all m a day, of course They had grown to be fond of
‘old Millie’, and they expected that after a day or two of tormenting them with
handwriting and ‘commercial arithmetic’ she would go back to something
interesting But the handwriting and arithmetic went on, and the popularity
Dorothy had enjoyed, as a teacher whose lessons weren’t boring and who
didn’t slap you, pinch you, or twist your ears, gradually vanished Moreover,
the story of the row there had been over Macbeth was not long m leaking out
The children grasped that old Millie had done something wrong-they didn’t
exactly know what-and had been given a ‘talking to’ It lowered her in their
eyes There is no dealing with children, even with children who are fond of
you, unless you can keep your prestige as an adult, let that prestige be once
damaged, and even the best-hearted children will despise you
So they began to be naughty in the normal, traditional way Before, Dorothy
had only had to deal with occasional laziness, outbursts of noise and silly
giggling fits, now there were spite and deceitfulness as well The children
revolted ceaselessly against the horrible routine They forgot the short weeks
when old Millie had seemed quite a good sort and school itself had seemed
rather fun Now, school was simply what it had always been, and what indeed
you expected it to be-a place where you slacked and yawned and whiled the
time away by pinching your neighbour and trying to make the teacher lose her
temper, and from which you burst with a yell of relief the instant the last lesson
was over Sometimes they sulked and had fits of crying, sometimes they argued
m the maddening persistent way that children have, f Why should we do this?
Why does anyone have to learn to read and write? ’ over and over again, until
Dorothy had to stand over them and silence them with threats of blows She
was growing almost habitually irritable nowadays, it surprised and shocked
her, but she could not stop it Every morning she vowed to herself, ‘Today I
will not lose my temper’, and every morning, with depressing regularity, she
did lose her temper, especially at about half past eleven when the children were
at their worst Nothing in the world is quite so irritating as dealing with
mutinous children Sooner or later, Dorothy knew, she would lose control of
herself and begm hitting them It seemed to her an unforgivable thing to do, to
hit a child, but nearly all teachers come to it in the end It was impossible now
to get any child to work except when your eye was upon it You had only to
turn your back for an instant and blotting-paper pellets were flying to and fro
Nevertheless, with ceaseless slave-driving the children’s handwriting and
‘commercial arithmetic’ did certainly show some improvement, and no doubt
A Clergyman’ s Daughter
397
the parents were satisfied
The last few weeks of the term were a very bad time For over a fortnight
Dorothy was quite penniless, for Mrs Creevy had told her that she couldn’t
pay her her term’s wages ‘till some of the fees came in’ So she was deprived of
the secret slabs of chocolate that had kept her going, and she suffered from a
perpetual slight hunger that made her languid and spiritless There were
leaden mornings when the minutes dragged like hours, when she struggled
with herself to keep her eyes away from the clock, and her heart sickened to
think that beyond this lesson there loomed another just like it, and more of
them and more, stretching on into what seemed like a dreary eternity Worse
yet were the times when the children were in their noisy mood and it needed a
constant exhausting effort of the will to keep them under control at all, and
beyond the wall, of course, lurked Mrs Creevy, always listening, always ready
to descend upon the schoolroom, wrench the door open, and glare round the
room with ‘Now then 1 What’s all this noise about, please^’ and the sack m her
eye
Dorothy was fully awake, now, to the beastliness of living in Mrs Creevy’s
house The filthy food, the cold, and the lack of baths seemed much more
important than they had seemed a little while ago Moreover, she was
beginning to appreciate, as she had not done when the joy of her work was
fresh upon her, the utter loneliness of her position Neither her father nor Mr
Warburton had written to her, and m two months she had made not a single
friend in Southbndge For anyone so situated, and particularly for a woman, it
is all but impossible to make friends She had no money and no home* of her
own, and outside the school her sole places of refuge were the public library,
on the few evenings when she could get there, and church on Sunday
mornings She went to church regularly, of course-Mrs Creevy had insisted
on that She had settled the question of Dorothy’s religious observances at
breakfast on her first Sunday morning
‘I’ve just been wondering what Place of Worship you ought to go to,’ she
said ‘I suppose you were brought up C of E , weren’t you>’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy
‘Hm, well I can’t quite make up my mind where to send you There’s St
George’s-that’s the C of E -and there’s the Baptist Chapel where I go
myself Most of our parents are Nonconformists, and I don’t know as they’d
quite approve of a C of E teacher You can’t be too careful with the parents
They had a bit of a scare two years ago when it turned out that the teacher I had
then was actually a Roman Catholic, if you please f Of course she kept it dark as
long as she could, but it came out in the end, and three of the parents took their
children away I got rid of her the same day as I found it out, naturally ’
Dorothy was silent
‘ Still, ? went on Mrs Creevy, ‘we have got three C of E pupils, and I don’t
know as the Church connexion mightn’t be worked up a bit So perhaps you’d
better risk it and go to St George’s But you want to be a bit careful, you know
I’m told St George’s is one of these churches where they go in for a lot of
bowing and scraping and crossing yourself and all that We’ve got two parents
398 A Clergyman's Daughter
that are Plymouth Brothers, and they’d throw a fit if they heard you’d been
seen crossing yourself So don’t go and do that 3 whatever you do ’
‘Very well,’ said Dorothy
‘And just you keep your eyes well open during the sermon Have a good look
round and see if there’s any young girls m the congregation that we could get
hold of If you see any likely looking ones, get on to the parson afterwards and
try and find out their names and addresses ’
So Dorothy went to St George’s It was a shade ‘Higher’ than St Athelstan’s
had been, chairs, not pews, but no incense, and the vicar (his name was Mr
Gore-Williams) wore a plain cassock and surplice except on festival days As
for the services, they were so like those at home that Dorothy could go through
them, and utter all the responses at the right moment, in a state of the
completest abstraction
There was never a moment when the power of worship returned to her
Indeed, the whole concept of worship was meaningless to her now, her faith
had vanished, utterly and irrevocably It is a mysterious thing, the loss of
faith-as mysterious as faith itself Like faith, it is ultimately not rooted in
logic, it is a change m the climate of the mind But however little the church
services might mean to her, she did not regret the hours she spent m church
On the contrary, she looked forward to her Sunday mornings as blessed
interludes of peace, and that not only because Sunday morning meant a respite
from Mrs Creevy’s prying eye and nagging voice In another and deeper sense
the atmosphere of the church was soothing and reassuring to her For she
perceived that in all that happens m church, however absurd and cowardly its
supposed purpose may be, there is somethmg-it is hard to define, but
something of decency, of spiritual comehness-that is not easily found in the
world outside It seemed to her that even though you no longer believe, it is
better to go to church than not, better to follow m the ancient ways, than to
drift in rootless freedom. She knew very well that she would never again be
able to utter a prayer and mean it, but she knew also that for the rest of her life
she must contmue with the observances to which she had been bred. Just this
much remained to her of the faith that had once, like the bones m a living
frame, held all her life together
But as yet she did not think very deeply about the loss of her faith and what it
might mean to her in the future. She was too busy merely existing, merely
struggling to make her nerves hold out for the rest of that miserable term For
as the term drew to an end, the job of keeping the class m order grew more and
more exhausting. The girls behaved atrociously, and they were all the bitterer
against Dorothy because they had once been fond of her She had deceived
them, they felt She had started off by being decent, and now she had turned
out to be just a beastly old teacher like the rest of them-a nasty old beast who
kept on and on with those awful handwriting lessons and snapped your head
off if you so much as made a blot on your book. Dorothy caught them eyeing
her face, sometimes, with the aloof, cruel scrutiny of children They had
thought her pretty once, and now they thought her ugly, old, and scraggy She
had grown, indeed, much thinner since she had been at Rmgwood House
A Clergyman’s Daughter 399
They hated her now, as they had hated all their previous teachers
Sometimes they baited her quite deliberately The older and more
intelligent girls understood the situation well enough-understood that Millie
was under old Creevy’s thumb and that she got dropped on afterwards when
they had been making too much noise, sometimes they made all the noise they
dared, just so as to bring old Creevy m and have the pleasure of watching
Millie’s face while old Creevy told her off There were times when Dorothy
could keep her temper and forgive them all they did, because she realized that
it was only a healthy instinct that made them rebel against the loathsome
monotony of their work But there were other times when her nerves were
more on edge than usual, and when she looked round at the score of silly little
faces, grinning or mutinous, and found it possible to hate them Children are
so blind, so selfish, so merciless They do not know when they are tormenting
you past bearing, and if they did know they would not care You may do your
very best for them, you may keep your temper in situations that would try a
saint, and yet if you are forced to bore them and oppress them, they will hate
you for it without ever asking themselves whether it is you who are to blame
How true-when you happen not to be a school-teacher yourself-how true
those often-quoted lines sound-
Under a cruel eye outworn
The little ones spend the day
m sighing and dismay 1
But when you yourself are the cruel eye outworn, you realize that there is
another side to the picture
The last week came, and the dirty farce of ‘exams’, was carried through The
system, as explained by Mrs Creevy, was quite simple. You coached the
children m, for example, a series of sums until you were quite certain that they
could get them right, and then set them the same sums as an arithmetic paper
before they had time to forget the answers, and so with each subject m turn
The children’s papers were, of course, sent home for their parents’ inspection
And Dorothy wrote the reports under Mrs Creevy’s dictation, and she had to
write ‘excellent’ so many times that-as sometimes happens when you write a
word over and over again-she forgot how to spell it and began writing m
‘excelent’, ‘exsellent‘, ‘ecsellent’, ‘eccelent’
The last day passed in fearful tumults Not even Mrs Creevy herself could
keep the children m order By midday Dorothy’s nerves were in rags, and Mrs
Creevy gave her a ‘talking to’ in front of the seven children who stayed to
dinner In the afternoon the noise was worse than ever, and at last Dorothy,
overcome, appealed to the girls almost tearfully to stop
‘Girls 1 ’ she called out, rising her voice to make herself heard through the
dm ‘ Please stop it, please' You’re behaving horribly to me Do you think it’s
kind to go on like this?
’
That was fatal, of course Never, never, never throw yourself on the mercy
of a child* There was an instant’s hush, and then one child cried out, loudly
and derisively, ‘Mill-iee 1 ’ The next moment the whole class had taken it up.
zfoo A Clergyman’s Daughter
even the imbecile Mavis, chanting all together 'Mill-iee' Mill-iee 1 Mill-iee*’ At
that, something within Dorothy seemed to snap She paused for an instant,
picked out the girl who was making the most noise, walked up to her, and gave
her a smack across the ear almost as hard as she could hit Happily it was only
one of the ‘medium payers’
6
On the first day of the holidays Dorothy received a letter from Mr Warburton
My Dear Dorothy [he wrote], — Or should I call you Ellen, as I understand that is your new
name’ You must, I am afraid, have thought it very heartless of me not to have written sooner, but I
assure you that it was not until ten days ago that I even heard anything about our supposed
escapade I have been abroad, first in various parts of France, then in Austria and then m Rome,
and, as you know, I avoid my fellow countrymen most strenuously on these trips They are
disgusting enough even at home, but in foreign parts their behaviour makes me so ashamed of
them that I generally try to pass myself off as an American
When I got to Knype Hill your father refused to see me, but I managed to get hold of Victor
Stone, who gave me your address and the name you are using He seemed rather reluctant to do so,
and I gathered that even he, like everyone else in this poisonous town, still believes that you have
misbehaved yourself in some way I think the theory that you and I eloped together has been
dropped, but you must, they feel, have done something scandalous A young woman has left home
suddenly, therefore there must be a man in the case, that is how the provincial mind works, you
see I need not tell you that I have been contradicting the whole story with the utmost vigour You
will be glad to hear that I managed to comer that disgusting hag, Mrs Sempnll, and give her a
piece of my mind, and I assure you that a piece of my mind is distinctly formidable But the woman
is simply sub-human I could get nothing out of her except hypocritical snivellings about ‘poor,
poor Dorothy’
I hear that your father misses you very much, and would gladly have you home again if it were
not for the scandal His meals are never punctual nowadays, it seems He gives it out that you ‘went
away to recuperate from a slight illness and have now got an excellent post at a girls’ school’ You
will be surpised to hear of one thing that has happened to him He has been obliged to pay off all his
debts 1 1 am told that the tradesmen rose in a body and held what was practically a creditors’
meeting in the Rectory Not the kind of thing that could have happened at Plumstead
Episcopi-but these are democratic days, alas' You, evidently, were the only person who could
keep the tradesmen permanently at bay
And now I must tell you some of my own news, etc , etc , etc
At this point Dorothy tore the letter up in disappointment and even m
annoyance He might have shown a little more sympathy* she thought It was
just like Mr Warburton after getting her into serious trouble-for after all, he
was principally to blame for what had happened-to be so flippant and
unconcerned about it But when she had thought it over she acquitted him of
heartlessness. He had done what little was possible to help her, and he could
not be expected to pity her for troubles of which he had not heard Besides, his
own life had been a senes of resounding scandals; probably he could not
understand that to a woman a scandal is a senous matter
A Clergyman’s Daughter 401
At Christmas Dorothy’s father also wrote* and what was more* sent her a
Christmas present of two pounds It was evident from the tone of his letter that
he had forgiven Dorothy by this time What exactly he had forgiven her was
not certain, because it was not certain what exactly she had done, but still* he
had forgiven her The letter started with some perfunctory but quite friendly
inquiries He hoped her new job suited her, he wrote And were her rooms at
the school comfortable and the rest of the staff congemaP He had heard that
they did one very well at schools nowadays-very different from what it had
been forty years ago Now, m his day, etc , etc * etc He had, Dorothy
perceived, not the dimmest idea of her present circumstances At the mention
of schools his mind flew to Winchester, his old school, such a place as
Ringwood House was beyond his imagining
The rest of the letter was taken up with grumblings about the way things
were going m the parish The Rector complained of being worried and
overworked The wretched churchwardens kept bothering him with this and
that, and he was growing very tired of Proggett’s reports about the collapsing
belfry, and the daily woman whom he had engaged to help Ellen was a great
nuisance and had put her broom-handle through the face of the grandfather
clock in his study-and so on, and so forth, for a number of pages He said
several times in a mumbling roundabout way that he wished Dorothy were
there to help him, but he did not actually suggest that she should come home
Evidently it was still necessary that she should remain out of sight and out of
mind-a skeleton m a distant and well-locked cupboard
The letter filled Dorothy with sudden painful homesickness She found
herself pining to be back at her parish visiting and her Girl Guides’ cooking
class, and wondering unhappily how her father had got on without her all this
while and whether those two women were looking after him properly She was
fond of her father, in a way that she had never dared to show, for he was not a
person to whom you could make any display of affection It surprised and
rather shocked her to realize how little he had been m her thoughts during the
past four months There had been periods of weeks at a time when she had
forgotten his existence But the truth was that the mere business of keeping
body and soul together had left her with no leisure for other emotions
Now, however, school work was over, and she had leisure and to spare, for
though Mrs Creevy did her best she could not invent enough household jobs to
keep Dorothy busy for more than part of the day She made it quite plain to
Dorothy that during the holidays she was nothing but a useless expense, and
she watched her at her meals (obviously feeling it an outrage that she should
eat when she wasn’t working) in a way that finally became unbearable So
Dorothy kept out of the house as much as possible, and, feeling fairly rich with
her wages (four pounds ten, for nine weeks) and her father’s two pounds, she
took to buying sandwiches at the ham and beef shop in the town and eating her
dinner out of doors Mrs Creevy acquiesced, half sulkily because she liked to
have Dorothy in the house to nag at her, and half pleased at the chance of
skimping a few more meals
Dorothy went for long solitary walks, exploring Southbridge and ns yet
402 A Clergyman' s Daughter
more desolate neighbours, Dorley, Wembridge, and West Holton Winter had
descended, dank and windless, and more gloomy m those colourless
labyrinthine suburbs than in the bleakest wilderness On two or three
occasions, though such extravagance would probably mean hungry days later
on, Dorothy took a cheap return ticket to Iver Heath or Burnham Beeches
The woods were sodden and wintry, with great beds of drifted beech leaves
that glowed like copper m the still, wet air, and the days were so mild that you
could sit out of doors and read if you kept your gloves on On Christmas Eve
Mrs Creevy produced some sprigs of holly that she had saved from last year,
dusted them, and nailed them up, but she did not, she said, intend to have a
Christmas dinner She didn’t hold with all this Christmas nonsense, she
said-it was just a lot of humbug got up by the shopkeepers, and such an
unnecessary expense, and she hated turkey and Christmas pudding anyway
Dorothy was relieved, a Christmas dinner m that joyless ‘morning-room’ (she
had an awful momentary vision of Mrs Creevy m a paper hat out of a cracker)
was something that didn’t bear thinking about She ate her Christmas
dmner-a hard-boiled egg, two cheese sandwiches, and a bottle of
lemonade-m the woods near Burnham, against a great gnarled beech tree,
over a copy of George Gissmg’s The Odd Women
On days when it was too wet to go for walks she spent most of her time m the
public library-becoming, indeed, one of the regular habituees of the library,
along with the out-of-work men who sat drearily musing over illustrated
papers which they did not read, and the elderly discoloured bachelor who lived
in ‘rooms’ on two pounds a week and came to the library to study books on
yachting by the hour together It had been a great relief to her when the term
ended, but this feeling soon wore off, indeed, with never a soul to talk to, the
days dragged even more heavily than before There is perhaps no quarter of
the inhabited world where one can be quite so completely alone as m the
London suburbs In a big town the throng and bustle give one at least the
illusion of companionship, and in the country everyone is interested m
everyone else-too much so, indeed But in places like Southbndge, if you have
no family and no home to call your own, you could spend half a lifetime
without managing to make a friend. There are women m such places, and
especially derelict gentlewomen m ill-paid jobs, who go for years upon end m
almost utter solitude It was not long before Dorothy found herself m a
perpetually low-spirited, jaded state m which, try as she would, nothing
seemed able to interest her And it was in the hateful ennui of this time-the
corrupting ennui that lies in wait for every modem soul- that she first came to a
full understanding of what it meant to have lost her faith
She tried drugging herself with books, and it succeeded for a week or so But
after a while very nearly all books seemed wearisome and unintelligible; for the
mind will not work to any purpose when it is quite alone In the end she found
that she could not cope with anything more difficult than a detective story She
took walks of ten and fifteen miles, trying to tire herself into a better mood, but
the mean suburban roads, and the damp, miry paths through the woods, the
naked trees, the sodden moss and great spongy fungi, afflicted her with a
A Clergyman’s Daughter 403
deadly melancholy It was human companionship that she needed, and there
seemed no way of getting it At nights when she walked back to the school and
looked at the warm-lit windows of the houses, and heard voices laughing and
gramophones playing within, her heart swelled with envy Ah, to be like those
people in there-to have at least a home, a family, a few friends who were
interested in you 1 There were days when she pined for the courage to speak to
strangers m the street Days, too, when she contemplated shamming piety m
order to scrape acquaintance with the Vicar of St George’s and his family, and
perhaps get the chance of occupying herself with a little parish work, days,
even, when she was so desperate that she thought of joining the YWCA
But almost at the end of the holidays, through a chance encounter at the
library, she made friends with a little woman named Miss Beaver, who was
geography mistress at Toot’s Commercial College, another of the private
schools in Southbridge Toot’s Commerical College was a much larger and
more pretentious school than Ringwood House-it had about a hundred and
fifty day-pupils of both sexes and even rose to the dignity of having a dozen
boarders-and its curriculum was a somewhat less blatant swindle It was one
of those schools that are aimed at the type of parent who blathers about ‘up-to-
date business training’, and its watch-word was Efficiency, meaning a
tremendous parade of hustling, and the banishment of all humane studies One
of its features was a kind of catechism called the Efficiency Ritual, which all the
children were required to learn by heart as soon as they joined the school It
had questions and answers such as
Q What is the secret of success’
A The secret of success is efficiency
Q What is the test of efficiency’
A The test of efficiency is success
And so on and so on It was said that the spectacle of the whole school, boys
and girls together, reciting the Efficiency Ritual under the leadership of the
Headmaster-they had this ceremony two mornings a week instead of
prayers-was most impressive
Miss Beaver was a prim little woman with a round body, a thm face, a
reddish nose, and the gait of a guinea-hen After twenty years of slave-driving
she had attained to an income of four pounds a week and the privilege of ‘living
out’ instead of having to put the boarders to bed at nights She lived in
‘rooms’-that is, m a bed-sitting room-to Which she was sometimes able to
invite Dorothy when both of them had a free evening How Dorothy looked
forward to those visits' They were only possible at rare intervals, because Miss
Beaver’s landlady ‘didn’t approve of visitors’, and even when you got there
there was nothmg much to do except to help solve the crossword puzzle out of
the Daily Telegraph and look at the photographs Miss Beaver had taken on her
trip (this trip had been the summit and glory of her life) to the Austrian Tyrol
in 1913 But still, how much it meant to sit talking to somebody in a friendly
way and to drink a cup of tea less wishy-washy than Mrs Creevy’s' Miss
Beaver had a spirit lamp in a japanned travelling case (it had been with her to
the Tyrol in 1913) on which she brewed herself pots of tea as black as coal-tar.
404 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
swallowing about a bucketful of this stuff during the day She confided to
Dorothy that she always took a Thermos flask to school and had a nice hot cup
of tea during the break and another after dinner Dorothy perceived that by
one of two well-beaten roads every third-rate schoolmistress must travel Miss
Strong’s road; via whisky to the workhouse, or Miss Beaver’s road, via strong
tea to a decent death m the Home for Decayed Gentlewomen
Miss Beaver was m truth a dull little woman She was a memento mon , or
rather memento senescere , to Dorothy Her soul seemed to have withered until it
was as forlorn as a dried-up cake of soap m a forgotten soap dish She had come
to a point where life in a bed-sitting room under a tyrannous landlady and the
‘efficient’ thrusting of Commercial Geography down children’s retching
throats, were almost the only destiny she could imagine Yet Dorothy grew to
be very fond of Miss Beaver, and those occasional hours that they spent
together in the bed-sitting room, doing the Daily Telegraph crossword over a
nice hot cup of tea, were like oases in her life
She was glad when the Easter term began, for even the daily round of slave-
driving was better than the empty solitude of the holidays Moreover, the girls
were much better m hand this term, she never again found it necessary to
smack their heads For she had grasped now that it is easy enough to keep
children m order if you are ruthless with them from the start Last term the
girls had behaved badly, because she had started by treating them as human
beings, and later on, when the lessons that interested them were discontinued,
they had rebelled like human beings But if you are obliged to teach children
rubbish, you mustn’t treat them as human beings You must treat them like
ammals-driving, not persuading Before all else, you must teach them that it is
more painful to rebel than to obey Possibly this kind of treatment is not very
good for children, but there is no doubt they understand it and respond to it
She learned the dismal arts of the school-teacher She learned to glaze her
mind against the interminable boring hours, to economize her nervous energy,
to be merciless and ever- vigilant, to take a kind of pride and pleasure in seeing
a futile rigmarole well done She had grown, quite suddenly it seemed, much
tougher and maturer Her eyes had lost the half-childish look that they had
once had, and her face had grown thinner, making her nose seem longer At
times it was quite definitely a schoolmarm’s face, you could imagine pince-nez
upon it But she had not become cynical as yet She still knew that these
children were the victims of a dreary swindle, still longed, if it had been
possible, to do something better for them If she harried them and stuffed their
heads with rubbish, it was for one reason alone because whatever happened
she had got to keep her job
There was very little noise in the schoolroom this term Mrs Creevy,
anxious as she always was for a chance of finding fault, seldom had reason to
rap on the wall with her broom-handle One morning at breakfast she looked
rather hard at Dorothy, as though weighing a decision, and then pushed the
dish of marmalade across the table
‘Have some marmalade if you like, Miss MillbOrough,’ she said, quite
graciously for her
A Clergyman 1 s Daughter 405
It was the first time that marmalade had crossed Dorothy's bps since she had
come to Rmgwood House She flushed slightly ‘So the woman realizes that I
have done my best for her,’ she could not help thinking
Thereafter she had marmalade for breakfast every morning And m other
ways Mrs Creevy’s manner became-not indeed, gemal, for it could never be
that, but less brutally offensive There were even times when she produced a
grimace that was intended for a smile, her face, it seemed to Dorothy, creased
with the effort About this time her conversation became peppered with
references to ‘next term’ It was always ‘Next term we’ll do this’, and ‘Next
term I shall want you to do that’, until Dorothy began to feel that she had won
Mrs Creevy’s confidence and was being treated more like a colleague than a
slave At that a small, unreasonable but very exciting hope took root m her
heart Perhaps Mrs Creevy was going to raise her wages' It was profoundly
unlikely, and she tried to break herself of hoping for it, but could not quite
succeed If her wages were raised even half a crown a week, what a difference it
would make'
The last day came With any luck Mrs Creevy might pay her wages
tomorrow, Dorothy thought She wanted the money very badly indeed, she
had been penniless for weeks past, and was not only unbearably hungry, but
also m need of some new stockings, for she had not a pair that were not darned
almost out of existence The following morning she did the household jobs
allotted to her, and then, instead of going out, waited in the ‘morning-room’
while Mrs Creevy banged about with her broom and pan upstairs Presently
Mrs Creevy came down
‘Ah, so there you are. Miss Millborough 1 ’ she said m a peculiar meaning
tone ‘I had a sort of an idea you wouldn’t be m such a hurry to get out of doors
this morning Well, as you are here, I suppose I may as well pay you your
wages ’
‘Thank you,’ said Dorothy
‘And after that,’ added Mrs Creevy, ‘I’ve got a little something as I want to
say to you ’
Dorothy’s heart stirred Did that ‘little something’ mean the longed-for rise
m wages ^ It was just conceivable Mrs Creevy produced a worn, bulgy leather
purse from a locked drawer m the dresser, opened it and licked her thumb
‘Twelve weeks and five days,’ she said ‘Twelve weeks is near enough No
need to be particular to a day That makes six pounds ’
She counted out five dingy pound notes and two ten-shilling notes; then,
examining one of the notes and apparently finding it too clean, she put it back
into her purse and fished out another that had been torn in half She went to
the dresser, got a piece of transparent sticky paper and carefully stuck the two
halves together Then she handed it, together with the other six, to Dorothy
‘There you are, Miss Millborough,’ she said ‘And now, will you just leave
the house at once, pleased I shan’t be wanting you any longer ’
‘You won’t be-’
Dorothy’s entrails seemed to have turned to ice All the blood drained out of
her face But even now, in her terror and despair, she was not absolutely sure of
^o5 A Clergyman's Daughter
the meaning of what had been said to her She still half thought that Mrs
Creevy merely meant that she was to stay out of the house for the rest of the
day
‘You won’t be wanting me any longer? ’ she repeated faintly
‘No I’m getting m another teacher at the beginning of next term And it
isn’t to be expected as I’d keep you through the holidays all free for nothings is
it? ’
‘But you don’t mean that you want me to leave - that you’re dismissing me? ’
‘Of course I do What else did you think I meant? ’
‘But you’ve given me no notice 1 ’ said Dorothy
‘Notice 1 ’ said Mrs Creevys getting angry immediately ‘What’s it got to do
withyoM whether I give you notice or not? You haven’t got a written contracts
have you? ’
‘No I suppose not ’
‘Well, then' You’d better go upstairs and start packing your box It’s no
good your staying any longer, because I haven’t got anything m for your
dinner ’
Dorothy went upstairs and sat down on the side of the bed She was
trembling uncontrollably, and it was some minutes before she could collect her
wits and begin packing She felt dazed The disaster that had fallen upon her
was so sudden, so apparently causeless, that she had difficulty in believing that
it had actually happened But m truth the reason why Mrs Creevy had sacked
her was quite simple and adequate
Not far from Rmgwood House there was a poor, moribund little school
called The Gables, with only seven pupils The teacher was an incompetent
old hack called Miss Allcock, who had been at thirty-eight different schools m
her life and was not fit to have charge of a tame canary But Miss Allcock had
one outstanding talent, she was very good at double-crossing her employers
In these third-rate and fourth-rate private schools a sort of piracy is constantly
gomg on Parents are ‘got round’ and pupils stolen from one school to another
Very often the treachery of the teacher is at the bottom of it. The teacher
secretly approaches the parents one by one (‘Send your child to me and I’ll
take her at ten shillings a term cheaper’), and when she has corrupted a
sufficient number she suddenly deserts and ‘sets up’ on her own, or carries the
children off to another school Miss Allcock had succeeded m stealing three
out of her employer’s seven pupils, and had come to Mrs Creevy with the offer
of them In return, she was to have Dorothy’s place and a fifteen-per-cent
commission on the pupils she brought
There were weeks of furtive chaffering before the bargain was clinched,
Miss Allcock being finally beaten down from fifteen per cent to twelve and a
half Mrs Creevy privately resolved to sack old Allcock the instant she was
certain, that the three children she brought with her would stay
Simultaneously, Miss Allcock was planning to begin stealing old Creevy’s
pupils as soon as she had got a footing in the school.
Having decided to sack Dorothy, it was obviously most important to prevent
her from finding it out For, of course, if she knew what was going to happen,
A Clergyman’s Daughter 407
she would begin stealing pupils on her own account, or at any rate wouldn’t do
a stroke of work for the rest of the term (Mrs Creevy prided herself on
knowing human nature ) Hence the marmalade, the creaky smiles, and the
other ruses to allay Dorothy’s suspicions Anyone who knew the ropes would
have begun thinking of another job the very moment when the dish of
marmalade was pushed across the table
Just half an hour after her sentence of dismissal, Dorothy, carrying her
handbag, opened the front gate It was the fourth of April, a bright blowy day,
too cold to stand about m, with a sky as blue as a hedgesparrow’s egg, and one
of those spiteful spring winds that come tearing along the pavement m sudden
gusts and blow dry, stinging dust into your face Dorothy shut the gate behind
her and began to walk very slowly m the direction of the mam-lme station
She had told Mrs Creevy that she would give her an address to which her
box could be sent, and Mrs Creevy had instantly exacted five shillings for the
carriage So Dorothy had five pounds fifteen in hand, which might keep her for
three weeks with careful economy What she was going to do, except that she
must start by going to London and finding a suitable lodging, she had very
little idea But her first panic had worn off, and she realized that the situation
was not altogether desperate No doubt her father would help her, at any rate
for a while, and at the worst, though she hated even the thought of doing it, she
could ask her cousin’s help a second time Besides, her chances of finding a job
were probably fairly good She was young, she spoke with a genteel accent, and
she was willing to drudge for a servant’s wages-qualities that are much sought
after by the proprietors of fourth-rate schools Very likely all would be well
But that there was an evil time ahead of her, a time of job-huntmg, of
uncertainty and possibly of hunger-that, at any rate, was certain
CHAPTER 5
However, it turned out quite otherwise For Dorothy had not gone five yards
from the gate when a telegraph boy came riding up the street in the opposite
direction, whistling and looking at the names of the houses, He saw the name
Rmgwood House, wheeled his bicycle round, propped it against the kerb, and
accosted Dorothy
‘Miss Mill-burrow live ’ere^’ he said, jerking his head m the direction of
Rmgwood House
‘Yes lam Miss Millborough ’
‘Gotter wait case there’s a answer,’ said the boy, taking an orange-coloured
envelope from his belt
Dorothy put down her bag She had once more begun trembling violently.
And whether this was from joy or fear she was not certain, for two conflicting
408 A Clergyman’s Daughter
thoughts had sprung almost simultaneously into her brain One, ‘This is some
kind of good news’’ The other, ‘Father is seriously ill’’ She managed to tear the
envelope open, and found a telegram which occupied two pages, and which she
had the greatest difficulty in understanding It ran
Rejoice in the lord o ye righteous note of exclamation great news note of exclamation your
reputation absolutely reestablished stop mrs sempnll fallen into the pit that she hath digged stop
action for libel stop no one believes her any longer stop your father wishes you return home
immediately stop am coming up to town myself comma will pick you up if you like stop arriving
shortly after this stop wait for me stop praise him with the loud cymbals note of exclamation much
love stop
No need to look at the signature It was from Mr Warburton, of course
Dorothy felt weaker and more tremulous than ever She was dimly aware the
telegraph boy was asking her something
‘Any answer? ’ he said for the third or fourth time
‘Not today, thank you,’ said Dorothy vaguely
The boy remounted his bicycle and rode off, whistling with extra loudness
to show Dorothy how much he despised her for not tipping him But Dorothy
was unaware of the telegraph’s boy’s scorn The only phrase of the telegram
that she had fully understood was ‘your father wishes you return home
immediately’, and the surprise of it had left her m a semi-dazed condition For
some indefinite time she stood on the pavement, until presently a taxi rolled up
the street, with Mr Warburton inside it He saw Dorothy, stopped the taxi,
jumped out and came across to meet her, beaming He seized her both hands
‘Hullo’’ he cried, and at once threw his arm pseudo-paternally about her and
drew her against him, heedless of who might be looking ‘How are you'* But by
Jove, how thm you’ve got’ I can feel all your ribs Where is this school of
yours? ’
Dorothy, who had not yet managed to get free of his arm, turned partly
round and cast a glance towards the dark windows of Rmgwood House
‘What’ That place? Good God, what a hole’ What have you done with your
luggage? 5 . *
‘It’s inside I’ve left them the money to send it on. I thip^||ffl be all right ’
‘Oh, nonsense' Why pay? We’ll take it with us It can go on top of the taxi ’
‘No, no' Let them send it, I daren’t go back Mrs Creevy would be horribly
angry ’
‘Mrs Creevy? Who’s Mrs Creevy? ’
‘The headmistress-at least, she owns the school ’
‘What, a dragon, is she? Leave her to me- I’ll deal with her Perseus and the
Gorgon, what? You are Andromeda Hi! ’ he called to the taxi-driver
The two of them went up to the front door and Mr Warburton knocked
Somehow, Dorothy never believed that they would succeed m getting her box
from Mrs Creevy. In fact, she half expected to see them come out flying for
their lives, and Mrs Creevy after them with her broom However, in a couple
of minutes they reappeared, the taxi-driver carrying the box on his shoulder
Mr Warburton handed Dorothy into the taxi and, as they sat down, dropped
half af crown into her hand
A Clergyman's Daughter 409
‘What a woman 1 What a woman’’ he said comprehensively as the taxi bore
them away ‘How the devil have you put up with it all this time? ’
‘What is this? ’ said Dorothy, looking at the com
‘Your half-crown that you left to pay for the luggage Rather a feat getting it
out of the old girl, wasn’t it? ’
‘But I left five shillings’’ said Dorothy
‘What’ The woman told me you only left half a crown By God, what
impudence’ We’ll go back and have the half-crown out of her Just to spite
her’’ He tapped on the glass
‘No, no’’ said Dorothy, laying her hand on his arm ‘It doesn’t matter in the
least Let’s get away from here-nght away I couldn’t bear to go back to that
place agai n-eveA'
It was quite true She felt that she would sacrifice not merely half a crown,
but all the money in her possession, sooner than set eyes on Rmgwood House
again So they drove on, leaving Mrs Creevy victorious It would be
interesting to know whether this was another of the occasions when Mrs
Creevy laughed
Mr Warburton insisted on taking the taxi the whole way into London, and
talked so voluminously in the quieter patches of the traffic that Dorothy could
hardly get a word in edgeways It was not till they had reached the inner
suburbs that she got from him an explanation of the sudden change m her
fortunes
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘what is it that’s happened? I don’t understand Why is it
all right for me to go home all of a sudden? Why don’t people believe Mrs
Semprill any longer? Surely she hasn’t confessed? ’
‘Confessed? Not she’ But her sins have found her out, all the same It was
the kind of thing that you pious people would ascribe to the finger of
Providence Cast thy bread upon the waters, and all that She got herself into a
nasty mess-an action for libel We’ve talked of nothing else in Knype Hill for
the last fortnight I though you would have seen somethmg about it in the
newspapers ’
‘I’ve hardly looked at a paper for ages Who brought an action for libel? Not
my father, surely? ’
‘Good gracious, no’ Clergymen can’t bring actions for libel It was the bank
manager Do you remember her favourite story about him-how he was
keeping a woman on the bank’s money, and so forth? ’
‘Yes, I think so ’
‘A few months ago she was foolish enough to put some of it m wntmg. Some
kind friend-some female friend, I presume-took the letter round to the bank
manager He brought an action-Mrs Semprill was ordered to pay a hundred
and fifty pounds damages I don’t suppose she paid a halfpenny, but still,
that’s the end of her career as a scandalmonger. You can go on blackening
people’s reputations for years, and everyone will believe you, more or less,
even when it? s perfectly obvious that you’re lying But once you’ve been
proved a liar in open cour% ymi’se disqualified* so to speak, Mrs SemprUlts
done for, so far aaKnyffe Hill goes. She left thetown betweendays-practically
qio A Clergyman's Daughter
did a moonlight flit, m fact I believe she’s inflicting herself on Bury St
Edmunds at present ’
‘But what has all that got to do with the things she said about you and me? ’
‘Nothing-nothing whatever But why worry? The point is that you’re
reinstated, and all the hags who’ve been smacking their chops over you for
months past are saying, “Poor, poor Dorothy, how shockingly that dreadful
woman has treated her 1 ”’
‘You mean they think that because Mrs Sempnll was telling lies m one case
she must have been telling lies m another? ’
‘No doubt that’s what they’d say if they were capable of reasoning it out At
any rate, Mrs Sempnll’s m disgrace, and so all the people she’s slandered must
be martyrs Even my reputation is practically spotless for the time being ’
‘And do you think that’s really the end of it? Do you think they honestly
believe that it was all an accident-that I only lost my memory and didn’t elope
with anybody? ’
‘Oh, well, I wouldn’t go as far as that In these country places there’s always
a certain amount of suspicion knocking about Not suspicion of anything in
particular, you know, just generalized suspicion A sort of instinctive rustic
dirty-mindedness I can imagine its being vaguely rumoured m the bar parlour
of the Dog and Bottle in ten years’ time that you’ve got some nasty secret m
your past, only nobody can remember what Still, your troubles are over If I
were you I wouldn’t give any explanations till you’re asked for them The
official theory is that you had a bad attack of flu and went away to recuperate I
should stick to that You’ll find they’ll accept it all right Officially, there’s
nothing against you ’
Presently they got to London, and Mr Warburton took Dorothy to lunch at
a restaurant in Coventry Street, where they had a young chicken, roasted, with
asparagus and tiny, pearly- white potatoes that had been ripped untimely from
their mother earth, and also treacle tart and a nice warm bottle of Burgundy,
but what gave Dorothy the most pleasure of all, after Mrs Creevy’s lukewarm
water tea, was the black coffee they had afterwards After lunch they took
another taxi to Liverpool Street Station and caught the 2 45 It was a four-
hour journey to Knype Hill
Mr Warburton insisted on travelling first-class, and would not hear of
Dorothy paying her own fare, he also, when Dorothy was not looking, tipped
the guard to let them have a carnage to themselves It was one of those bright
cold days which are spring or winter according as you are indoors or out From
behind the shut windows of the carnage the too-blue sky looked warm and
kind, and all the slummy wilderness through which the tram was ratthng-the
labyrinths of little dingy-coloured houses, the great chaotic factories, the miry
canals, and derelict bmlding lots littered with rusty boilers and overgrown by
smoke-blackened weeds-all were redeemed and gilded by the sun Dorothy
hardly spoke for the first half-hour of the journey For the moment -she was too
happy to talk She did not even think of anything in particular, but merely sat
there luxuriating in the glass-filtered sunlight, m the comfort of the padded
seat and the feeling of having escaped from Mrs Creevy’s clutches But she was
A Clergyman's Daughter 41 j
aware that this mood could not last very much longer Her contentment, like
the warmth of the wme that she had drunk at lunch, was ebbing away, and
thoughts either painful or difficult to express were taking shape m her mind
Mr Warburton had been watching her face, more observantly than was usual
for him, as though trying to gauge the changes that the past eight months had
worked m her
‘You look older,’ he said finally
‘I am older,’ said Dorothy
‘Yes, but you look- well, more completely grown up Tougher Something
has changed m your face You look-if you’ll forgive the expression-as though
the Girl Guide had been exorcized from you for good and all I hope seven
devils haven’t entered into you instead’’ Dorothy did not answer, and he
added ‘I suppose, as a matter of fact, you must have had the very devil of a
time’’
‘Oh, beastly' Sometimes too beastly for words Do you know that
sometimes-’
She paused She had been about to tell him how she had had to beg for her
food, how she had slept in the streets, how she had been arrested for beggmg
and spent a mght in the police cells, how Mrs Creevy had nagged at her and
starved her But she stopped, because she had suddenly realized that these
were not the things that she wanted to talk about Such things as these, she
perceived, are of no real importance, they are mere irrelevant accidents, not
essentially different from catching a cold in the head or having to wait two
hours at a railway junction They are disagreeable, but they do not matter The
truism that all real happenings are in the mind struck her more forcibly than
ever before, and she said
‘Those things don’t really matter I mean, things like having no money and
not having enough to eat Even when you’re practically starvmg-it doesn’t
change anything inside you ’
‘Doesn’t it’ I’ll take your word for it I should be very sorry to try ’
‘Oh, well, it’s beastly while it’s happening, of course, but it doesn’t make any
real difference, it’s the things that happen inside you that matter ’
‘Meaning’’ said Mr Warburton
‘Oh— things change m your mind And then the whole world changes,
because you look at it differently ’
She was still looking out of the window The tram had drawn clear of the
eastern slums and was running at gathering speed past willow-bordered
streams and low-lying meadows upon whose hedges the first buds made a faint
soft greenness, like a cloud In a field near the line a month-old calf, flat as a
Noah’s Ark animal, was bounding stiff-legged after its mother, and in a cottage
garden an old labourer, with slow, rheumatic movements, was turning over the
soil beneath a pear tree covered with ghostly bloom His spade flashed in the
sun as the train passed. The depressing hymn-line ‘Change and decay in ail
arouhd I see’ moved through Dorothy’s mind It was true what she had said
just now Somethin# had happened m her heart, and the world was a little
emptier, a little poorer from that minute. On such a day as this, last spring or
412 A Clergyman’s Daughter
any earlier spring, how joyfully, and how unthinkingly, she would have
thanked God for the first blue skies and the first flowers of the reviving year 1
And now, seemingly, there was no God to thank, and nothmg-not a flower or a
stone or a blade of grass-nothing m the universe would ever be the same again
‘Things change m your mind,’ she repeated ‘I’ve lost my faith,’ she added,
somewhat abruptly, because she found herself half ashamed to utter the words
‘You’ve lost your zuhaD’ said Mr Warburton, less accustomed than she to
this kind of phraseology
‘My faith Oh, you know what I mean 1 A few months ago, all of a sudden, it
seemed as if my whole mmd had changed Everything that I’d believed m till
then-everythmg-seemed suddenly meaningless and almost silly God-what
I’d meant by God-immortal life. Heaven and Hell-everything It had all
gone And it wasn’t that I’d reasoned it out, it just happened to me It was like
when you’re a child, and one day, for no particular reason, you stop believing
m fairies I just couldn’t go on believing m it any longer ’
‘You never did believe in it,’ said Mr Warburton unconcernedly
‘But I did, really I did* I know you always thought I didn’t-you thought I
was just pretending because I was ashamed to own up But it wasn’t that at all
I believed it just as I believe that I’m sitting in this carriage ’
‘Of course you didn’t, my poor child* How could you, at your age? You were
far too intelligent for that But you’d been brought up in these absurd beliefs,
and you’d allowed yourself to go on thinking, m a sort of way, that you could
still swallow them You’d built yourself a life-pattern-if you’ll excuse a bit of
psychological jargon-that was only possible for a believer, and naturally it was
beginning to be a strain on you In fact, it was obvious all the time what was the
matter with you I should say that in all probability that was why you lost your
memory ’
‘What do you mean? ’ she said, rather puzzled by this remark
He saw that she did not understand, and explained to her that loss of
memory is only a device, unconsciously used, to escape from an impossible
situation The mmd, he said, will play curious tricks when it is in a tight
comer Dorothy had never heard of anything of this kind before, and she could
not at first accept his explanation Nevertheless she considered it for a
moment, and perceived that, even if it were true, it did not alter the
fundamental fact
‘I don’t see that it makes any difference,’ she said finally
‘Doesn’t it? I should have said it made a considerable difference ’
‘But don’t you see, if my faith is gone, what does it matter whether I’ve only
lost it now or whether I’d really lost it years ago? All that matters is that it’s
gone, and I’ve got to begin my life all over again ’
‘Surely I don’t take you to mean,’ said Mr Warburton, ‘that you actually
regret losmg your faith, as you call it? One might as well regret losmg a goitre
Mmd you, I’m speaking, as it were, without the book-as a man who never had
very much faith to lose The little I had passed away quite painlessly at the age
of nine But it’s hardly the kind of thing I should have thought anyone would
regret losing Used you not, if I remember rightly, to do horrible things like
A Clergyman’s Daughter 413
getting up at five in the morning to go to Holy Communion on an empty belly’
Surely you’re not homesick for that kind of thing’ 5
‘I don’t believe m it any longer, if that’s what you mean And I see now that a
lot of it was rather silly But that doesn’t help The point is that all the beliefs I
had are gone, and I’ve nothing to put in their place ’
‘But good God r why do you want to put anything in their place’ You’ve got
rid of a load of superstitious rubbish, and you ought to be glad of it Surely it
doesn’t make you any happier to go about quaking in fear of Hell fire’’
‘But don’t you see-you must see-how different everything is when all of a
sudden the whole world is empty’’
‘Empty’’ exclaimed Mr Warburton ‘What do you mean by saying it’s
empty’ I call that perfectly scandalous in a girl of your age It’s not empty at
all, it’s a deuced sight too full, that’s the trouble with it We’re here today and
gone tomorrow, and we’ve no time to enjoy what we’ve got ’
‘But how can one enjoy anything when all the meaning’s been taken out of
it’’
‘Good gracious 1 What do you want with a meaning’ When I eat my dinner I
don’t do it to the greater glory of God, I do it because I enjoy it The world’s
full of amusing things-books, pictures, wine, travel, fnends-everything I’ve
never seen any meaning m it all, and I don’t want to see one Why not take life
as you find it’’
‘But-’
She broke off, for she saw already that she was wasting words m trying to
make herself clear to him He was quite incapable of understanding her
difficulty-incapable of realizing how a mind naturally pious must recoil from a
world discovered to be meaningless Even the loathsome platitudes of the
pantheists would be beyond his understanding Probably the idea that life was
essentially futile, if he thought of it at all, struck him as rather amusing than
otherwise And yet with all this he was sufficiently acute He could see the
difficulty of her own particular position, and he adverted to it a moment later
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I can see that things are going to be a little awkward for
you when you get home You’re going to be, so to speak, a wolf m sheep’s
clothing Parish work-Mothers’ Meetings, prayers with the dying, and all
that-I suppose it might be a little distasteful at times Are you afraid you won’t
be able to keep it up-is that the trouble’’
‘Oh, no I wasn’t thinking of that I shall go on with it, just the same as
before It’s what I’m most used to Besides, Father needs my help He can’t
afford a curate, and the work’s got to be done ’
‘Then what’s the matter? Is it the hypocrisy that’s worrying you’ Afraid that
the consecrated bread might stick in your throat, and so forth’ I shouldn’t
trouble Half the parsons’ daughters in England are probably m the same
difficulty And quite nine-tenths of the parsons, I should say*’
‘It’s partly that I shall have t<? be always pretending- oh, you can’t imagine
in what ways 1 But that’s not the worst Perhaps that part of it doesn’t matter,
really Perhaps it’s better to be a hypocrite- z/wt kind of hypocnte-than some
things,’
4/4 A Clergyman's Daughter
‘Why do you say that kind of hypocrite? I hope you don’t mean that
pretending to believe is the next best thing to believing? ’
‘Yes I suppose that’s what I do mean Perhaps it’s better-less selfish-to
pretend one believes even when one doesn’t, than to say openly that one’s an
unbeliever and perhaps help turn other people into unbelievers too ’
‘My dear Dorothy,’ said Mr Warburton, ‘your mind, if you’ll excuse my
saying so, is m a morbid condition No, dash it 1 it’s worse than morbid, it’s
downright septic You’ve a sort of mental gangrene hanging over from your
Christian upbringing You tell me that you’ve got rid of these ridiculous
beliefs that were stuffed into you from your cradle upwards, and yet you’re
taking an attitude to life which is simply meaningless without those beliefs Do
you call that reasonable? ’
‘I don’t know No perhaps it’s not But I suppose it’s what comes naturally
to me ’
‘What you’re trying to do, apparently,’ pursued Mr Warburton, ‘is to make
the worst of both worlds You stick to the Christian scheme of things, but you
leave Paradise out of it And I suppose, if the truth were known, there are quite
a lot of your kind wandering about among the rums of C of E You’re
practically a sect m yourselves,’ he added reflectively ‘the Anglican Atheists.
Not a sect I should care to belong to, I must say ’
They talked for a little while longer, but not to much purpose In reality the
whole subject of religious belief and religious doubt was boring and
incomprehensible to Mr Warburton Its only appeal to him was as a pretext for
blasphemy Presently he changed the subject, as though giving up the attempt
to understand Dorothy’s outlook
‘This is nonsense that we’re talking,’ he said ‘You’ve got hold of some very
depressmg ideas, but you’ll grow out of them later on, you know Christianity
isn’t really an incurable disease However, there was something quite different
that I was going to say to you I want you to listen to me for a moment You’re
coming home, after being away eight months, to what I expect you realize is a
rather uncomfortable situation. You had a hard enough life before-at least,
what I should call a hard life- and now that you aren’t quite suqh a good Girl
Guide as you used to be, it’s going to be a great deal harder Now, do you thmk
it’s absolutely necessary to go back to it? ’
‘But I don’t see what else I can do, unless I could get another job I’ve really
no alternative ’
Mr Warburton, with his head cocked a little on one side, gave Dorothy a
rather curious look
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, in a more serious tone than usual, ‘there’s at
least one other alternative that I could suggest to you ’
‘You mean that I could go on being a schoolmistress? Perhaps that’s what I
ought to do, really. I shall come back to it in the end, m any case ’
‘No. I don’t think that’s what I should advise ’
All this time Mr Warburton, unwilling as ever to expose his baldness, had
been wearing his rakish, rather broad-brimmed grey felt hat Now, however,
he took it off and laid it carefully on the empty seat beside him His naked
A Clergyman's Daughter 41$
cranium, with only a wisp or two of golden hair lingering in the
neighbourhood of the ears, looked like some monstrous pink pearl Dorothy
watched him with a slight surprise
‘I am taking my hat off,’ he said, £ in order to let you see me at my very worst
You will understand why m a moment Now, let me offer you another
alternative besides going back to your Girl Guides and your Mothers’ Union,
or imprisoning yourself in some dungeon of a girls’ school ’
‘What do you mean 5 *’ said Dorothy
‘I mean, will you-think well before you answer, I admit there are some very
obvious objections, but-will you marry me 5 ’
Dorothy’s lips parted with surprise Perhaps she turned a little paler With a
hasty, almost unconscious recoil she moved as far away from him as the back of
the seat would allow But he had made no movement towards her He said with
complete equanimity
‘You know, of course, that Dolores [Dolores was Mr Warburton’s ex-
mistress] left me a year ago 5 *’
‘But I can’t, I can’t f ’ exclaimed Dorothy ‘You know I can’t 1 I’m not-like
that I thought you always knew I shan’t ever marry ’
Mr Warburton ignored this remark
‘I grant you,’ he said, still with exemplary calmness, ‘that I don’t exactly
come under the heading of eligible young men I am somewhat older than you
We both seem to be putting our cards on the table today, so I’ll let you into a
great secret and tell you that my age is forty-nine And then I’ve three children
and a bad reputation It’s a marriage that your father would- well, regard with
disfavour And my income is only seven hundred a year But still, don’t you
think it’s worth considering 1 ’
‘I can’t, you know why I can’t 1 ’ repeated Dorothy
She took it for granted that he ‘knew why she couldn’t’, though she had
never explained to him, or to anyone else, why it was impossible for her to
marry Very probably, even if she had explained, he would not have
understood her He went on speaking, not appearing to notice what she had
said
‘Let me put it to you’, he said, ‘in the form of a bargain Of course, I needn’t
tell you that it’s a great deal more than that I’m not a marrying kind of man, as
the saying goes, and I shouldn’t ask you to marry me if you hadn’t a rather
special attraction for me But let me put the business side of it first. You need a
home and a livelihood, I need a wife to keep me m order I’m sick of these
disgusting women I’ve spent my life with, if you’ll forgive my mentioning
them, and I’m rather anxious to settle down A bit late m the day, perhaps, but
better late than never Besides, I need somebody to look after the children, the
bastards , you know I don’t expect you to find me overwhelmingly attractive,’
he added, running a hand reflectively over his bald crown, ‘but on the other
hand I am very easy to get on wifh Immoral people usually are, as a matter of
fact And from your own point of view the scheme would have certain
advantages Why should you spend your life delivering parish magazines and
rubbing nastly old women’s legs with Elliman’s embrocation 5 * You would be
416 A Clergyman’s Daughter
happier married, even to a husband with a bald head and a clouded past
You’ve had a hard, dull life for a girl of your age, and your future isn’t exactly
rosy Have you really considered what your future will be like if you don’t
marry? ’
‘I don’t know I have to some extent,’ she said
As he had not attempted to lay hands on her or to offer any endearments, she
answered his question without repeating her previous refusal He looked out of
the window, and went on m a musing voice, much quieter than his normal
tone, so that at first she could barely hear him above the rattle of the train, but
presently his voice rose, and took on a note of seriousness that she had never
heard in it before, or even imagined that it could hold
‘Consider what your future would be like,’ he repeated ‘It’s the same future
that lies before any woman of your class with no husband and no money Let us
say your father will live another ten years By the end of that time the last
penny of his money will have gone down the sink The desire to squander it
will keep him alive just as long as it lasts, and probably no longer All that time
he will be growing more senile, more tiresome, more impossible to live with,
he will tyrannize over you more and more, keep you shorter and shorter of
money, make more and more trouble for you with the neighbours and the
tradesmen And you will go on with that slavish, worrying life that you have
lived, struggling to make both ends meet, drilling the Girl Guides, reading
novels to the Mothers’ Union, polishing the altar brasses, cadging money for
the organ fund, making brown paper jackboots for the schoolchildren’s plays,
keeping your end up m the vile little feuds and scandals of the church hen-
coop Year after year, winter and summer, you will bicycle from one reeking
cottage to another, to dole out pennies from the poor box and repeat prayers
that you don’t even believe in any longer You will sit through interminable
church services which in the end will make you physically sick with their
sameness and futility Every year your life will be a little bleaker, a little fuller
of those deadly little jobs that are shoved off on to lonely women And
remember that you won’t always be twenty-eight All the while you will be
fading, withering, until one mormng you will look m the glass and realize that
you aren’t a girl any longer, only a skinny old maid. You’ll fight against it, of
course You’ll keep your physical energy and your girlish mannensms-you’ll
keep them just a little bit too long Do you know that type of bnght-too
bright-spmster who says “topping” and “ripping” and “nght-ho”, and
prides herself on being such a good sport, and she’s such a good sport that she
makes everyone feel a little unwelP And she’s so splendidly hearty at tennis
and so handy at amateur theatricals, and she throws herself with a kind of
desperation into her Girl Guide work and her parish visiting, and she’s the life
and soul of Church socials, and always, year after year, she thinks of herself as a
young girl still and never realizes that behind her back everyone laughs at her
for a poor, disappointed old maid? That’s what you’ll become, what you must
become, however much you foresee it and try to avoid it There’s no other
future possible to you unless you marry Women who don’t marry wither
up-r-they wither up like aspidistras in back-parlour windows; and the devilish
A Clergyman's Daughter 417
thing is that they don’t even know that they’re withering ’
Dorothy sat silent and listening with intent and horrified fascination She
did not even notice that he had stood up, with one hand on the door to steady
him against the swaying of the train She was as though hypnotized, not so
much by his voice as by the visions that his words had evoked m her He had
described her life, as it must inevitably be, with such dreadful fidelity that he
seemed actually to have carried her ten years onward into the menacmg future,
and she felt herself no longer a girl full of youth and energy, but a desperate,
worn virgm of thirty-eight As he went on he took her hand, which was lying
idle on the arm of the seat, and even that she scarcely noticed
‘After ten years,’ he continued, ‘your father will die, and he will leave you
with not a penny, only debts You will be nearly forty, with no money, no
profession, no chance of marrying, just a derelict parson’s daughter like the ten
thousand others m England And after that, what do you suppose will become
of you^ You will have to find yourself a job- the sort of job that parsons’
daughters get A nursery governess, for mstance, or companion to some
diseased hag who will occupy herself in thinking of ways to humiliate you Or
you will go back to school-teachmg, English mistress m some grisly girls’
school, seventy-five pounds a year and your keep, and a fortnight in a seaside
boarding-house every August And all the time withering, drying up, growing
more sour and more angular and more friendless And therefore-’
As he said ‘therefore’ he pulled Dorothy to her feet She made no resistance
His voice had put her under a spell As her mind took m the prospect of that
forbidding future, whose emptiness she was far more able to appreciate than
he, such a despair had grown in her that if she had spoken at all it would have
been to say, ‘Yes, I will marry you ’ He put his arm very gently about her and
drew her a little towards him, and even now she did not attempt to resist Her
eyes, half hypnotized, were fixed upon his When he put his arm about her it
was as though he were protecting her, sheltering her, drawing her away from
the brink of grey, deadly poverty and back to the world of friendly and
desirable things-to security and ease, to comely houses and good clothes, to
books and friends and flowers, to summer days and distant lands So for nearly
a minute the fat, debauched bachelor and the thin, spmstensh girl stood face to
face, their eyes meeting, their bodies all but touching, while the tram swayed
them in its motion, and clouds and telegraph poles and bud-misted hedges and
fields green with young wheat raced past unseen,
Mr Warburton tightened his grip and pulled her against him It broke the
spell The visions that had held her helpless-visions of poverty and of escape
from poverty-suddenly vanished and left only a shocked realization of what
was happening to her She was m the arms of a man-a fattish, oldish man' A"
wave of disgust and deadly fear went through her, and her entrails seemed to
shrink and freeze His thick male body was pressing her backwards and
downwards, has large, pink facef smooth, but to her eyes old, was bearing down
upon her own The harsh odour of maleness forced itself into her nostrils She
recoiled. Furry thighs of satyrs! She began to struggle furiously^ though
indeed he made hardly any effort to. retam her, and in a moment she had
4i8 A Clergyman's Daughter
wrenched herself free and fallen back into her seat, white and trembling She
looked up at him with eyes which, from fear and aversion, were for a moment
those of a stranger
Mr Warburton remained on his feet, regarding her with an expression of
resigned, almost amused disappointment He did not seem m the least
distressed As her calmness returned to her she perceived that all he had said
had been no more than a trick to play upon her feelings and cajole her into
saying that she would marry him, and what was stranger yet, that he had said it
without seriously caring whether she married him or not He had, m fact,
merely been amusing himself Very probably the whole thing was only another
of his periodical attempts to seduce her
He sat down, but more deliberately than she, taking care of the creases of his
trousers as he did so
‘If you want to pull the communication cord,’ he said mildly, ‘you had better
let me make sure that I have five pounds in my pocket-book *
After that he was quite himself again, or as nearly himself as anyone could
possibly be after such a scene, and he went on talking without the smallest
symptom of embarrassment His sense of shame, if he had ever possessed one,
had perished many years ago Perhaps it had been killed by overwork m a
lifetime of squalid affairs with women
For an hour, perhaps, Dorothy was ill at ease, but after that the tram reached
Ipswich, where it stopped for a quarter of an hour, and there was the diversion
of going to the refreshment room for a cup of tea For the last twenty miles of
the journey they talked quite amicably Mr Warburton did not refer again to
his proposal of marriage, but as the tram neared Knype Hill he returned, less
seriously than before, to the question of Dorothy’s future
‘So you really propose’, he said ‘to go back to your parish work? “The trivial
round, the common task? ” Mrs Pither’s rheumatism and Mrs Lewm’s corn-
plaster and all the rest of it? The prospect doesn’t dismay you? ’
‘I don’t know- sometimes it does But I expect it’ll be all right once I’m back
at work I’ve got the habit, you see ’
‘And you really feel equal to years of calculated hypocrisy? For that’s what it
amounts to, you know Not afraid of the cat getting out of the bag? Quite sure
you won’t find yourself teaching the Sunday School kids to say the Lord’s
Prayer backwards, or reading Gibbon’s fifteenth chapter to the Mothers’
Umon instead of Gene Stratton Porter? ’
‘I don’t think so Because, you see, I do feel that that kind of work, even if it
means saying prayers that one doesn’t believe m, and even if it means teaching
children things that one doesn’t always think are true-I do feel that m a way
it’s useful. ’
‘Useful? ’ said Air Warburton distastefully ‘You’re a little too fond of that
depressing word “useful” Hypertrophy of the sense of duty- that’s what’s the
matter with you Now, to me, it seems the merest common sense to have a bit
of fun while the going’s good. ’
‘That’s just hedonism,’ Dorothy objected
‘M^ dear child, can you show me a philosophy of life that isn’t hedonism?
A Clergyman’s Daughter 419
Your verminous Christian samts are the biggest hedonists of all They’re out
for an eternity of bliss, whereas we poor sinners don’t hope for more than a few
years of it Ultimately we’re all trying for a bit of fun, but some people take it in
such perverted forms Your notion of fun seems to be massaging Mrs Pither’s
legs ’
‘It’s not that exactly, but-oh 1 somehow I can’t explain'’
What she would have said was that though her faith had left her, she had not
changed, could not change, did not want to change, the spiritual background of
her mind, that her cosmos, though now it seemed to her empty and
meaningless, was still in a sense the Christian cosmos, that the Christian way of
life was still the way that must come naturally to her But she could not put this
into words, and felt that if she tried to do so he would probably begin making
fun of her So she concluded lamely
‘Somehow I feel that it’s better for me to go on as I was before ’
‘j Exactly the same as before? The whole bill of fare? The Girl Guides, the
Mothers’ Umon, the Band of Hope, the Companionship of Marriage, parish
visiting and Sunday School teaching. Holy Communion twice a week and here
we go round the doxology-bush, chanting Gregorian plain-song? You’re quite
certain you can manage it? ’
Dorothy smiled m spite of herself ‘Not plain-song Father doesn’t like it ’
‘And you think that, except for your inner thoughts, your life will be
precisely what it was before you lost your faith? There will be no change m
your habits? ’
Dorothy thought Yes, there would be changes m her habits, but most of
them would be secret ones The memory of the disciplinary pin crossed her
mind It had always been a secret from everyone except herself and she decided
not to mention it
‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘perhaps at Holy Communion I shall kneel down on
Miss Mayfill’s right instead of on her left ’
2
A week had gone by
Dorothy rode up the hill from the town and wheeled her bicycle in at the
Rectory gate It was a fine evening, clear and cold, and the sun, unclouded, was
sinking in remote, greenish skies Dorothy noticed that the ash tree by the gate
was m bloom, with clotted dark red blossoms that looked like festerings from a
wound
She was rather tired She had had a busy week of it, what with visiting all the
women on her list in turn and trying to get the parish affairs into some kind of
order again. Everything was in a fearful mess after her absence* The church
420 A Clergyman's Daughter
was dirty beyond all belief-in fact, Dorothy had had to spend the best part of a
day cleaning up with scrubbing-brushes, broom and dustpan, and the beds of
‘mouse dirts’ that she had found behind the organ made her wince when she
thought of them (The reason why the mice came there was because Georgie
Frew, the organ-blower, would bring penny packets of biscuits into church and
eat them during the sermon ) All the Church associations had been neglected,
with the result that the Band of Hope and the Companionship of Marriage had
now given up the ghost, Sunday School attendance had dropped by half, and
there was internecine warfare going on in the Mothers’ Union because of some
tactless remark that Miss Foote had made The belfry was m a worse state than
ever The parish magazine had not been delivered regularly and the money for
it had not been collected None of the accounts of the Church Funds had been
properly kept up, and there was nineteen shillings unaccounted for m all, and
even the pansh registers were m a muddle-and so on and so on, ad infinitum
The Rector had let everymg slide
Dorothy had been up to her eyes m work from the moment of reaching
home Indeed, things had slipped back into their old routine with astonishing
swiftness. It was as though it had been only yesterday that she had gone away.
Now that the scandal had blown over, her return to Knype Hill had aroused
very little curiosity Some of the women on her visiting list, particularly Mrs
Pither, were genmnely glad to see her back, and Victor Stone, perhaps, seemed
just a little ashamed of havmg temporarily believed Mrs SemprilFs libel, but
he soon forgot it in recounting to Dorothy his latest triumph in the Church
Times Various of the coffee-ladies, of course, had stopped Dorothy in the
street with ‘My dear, how very nice to see you back again’ You have been away
a long time! And you know, dear, we all thought it such a shame when that
horrible woman was going round telling those stories about you But I do hope
you’ll understand, dear, that whatever anyone else may have thought, I never
believed a word of them’, etc. , etc , etc But nobody had asked her the
uncomfortable questions that she had been fearing ‘I’ve been teaching m a
school near London’ had satisfied everyone, they had not even asked her the
name of the school. Never, she saw, would she have to confess that she had
slept in Trafalgar Square and been arrested for begging The fact is that people
who live m small country towns have only a very dim conception of anything
that happens more than ten miles from their own front door The world
outside is a terra incognita , inhabited, no doubt, by dragons and
anthropophagi, but not particularly interesting
Even Dorothy’s father had greeted her as though she had only been away for
the week-end He was in his study when she arrived, musingly smoking his
pipe in front of the grandfather clock, whose glass, smashed by the
charwoman’s broom-handle four months ago, was still unmended As
Dorothy came into the room he took his pipe out of his mouth and put it away
in his pocket with an absent-minded, old-mannish movement He looked a
great deal older, Dorothy thought
‘So here you are at last,’ he said ‘Did you have a good journey? ’
- Dorothy put her arms round his neck and touched his silver-pale cheek with
A Clergyman's Daughter 421
her lips As she disengaged herself he patted her shoulder with a just
perceptible trace more affection than usual
‘What made you take it into your head to run away like that? ’ he said
‘I told you, Father-I lost my memory 9
‘Hm,’ said the Rector, and Dorothy saw that he did not believe her, never
would believe her, and that on many and many a future occasion, when he was
in a less agreeable mood than at present, that escapade would be brought up
against her ‘Well , 9 he added, ‘when you’ve taken your bag upstairs, just bring
your typewriter down here, would you? I want you to type out my sermon 9
Not much that was of interest had happened m the town Ye Olde Tea
Shoppe was enlarging its premises, to the further disfigurement of the High
Street Mrs Pither’s rheumatism was better (thanks to the angelica tea, no
doubt), but Mr Pither had ‘been under the doctor 9 and they were afraid he had
stone in the bladder Mr Blifil- Gordon was now m Parliament, a docile
deadhead on the back benches of the Conservative Party Old Mr Tombs had
died just after Christmas, and Miss Foote had taken over seven of his cats and
made heroic efforts to find homes for the others Eva Twiss, the niece of Mr
Twiss the ironmonger, had had an illegitimate baby, which had died Proggett
had dug the kitchen garden and sowed a few seeds, and the broad beans and the
first peas were just showing The shop-debts had begun to mount up again
after the creditors’ meeting, and there was six pounds owing to Cargill Victor
Stone had had a controversy with Professor Coulton m the Church Times,
about the Holy Inquisition, and utterly routed him Ellen’s eczema had been
very bad all the winter Walph Blifil-Gordon had had two poems accepted by
the London Mercury
Dorothy went into the conservatory She had got a big job on
hand-costumes for a pageant that the schoolchildren were gomg to have on St
George’s Day, in aid of the organ fund Not a penny had been paid towards the
organ during the past eight months, and it was perhaps as well that the Rector
always threw the organ-people’s bills away unopened, for their tone was
growing more and more sulphurous Dorothy had racked her brams for a way
of raising some money, and finally decided on a historical pageant, beginning
with Julius Caesar and ending with the Duke of Wellington They might raise
two pounds by a pageant, she thought- with luck and a fine day, they might
even raise three pounds*
She looked round the conservatory She had hardly been in here since
coming home, and evidently nothing had been touched during her absence
Her things were lying just as she had left them, but the dust was thick on
everything. Her sewing-machine was on the table amid the old familiar litter of
scraps of cloth, sheets of brown paper, cotton-reels and pots of paint, and
though the needle had rusted, the thread was still in it And, yes* there were the
jackboots that she had been making the night she went away. She picked one of
them up and looked at it. Something stirred m her heart Yes, say what you
like, they were good jackboots! What a pity they had never been used!
However, they would come in useful for the pageant For Charles II,
perhaps-or, no, better not have Charles II, have Oliver Cromwell instead;
422 A Clergyman’s Daughter
because if you had Oliver Cromwell you wouldn’t have to make him a wig
Dorothy lighted the oilstove, found her scissors and two sheets of brown
paper, and sat down There was a mountain of clothes to be made Better start
off with Julius Caesar’s breastplate, she thought It was always that wretched
armour that made all the trouble' What did a Roman soldier’s armour look
like? Dorothy made an effort, and called to mind the statue of some idealized
curly-bearded emperor in the Roman Room at the British Museum You
might make a sort of rough breastplate out of glue and brown paper, and glue
narrow strips of paper across it to represent the plates of the armour, and then
silver them over No helmet to make, thank goodness' Julius Caesar always
wore a laurel wreath-ashamed of his baldness, no doubt, like Mr Warburton
But what about greaves? Did they wear greaves in Julius Caesar’s time? And
boots? Was a caligum a boot or a sandal?
After a few moments she stopped with the shears resting on her knee A
thought which had been haunting her like some mexorcizable ghost at every
unoccupied moment durmg the past week had returned once more to distract
her It was the thought of what Mr Warburton had said to her in the tram-of
what her life was going to be like hereafter, unmarried and without money
It was not that she was m any doubt about the external facts of her future
She could see it all quite clearly before her Ten years, perhaps, as unsalaried
curate, and then back to school-teaching Not necessarily in qmte such a
school as Mrs Creevy’s-no doubt she could do something rather better for
herself than that-but at least in some more or less shabby, more or less prison-
like school, or perhaps m some even bleaker, even less human kind of
drudgery Whatever happened, at the very best, she had got to face the destiny
that is common to all lonely and penniless women ‘The Old Maids of Old
England’, as somebody called them She was twenty-eight-just old enough to
enter their ranks
But it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter' That was the thing that you could
never drive into the heads of the Mr Warburtons of this world, not if you
talked to them for a thousand years, that mere outward things like poverty and
drudgery, and even loneliness, don’t matter m themselves It is the things that
happen in your heart that matter For just a moment-an evil moment-while
Mr Warburton was talking to her in the tram, she had known the fear of
poverty But she had mastered it, it was not a thing worth worrying about It
was not because of that that she had got to stiffen her courage and remake the
whole structure of her mmd
No, it was something far more fundamental, it was the deadly emptmesis that
she had discovered at the heart of things. She thought of how a year ago she
had sat in this chair, with these scissors in her hand, doing precisely what she
was doing now; and yet it was as though then and now she had been two
different beings Where had she gone, that well-meaning, ridiculous girl who
had prayed ecstatically m summer-scented fields and pricked her arm as a
punishment for sacrilegious thoughts? And where is any of ourselves of even a
year ago^And yet after all-and here lay the trouble- she was the same girl
Beliefs change, thoughts change, but there is some inner part of the soul that
A Clergyman’s Daughter 423
does not change Faith vanishes, but the need for faith remains the same as
before
And given only faith, how can anything else matter? How can anything
dismay you if only there is some purpose m the world which you can serve, and
which, while serving it, you can understand? Your whole life is illumined by
the sense of purpose There is no weariness m your heart, no doubts, no feeling
of futility, no Baudelairean ennui waiting for unguarded hours Every act is
significant, every moment sanctified, woven by faith as mto a pattern, a fabric
of never-ending joy
She began to meditate upon the nature of life You emerged from the womb,
you lived sixty or seventy years, and then you died and rotted And m every
detail of your life, if no ultimate purpose redeemed it, there was a quality of
greyness, of desolation, that could never be described, but which you could
feel like a physical pang at your heart Life, if the grave really ends it, is
monstrous and dreadful No use trying to argue it away Think of life as it
really is, think of the details of life, and then think that there is no meaning m it,
no purpose, no goal except the grave Surely only fools or self-deceivers, or
those whose lives are exceptionally fortunate, can face that thought without
flinching?
She shifted her position in her chair But after all there must be some
meaning, some purpose in it all 1 The world cannot be an accident. Everything
that happens must have a cause-ultimately, therefore, a purpose Since you
exist, God must have created you, and since He created you a conscious being.
He must be conscious The greater doesn’t come out of the less He created
you, and He will kill you, for His oWn purpose. But that purpose is inscrutable
It is in the nature of thmgs that you can never discover it, and perhaps even if
you did discover it you would be averse to it Your life and death, it may be, are
a single note in the eternal orchestra that plays for His diversion And suppose
you don’t like the tune? She thought of that dreadful unfrocked clergyman m
Trafalgar Square Had she dreamed the things he said, or had he really said
them? ‘Therefore with Demons and Archdemons and with all the company of
Hell’ But that was silly, really For your not liking the tune was also part of the
tune
Her mind struggled with the problem, while perceiving that there was no
solution There was, she saw clearly, no possible substitute for faith; no pagan
acceptance of life as sufficient to itself, no pantheistic cheer-up stuff, no
pseudo-religion of ‘progress’ with visions of glittering Utopias and ant-heaps
of steel and concrete It is all or nothing Either life on earth is a preparation for
something greater and more lasting, or it is meaningless, dark, and dreadful
Dorothy started. A frizzling sound was coming from the glue-pot She had
forgotten to put any water in the saucepan, and the glue was beginning to bum
She took the saucepan, hastened to the scullery sink to replenish it, then
brought it back and put it on the oilstove again I simply must get that
breastplate done before supper 1 she thought After Julius Caesar there was
William the Conqueror to be thought of More armour! And presently she
must go along to the kitchen and remind EUen to boil some potatoes to go with
424 A Clergyman's Daughter
the mmced beef for supper, also there was her ‘memo list’ to be written out for
tomorrow She shaped the two halves of the breastplate, cut out the armholes
and neckholes, and then stopped agam
Where had she got to? She had been saying that if death ends all, then there
is no hope and no meaning m anything Well, what then?
The action of going to the scullery and refilling the saucepan had changed
the tenor of her thoughts She perceived, for a moment at least, that she had
allowed herself to fall into exaggeration and self-pity What a fuss about
nothing, after all* As though m reality there were not people beyond number in
the same case as herself 1 All over the world, thousands, millions of them,
people who had lost their faith without losing their need of faith ‘Half the
parsons’ daughters m England,’ Mr Warburton had said He was probably
right And not only parsons’ daughters, people of every description-people m
illness and loneliness and failure, people leading thwarted, discouraging
lives-people who needed faith to support them, and who hadn’t got it Perhaps
even nuns m convents, scrubbmg floors and singing Ave Marias , secretly
unbelieving
And how cowardly, after all, to regret a superstition that you had got rid
of-to want to believe something that you knew m your bones to be untrue 1
And yet-'
Dorothy had put down her scissors Almost from force of habit, as though
her return home, which had not restored her faith, had restored the outward
habits of piety, she knelt down beside her chair She buried her face m her
hands She began to pray
‘Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief Lord, I believe, I believe, help
Thou my unbelief ’
It was useless, absolutely useless Even as she spoke the words she was aware
of their uselessness, and was half ashamed of her action She raised her head
And at that moment there stole into her nostrils a warm, evil smell, forgotten
these eight months but unutterably familiar-the smell of glue The water in
the saucepan was bubbling noisily Dorothy jumped to her feet and felt the
handle of the glue-brush- The glue was softemng-would be liquid m another
five minutes
The grandfather clock m her father’s study struck six. Dorothy started She
realized that she had wasted twenty minutes, and her conscience stabbed her
so hard that all the questions that had been worrymg her fled out of her mmd
What on earth have I been doing all this time? she thought, and at that moment
it really seemed to her that she did not know what she had been doing. She
admonished herself Come on, Dorothy 1 No slacking, please 1 You’ve got to get
that breastplate done before supper She sat down, filled her mouth with pins
and began pinning the two halves of the breastplate together, to get it into
shape before the glue should be ready
The smell of glue was the answer to her prayer. She did not know this. She
did not reflect, consciously, that the solution to her difficulty lay m accepting
the fact that there was no solution; that if one gets on with the job that lies to
hand, the ultimate purpose of the job fades into insignificance, that faith and
A Clergyman' s Daughter _ 425
no faith are very much the same provided that one is doing what is customary,
useful, and acceptable She could not formulate these thoughts as yet, she
could only live them Much later, perhaps, she would formulate them and
draw comfort from them
There was still a minute or two before the glue would be ready to use
Dorothy finished pinning the breastplate together, and in the same instant
began mentally sketching the innumerable costumes that were yet to be made
After William the Conqueror-was it chain mail in William the Conqueror’s
day? -there were Robin Hood- Lincoln Green and a bow and arrow-and
Thomas k Becket m his cope and mitre, and Queen Elizabeth’s ruff, and a
cocked hat for the Duke of Wellington And I must go and see about those
potatoes at half past six, she thought And there was her ‘memo list’ to be
written out for tomorrow Tomorrow was Wednesday-mustn’t forget to set
the alarm clock for half past five She took a slip of paper and began writing out
the ‘memo list’
70c HC
Mrs J baby next month go and see her
Breakfast Bacon
She paused to think of fresh items Mrs J was Mrs Jowett, the blacksmith’s
wife, she came sometimes to be churched after her babies were born, but only
if you coaxed her tactfully beforehand And I must take old Mrs Frew some
paregoric lozenges, Dorothy thought, and then perhaps she’ll speak to Georgie
and stop him eating those biscuits during the sermon She added Mrs Frew to
her list And then what about tomorrow’s dinner-luncheon? We simply must
pay Cargill something* she thought And tomorrow was the day of the
Mothers’ Union tea, and they had finished the novel that Miss Foote had been
reading to them The question was, what to get for them next? There didn’t
seem to be any more books by Gene Stratton Porter, their favourite What
about Warwick Deeping? Too highbrow, perhaps? And I must ask Proggett to
get us some young cauliflowers to plant out, she thought finally
The glue had liquefied Dorothy took two fresh sheets of brown paper,
sliced them into narrow strips, and-rather awkwardly, because of the
difficulty of keeping the breastplate convex-pasted the strips horizontally
across it, back and front By degrees it stiffened under her hands When she
had reinforced it all over she set it on end to look at it. It really wasn’t half bad*
One more coatmg of paper and it would be almost like real armour We must
make that pageant a success* she thought What a pity we can’t borrow a horse
from somebody and have Boadicea in her chariot* We might make five pounds
if we had a really good chariot, with scythes on the wheels And what about
Hengist and Horsa? Cross-gartering and winged helmets Dorothy sliced two
more sheets of brown paper mto strips, and took up the breastplate to give it its
final coating.
’e says
daddy When I was a boy we didn’t live on this ’ere bread and marg and tea
and suchlike trash Good solid tommy we ’ad in them days Beefstoo Black
pudden Bacon dumpling Pig’s ’ead Fed like a fighting-cock on a tanner a
3 50 A Clergyman' s Daughter
day And now fifty year I’ve ’ad of it on the toby Spud-grabbing, pea-
pickmg, lambing, turnip-toppmg-everythink And sleeping m wet straw
and not once in a year you don’t fill your guts right full Well-! [Retires
mthvn his coat ]
mrs mcelligot But he was real bold, Michael was He’d go m anywhere
Many’s de time we’ve broke into an empty house an’ kipped m de best bed
‘Other people got homes,’ he’d say ‘Why shouln’t we have’m too*’
ginger [singing] But I’m dan-cing with tears-m my eyes-
mr tallboys [ to himself] Absumet haeres Caecuba digmor 1 To think that there
were twenty-one bottles of Clos St Jacques 1911m my cellar still, that night
when the baby was born and I left for London on the milk train!
mrs wayne And as for the wreaths we ’as sent us when our mother died- well,
you wouldn’t believe' ’Uge, they was
mrs Bendigo If I’ad my time over again I’d marry for bloody money
ginger [singing]
But I’m dan-cing with tears-in my eyes-
’Cos the girl-m my arms-isn’t you-o-ou'
nosy watson Some of you lot think you got a bloody lot to howl about, don’t
you? What about a poor sod like me? You wasn’t narked into the stir when
you was eighteen year old, was you?
the kike OhJ e-e-eeeze'
Charlie Ginger, you can’t smg no more’n a perishing tomcat with the guts-
ache Just you listen to me I’ll give y’a treat [Singing] Jesu, lover of my
soul-
mr tallboys [to himself] Et ego in Crockford With Bishops and
Archbishops and with all the Company of Heaven
nosy watson D’you know how I got m the stir the first time? Narked by my
own sister-yes, my own bloody sister' My sister’s a cow if ever there was
one She got married to a religious maniac-he’s so bloody religious that
she’s got fifteen kids now-well, it was him put her up to narking me But I
got back on ’em, I can tell you First thing, I done when I come out of the
stir, I buys a hammer and goes round to my sister’s house, and smashed her
piano to bloody matchwood ‘There 1 ’ I says, ‘that’s what you get for narking
me' You nosing mare ' 5 1 says
dorothy This cold, this cold! I don’t know whether my feet are there or not
mrs mcelligot Bloody tea don’t warm you for long, do it? I’m fair froze
myself,
mr tallboys [to himself] My curate days, my curate days' My fancy work
bazaars and morris-dancers in aid of on the village green, my lectures to the
Mothers’ Union-missionary work in Western China with fourteen magic
lantern slides' My Boys’ Cricket Club, teetotallers only, my Confirmation
classes -purity lecture once monthly in the Parish Hall-my Boy Scout
orgies' The Wolf Cubs will deliver the Grand Howl Household Hints for
the Parish Magazine, ‘Discarded fountain-pen fillers can be used as enemas
for canaries ’
Charlie [singing] Jesu, lover of my soul-
A Clergyman’s Daughter 351
GINGER ’Ere comes the bleeding flattie' Get up off the ground, all of you
[Daddy emerges from his overcoat ]
the policeman [shaking the sleepers on the next bench ] Now then, wake up,
wake up' Rouse up, you' Got to go home if you want to sleep This isn’t a
common lodging house Get up, there' [etc , etc ]
mrs Bendigo It’s that nosy young sod as wants promotion Wouldn’t let you
bloody breathe if ’e ’ad ’is way
charlie [ singing ]
Jesu, lover of my soul,
' Let me to Thy bosom fly-
the policeman Now then, you' What you think this is? Baptist prayer
meeting? [To the Kike ] Up you get, and look sharp about it'
charlie I can’t ’elp it, sergeant It’s my toonful nature It comes out of me
natural-like
the policeman [shaking Mrs Bendigo ] Wake up, mother, wake up'
mrs Bendigo Mother? Mother , is it? Well, if I am a mother, thank God I ain’t
got a bloody son like you' And I’ll tell you another little secret, constable
Next time I want a man’s fat ’ands feeling round the back of my neck, I
won’t ask you to do it I’ll ’ave someone with a bit more sex-appeal
the policeman Now then, now then' No call to get abusive, you know We got
our orders to carry out [Exit majestically ]
snouter [sotto voce] — off, you — son of a — 1
CHARLIE [singing]
While the gathering waters roll.
While the tempest still is ’igh>
Sung bass m the choir my last two years in Dartmoor, I did
mrs Bendigo I’ll bloody mother ’im' [Shouting after the policeman] ’I' Why
don’t you get after them bloody cat burglars ’stead of coming nosing round a
respectable married woman?
ginger Kip down, blokes ’E’s jacked, [Daddy retires within his coat ]
nosy watson Wassit like m Dartmoor now? D’they give you jam now?
mrs wayne Of course, you can see as they couldn’t reely allow people to sleep
m the streets-I mean, it wouldn’t be qmte mce-and then you’ve got to
remember as it’d be encouraging of all the people as haven’t got homes of
their own-the kind of riff-raff, if you take my meaning
mr tallboys [to himself] Happy days, happy days! Outings with the Girl
Guides m Epping Forest-hired brake and sleek roan horses, and I on the
box m my grey flannel suit, speckled straw hat, and discreet layman’s neck-
tie Buns and ginger pop under the green elms Twenty Girl Guides pious
yet susceptible frisking in the breast-high bracken, and I a happy curate
sporting among them, in loco parentis pinching the girls’ backsides
mrs mcelligot Well, you may talk about kippm’ down, but begod dere won’t
be much sleep for my poor ole bloody bones tonight I can’t skipper it now
de way me and Michael used to.
charlie Not jam Gets cheese, though, twice a week
the kike Oh Jeezi I can’t stand it no longer I going down to the M A. B
3$2 A Clergyman's Daughter
[Dorothy stands up, and then , her knees having stiffened with the cold, almost
falls ]
ginger Only send you to the bleeding Labour Home What you say we all go
up to Covent Garden tomorrow morning? Bum a few pears if we get there
early enough
Charlie I’ve ’ad my perishing bellyful of Dartmoor, b’lieve me Forty on us
went through ’ell for getting off with the ole women down on the allotments
Ole trots seventy years old they was-spud-grabbers Didn’t we cop it just 1
Bread and water, chained to the wall-penshmg near murdered us
mrs bendigo No fear 1 Not while my bloody husband’s there One black eye m
a week’s enough for me, thank you
mr tallboys [chanting, reminiscently] As for our harps, we hanged them up,
upon the willow trees of Babylon'
mrs mcelligot Hold up, kiddie' Stamp your feet an’ get de blood back into
’m I’ll take y’a walk up to Paul’s m a coupla minutes
deafie [singing] With my willy willy-
[Big Ben strikes eleven ]
snouter Six more — hours' Cnpes'
[An hour passes Big Ben stops striking The mist thins and the cold increases
A grubby-faced moon is seen sneaking among the clouds of the southern
sky A dozen hardened old men remain on the benches, and still contrive to
sleep, doubled up and hidden in their greatcoats Occasionally they groan in
their sleep The others set out m all directions , intending to walk all night and
so keep then blood flowing, but nearly all of them have drifted back to the
Square by midnight A new policeman comes on duty He strolls through the
Square at intervals of half an hour, scrutinizing the faces of the sleepers but
letting them alone when he has made sure that they are only asleep and not
dead Round each bench revolves a knot of people who take it in turns to sit
down and are driven to their feet by the cold after a few minutes Ginger and
Charlie fill two drums at the fountains and set out m the desperate hope of
boiling some tea over the navvies' clinker fire in Chandos Street, but a
policeman is warming himself at the fire, and orders them away The Kike
suddenly vanishes, probably to beg a bed at the M A B Towards one o'clock a
rumour goes round that a lady is distributing hot coffee, ham sandwiches, and
packets of cigarettes under Charing Cross Bridge, there is a rush to the spot,
but the rumour turns out to be unfounded As the Square fills again the
ceaseless changing of places upon the benches quickens until it is a game of
musical chairs Sitting down, with one's hands under one's armpits, it is
possible to get into a kind of sleep, or doze, for two or three minutes on end In
this state, enormous ages seem to pass One sinks into a complex, troubling
dreams which leave one conscious of one's surroundings and of the bitter cold
The night is growing clearer and colder every minute There is a chorus of
varying sound— groans, curses, bursts of laughter, and singing , and through
them all the uncontrollable chattering of teeth ]
mr tallboys [chanting] I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of
joint'
A Clergyman's Daughter 353
mrs mcelligot Ellen an’ me bm wanderin’ round de City dis two hours
Begod it’s like a bloody tomb wid dem great lamps glarin’ down on you an’
not a soul stirren’ excep’ de flatties strollin’ two an’ two
snouter Five past — one and I ain’t ’ad a bite since dinner 1 Course it ’ad to
’appen to us on a — night like this 1
mr tallboys A drinking night I should have called it But every man to his
taste [ Chanting ] ‘My strength is dried like a potsherd, and my tongue
cleaveth to my gums 1 ’
Charlie Say, what you think? Nosy and me done a smash jest now Nosy sees a
tobacconist’s show-case full of them fancy boxes of Gold Flake, and ’e says,
‘By cnpes I’m gomg to ’ave some of them fags if they give me a perishing
stretch for it 1 ’ ’e says So ’e wraps ’is scarf round ’is ’and, and we waits till
there’s a perishing great van passing as’ll drown the noise, and then Nosy
lets fly-biff We nipped a dozen packets of fags, and then I bet you didn’t see
our a — s for dust And when we gets round the corner and opens them, there
wasn’t no perishing fags inside 1 Perishmg dummy boxes I ’ad to laugh
Dorothy My knees are giving way I can’t stand up much longer
mrs Bendigo Oh, the sod, the sod 1 To turn a woman out of doors on a night
like bloody this! You wait’ll I get ’im drunk 0’ Saturday night and ’e can’t ’it
back I’ll mash ’im to bloody shin of beef, I will ’E’ll look like two pennorth
of pieces after I’ve swiped ’im with the bloody flat-iron
mrs mcelligot Here, make room’n let de kid sit down- Press up agen ole
Daddy, dear. Put his arm round you He’s chatty, but he’ll keep you warm
ginger [double marking time ] Stamp your feet on the ground-only bleeding
thing to do Strike up a song, someone, and less all stamp our bleeding feet m
time to it
daddy [ waking and emerging ] Wassat? [Still half asleep, he lets his head fall
back, with mouth open and Adam's apple protruding from his withered throat
like the blade of a tomahawk . ]
MRS Bendigo There’s women what if they’d stood what I've stood, they’d ave
put spirits of salts m ’is cup of bloody tea
mr tallboys [beating an imaginary drum and singing] Onward, heathen
so-oldiers-
mrs wayne Well, reely now 1 If any of us’d ever of thought, m the dear old days
when we used to sit round our own Silkstone coal fire, with the kettle on the
hob and a nice dish of toasted crumpets from the baker’s over the way
[The chattering of her teeth silences her ]
charlie. No perishing church trap now, matie I’ll give y’a bit of
smut-something as we can perishing dance to You listen t’me
mrs mcelligot Don’t you get talkin’ about crumpets, Missis Me bloody
belly’s rubbm’ agen me backbone already
[Charlie draws himself up, clears his throat, and in an enormous voice roars
out a song entitled Rollicking Bill the Sailor 3 . A laugh that is partly a
shudder bursts from the people on, the bench They smg the song through ogam*
with increasing volume of noise, stamping and clapping m time Those sitting
down, packed elbow to elbow, sweep grotesquely foam side to side, working their
354 A Clergyman's Daughter
feet as though stamping on the pedals of a harmonium Even Mrs Wayne joins
in after a moment, laughing in spite of herself They are all laughing, though
with chattering teeth Mr Tallboys marches up and down behind his vast swag
belly, pretending to carry a banner or crozier m front of him The night is now
quite clear, and an icy wind comes shuddering at intervals through the
Square The stamping and clapping rise to a kind of frenzy as the people feel
the deadly cold penetrate to their bones Then the policeman is seen wandering
into the Square from the eastern end, and the singing ceases abruptly ]
Charlie There 1 You can’t say as a bit of music don’t warm you up
mrs bendigo This bloody wind 1 And I ain’t even got any drawers on, the
bastard kicked me out in such a ’urry
mrs mcelligot Well, glory be to Jesus, ’twon’t be long before dat dere church
in de Gray’s Inn Road opens up for de winter Dey gives you a roof over
your head of a night, ’t any rate
the policeman Now then, now then ' D’you think this is the time of night to
begin singing like a blooming bear garden? I shall have to send you back to
your homes if you can’t keep quiet
snouter [sotto voce ] You — son of a — 1
ginger Yes-they lets you kip on the bleeding stone floor with three
newspaper posters ’stead of blankets Might as well be in the Square and
’ave done with it God, I wish I was in the bleeding spike
mrs mcelligot Still, you gets a cup of Horlicks an’ two slices I bin glad to kip
dere often enough
mr tallboys [ chanting ] I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the
house of the Lord*
dorothy [starting up] Oh, this cold, this cold' I don’t know whether it’s worse
when you’re sittmg down or when you’re standing up Oh, how can you all
stand it? Surely you don’t have to do this every night of your lives?
mrs wayne You mustn’t think, dearie, as there isn’t some of us wasn’t brought
up respectable
Charlie [singing] Cheer up, cully, you’ll soon be dead' Brrh 1 Perishing Jesus'
Ain’t my fish-hooks blue' [Double marks time and beats his arms against his
sides ]
dorothy Oh, but how can you stand it? How can you go on like this, night
after mght, year after year? It’s not possible that people can live so' It’s so
absurd that one wouldn’t believe it if one didn’t know it was true It’s
impossible'
snouter — possible if you ask me
MR tallboys [stage curate-wise]' With God, all things are possible
[Dorothy sinks back on to the bench, her knees still being unsteady ]
Charlie. Well, it’s jest on ’ar-parse one Either we got to get moving, or else
make a pyramid on that perishing bench Unless we want to perishing turn
up our toes ’Oo’s for a little constitootional up to the Tower of London?
mrs mcelligot ’Twon’t be me dat’ll walk another step tomght Me bloody
legs’ve given out on me.
ginger: What-o for the pyramid' This is a bit too bleeding nme-day-old for
A Clergyman's Daughter 355
me Less scrum into that bench-beg pardon, Ma !
daddy [sleepily] Wassa game’ Can’t a man get a bit of kip but what you must
come worriting ’im and shaking of ’im’
charlie That’s the stuff 1 Shove in' Shift yourself. Daddy, and make room for
my little sit-me-down Get one atop of each other That’s right Nevermind
the chats Jam all together like pilchards m a perishing tin
mrs wayne Here 1 1 didn’t ask you to sit on my lap, young man'
ginger Sit on mine, then, mother- ’sail the same What-o 1 First bit of stuff
I’ve ’ad my arm round since Easter
[They pile themselves m a monstrous shapeless clot , men and women clinging
indiscriminately together , like a bunch of toads at spawning time There is a
writhing movement as the heap settles down , and a sour stench of clothes
diffuses itself Only Mr Tallboys remains marching up and down ]
mr tallboys [declaiming] O ye nights and days, ye light and darkness, ye
lightnings and clouds, curse ye the Lord 1
[. Deafie , someone having sat on his diaphragm , utters a strange ,
unreproducible sound ]
mrs Bendigo Get off my bad leg, can’t you’ What you think I am’ Bloody
drawing-room sofa’
charlie Don’t ole Daddy stink when you get up agen ’im’
ginger Bleeding Bank ’oliday for the chats this’ll be
DOROTHY Oh, God, God'
MR tallboys [halting] Why call on God, you puling deathbed penitent’ Stick
to your guns and call on the Devil as I do Hail to thee, Lucifer, Prince of the
Air 1 [Singing to the tune of ( Holy, holy holy *J Incubi and Succubi, falling
down before Theei
mrs Bendigo Oh, shut up, you blarsphemous old sod 1 ’E’s too bloody fat to
feel the cold, that’s what’s wrong with ’im
charlie Nice soft be’md you got, Ma Keep an eye out for the penshmg
flattie. Ginger
MR tallboys Malecidite 3 omnia opera 1 The Black Mass 1 Why not’ Once a
priest always a priest Hand me a chunk of toke and I will work the miracle
Sulphur candles. Lord’s Prayer backwards, crucifix upside down [To
Dorothy] If we had a black he-goat you would come in useful
[ The animal heat of the piled bodies had already made itself felt A drowsiness
is descending upon everyone ]
mrs wayne You mustn’t think as I’m accustomed to sittmg on a gentleman’s
knee, you know
mrs mcelligot [drowsily] . It took my sacraments reg’lar till de bloody priest
wouldn’t give me absolution along 0’ my Michael, De ole get, de ole
getsie 1
mr tallboys [striking an attitude] Per aquam sacratam quam nunc spargo ,
signumque crucis quod nunc facto
ginger ’Oo’s got a fill of ’ard-up’ I’ve smoked by last bleeding fag-end,
MR tallboys [as at the altar]. Dearly beloved brethren we are gathered
together m the sight of God for the solemnization of unholy blasphemy. He
556 A Clergyman’s Daughter
has afflicted us with dirt and cold, with hunger and solitude, with the pox
and the itch, with the headlouse and the crablouse Our food is damp crusts
and slimy meat-scraps handed out m packets from hotel doorways Our
pleasure is stewed tea and sawdust cakes bolted m reeking cellars, bar-
rinsing sand spittle of common ale, the embrace of toothless hags Our
destiny is the pauper’s grave, twenty-feet deep in deal coffins, the kip-house
of underground It is very meet, right and our bounden duty at all times and
in all places to curse Him and revile Him Therefore with Demons and
Archdemons [etc , etc , etc ]
mrs mcelligot [drowsily] By holy Jesus, I’m half asleep right now, only some
b — ’s lyin’ across my legs and crushin’ ’em
mr tallboys Amen Evil from us deliver, but temptation into not us lead [etc ,
etc , etc ]
[As he reaches the first word of the prayer he tears the consecrated bread
across The blood runs out of it There is a rolling sound , as of thunder , and the
landscape changes Dorothy’s feet are very cold Monstrous winged shapes of
Demons and Archdemons are dimly visible , moving to and fro Something ,
beak or claw , closes upon Dorothy’s shoulder, reminding her that her feet and
hands are aching with cold ]
the policeman [shaking Dorothy by the shoulder ] Wake up, now, wake up,
wake up 1 Haven’t you got an overcoat? You’re as white as death Don’t
you know better than to let yourself sprawl about m the cold like that?
[Dorothy finds that she is stiff with cold The sky is now quite clear, with
gritty little stars twinkling like electric lamps enormously remote The
pyramid has unrolled itself ]
mrs mcelligot De poor kid, she ain’t used to roughin’ it de way us others are
ginger [beating his arms ] Brr ! Woo* ’Taters in the bleeding mould*
mrs wayne She’s a lady bom and bred
the policeman Is that so? -See here. Miss, you best come down to the M A B
with me They’ll give you a bed all right Anyone can see with half an eye as
you’re a cut above these others here
mrs bfndigo Thank you, constable, thank you* ’Ear that, girls? ‘A cut above
us,’ ’e says Nice, ain’t it? [To the policeman j Proper bloody Ascot swell
yourself, ain’t you?
Dorothy No, no* Leave me. I’d rather stay here
the policeman Well, please yourself You looked real bad just now I’ll be
along later and take a look at you [Moves off doubtfully ]
Charlie Wait’ll the perisher’s round the corner and then pile up agen Only
perishing way we’ll keep warm
mrs mcelligot Come on, kid Get underneath an’ let’m warm you
snouter Ten mmutes to — two Can’t last for ever, I s’pose
MR tallboys [chanting]: I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of
joint My heart also in the midst of my body is like unto melting wax*
[Once more the people pile themselves on the bench But the temperature is
now not many degrees above freezing-point, and the wind is blowing more
cuttingly. The people wriggle their zmnd-mpped faces into the heap like
A Clergyman’s Daughter 357
sucking pigs struggling for their mother’s teats One’s interludes of sleep shrink
to a few seconds, and one’s dreams grow more monstrous, troubling , and
undreamlike There are times when the nine people are talking almost
normally , times when they can even laugh at their situation, and times when
they press themselves together in a kind of frenzy, with deep groans of pain
Mi Tallboys suddenly becomes exhausted and his monologue degenerates into
a stream of nonsense He drops his vast bulk on top of the others, almost
suffocating them The heap rolls apart Some remain on the bench, some slide
to the ground and collapse against the parapet or against the others’ knees
The policeman enters the Square and orders those on the ground to their feet
They get up, and collapse again the moment he is gone There is no sound from
the ten people save of snores that are partly groans Their heads nod like those
of joined porcelain Chinamen as they fall asleep and reawake as rhythmically
as the ticking of a clock Three strikes somewhere A voice yells like a trumpet
from the eastern end of the Square ‘Boys 1 Up you get 1 The noospapers is
come’’]
Charlie [starting from his sleep ] The perishing papers’ C’m on. Ginger' Run
like Hell'
[They run, or shamble, as fast as they can to the corner of the Square , where
three youths are distributing surplus posters given away m charity by the
morning newspapers Charlie and Ginger come back with a thick wad of
posters The five largest men now jam themselves together on the bench , Deafie
and the four women sitting across their knees, then, with infinite difficulty ( as
it has to be done from the inside), they wrap themselves m a monstrous cocoon
of paper, several sheets thick, tucking the loose ends into their necks or breasts
or between their shoulders and the back of the bench Finally nothing is
uncovered save their heads and the lower part of their legs For their heads
they fashion hoods of paper The paper constantly comes loose and lets in cold
shafts of wind, but it is now possible to sleep for as much as five minutes
consecutively At this time-between three and five m the mormng~it is
customary with the police not to disturb the Square sleepers A measure of
warmth steals through everyone and extends even to their feet There is some
furtive fondling of the women under cover of the paper Dorothy is too far gone
to care
By a quarter past four the paper is all crumpled and torn to nothing, and it is
far too cold to remain sitting down The people get up, swear, find their legs
somewhat rested, and begin to slouch to and fro m couples, frequently halting
from mere lassitude Every belly is now contorted with hunger Ginger’s tin of
condensed milk is tom open and the contents devoured, everyone dipping their
fingers into it and licking them. Those who have no money at all leave the
Square for the Green Park, where they will be undisturbed till seven . Those
who can command even a halfpenny make for Wilkins’s cafe not far from the
Charing Cross Road It is known that the cafe will not open till five o’clock;
nevertheless , a crowd is waiting outside the door by twenty to five ]
mrs mcelligot Got your halfpenny, dearie-* Dey won’t let more’n four of us
in on one cup o’tea, de stingy ole gets'
3 $8 A Clergyman’s Daughter
mr tallboys [singing] The roseate hu-ues of early da-awn—
ginger God, that bit of sleep we ’ad under the newspapers done me some
good [Singing] But I’m dan-cmg with tears-m my eyes-
charlie Oh, boys, boys' Look through that perishing window, will you’ Look
at the ’eat steaming down the window pane' Look at the tea-urns jest on the
boil, and them great piles of ’ot toast and ’am sandwiches, and them there
sausages sizzling m the pan' Don’t it make your belly turn perishing
summersaults to see ’em’
Dorothy I’ve got a penny I can’t get a cup of tea for that, can I’
snouter — lot of sausages we’ll get this morning with fourpence between us
’Alf a cup of tea and a — doughnut more likely There’s a breakfus’ for you'
mrs mcelligot You don’t need buy a cup o’ tea all to yourself I got a
halfpenny an’ so’s Daddy, an’ we’ll put’m to your penny an’ have a cup
between de t’ree of us He’s got sores on his lip, but Hell' who cares’ Drink
near de handle an’ dere’s no harm done
[A quarter to five strikes ]
mrs bendigo I’d bet a dollar my ole man’s got a bit of ’addock to ’is breakfast I
’ope it bloody chokes ’im
ginger [singing] But I’m dan-cing with tears-m my eyes-
mr tallboys [singing] Early m the morning my song shall rise to Thee!
mrs mcelligot You gets a bit o’ kip m dis place, dat’s one comfort Dey lets
you sleep wid your head on de table till seven o’clock It’s a bloody godsend
to us Square Tobies
Charlie [slavering like a dog] Sausages' Perishing sausages' Welsh rabbit! ’Ot
dripping toast' And a rump-steak two inches thick with chips and a pint of
Ole Burton' Oh, perishing Jesus'
[He bounds forward, pushes his way through the crowd and rattles the handle
of the glass door The whole crowd of people, about forty strong, surge forward
and attempt to storm the door, which is stoutly held within by Mr Wilkins, the
proprietor of the cafe He menaces them through the glass. Some press their
breasts and faces against the window as though warming themselves With a
whoop and a rush Florry and four other girls , comparatively fresh from
having spent part of the night m bed, debouch from a neighbouring alley,
accompanied by a gang of youths m blue suits They hurl themselves upon the
rear of the crowd with such momentum that the door is almost broken Mr
Wilkins pulls it furiously open and shoves the leaders back A fume of
sausages, kippers , coffee, and hot bread streams into the outer cold ]
youths’ voices from the rear Why can’t he — open before five’ We’re
starving for our — tea' Ram the — door in' [etc , etc ]
mr wilkins Get out' Get out, the lot of you' Or by God not one of you comes
m this morning'
girls’ voices from the rear Mis-ter Wil-kins' Mis-ter Wil-kms' Be a sport
and let us ini I’ll give y’a kiss all free for nothing Be a sport now* [etc , etc ]
mr wilkins Get on out of it' We don’t open before five, and you know it
[Slams the door,]
mrs mcelligot Oh, holy Jesus, if dis ain’t de longest ten minutes o’ de whole
A Clergyman's Daughter 359
bloody night’ Well, I’ll give me poor ole legs a rest, anyway [Squats on her
heels coal-mtner-fashion Many others do the same ]
ginger ’Oo’s got a ’alfpenny? I’m ripe to go fifty-fifty on a doughnut
youths’ voices [imitating military music , then singing]
‘ — ’’ was all the band could play,
‘ — ' — ’ And the same to you’
dorothy [to Mrs McElligot ] Look at us all’ Just look at us' What clothes’
What faces'
mrs Bendigo You’re no Greta Garbo yourself, if you don’t mind my
mentiomng it
mrs wayne Well, now, the time do seem to pass slowly when you’re waiting for
a nice cup of tea, don’t it now?
mr tallboys [chanting] For our soul is brought low, even unto the dust our
belly cleaveth unto the ground’
Charlie Kippers' Perishing piles of ’em’ I can smell ’em through the
perishing glass
ginger [singing]
But I’m dan-cmg with tears-m my eyes-
’Cos the girl-m my arms-isn’t you-o-ou’
[Much time passes Five strikes Intolerable ages seem to pass Then the door
is suddenly wrenched open and the people stampede m to fight for the corner
seats Almost swooning m the hot air , they fling themselves down and sprawl
across the tables, drinking m the heat and the smell of food through all their
pores ]
mr wilkins Now then, all’ You know the rules, I s’pose No hokey-pokey this
morning' Sleep till seven if you like, but if I see any man asleep after that,
out he goes on his neck Get busy with that tea, girls'
a deafening chorus of yells Two teas ’ere' Large tea and a doughnut
between us four' Kippers' Mis-ter Wil-kms' ’Ow much them sausages?
Two slices' Mis-ter Wil-kins' Got any fag papers? Kipp -erf [etc , etc ]
mr wilkins Shut up, shut up! Stop that hollering or I don’t serve any of you
mrs mcelligot D’you fell de blood runmn’ back mto your toes, dearie?
mrs wayne He do speak rough to you, don’t he? Not what I’d call a reely
gentlemanly kind of man
snouter This is — starvation Corner, this is Cripes' Couldn’t I do a couple
of them sausages'
the tarts [in chorus] Kippers ’ere' ’Urry up with them kippers' Mis-ter Wil-
kins' Kippers all round' And a doughnut'
charlie Not ’alf ' Got to fill up on the smell of ’em this morning Sooner be
’ere than on the perishing Square, all the same
ginger ’Ere, Deafie' You’ve ’ad your ’alf Gimme me that bleeding cup
mr tallboys [chanting]' Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our
tongue with joy!
mrs mcelligot Begod I’m half asleep already It’s de heat o’ de room as does
it
mr WILKINS’ Stop that singing there' You know the rules.
g6o A Clergyman’s Daughter
the tarts [ in chorus] Kipp-m’
snouter — doughnuts’ Cold prog' It turns my belly sick
daddy Even the tea they give you ain’t no more than water with a bit of dust in
it [ Belches ]
charlie Bes’ thing- ’ave a bit of shut-eye and forget about it Dream about
perishing cut off the joint and two veg Less get our ’eads on the table and
pack up comfortable
mrs mcelligot Lean up agen me shoulder, dearie I’ve got more flesh on me
bones’n what you have
ginger I’d give a tanner for a bleeding fag, if I ’ad a bleeding tanner
charlie Pack up Get your ’ead agenst mine, Snouter That’s right Jesus,
won’t I perishing sleep’
[A dish of smoking kippers is borne past to the tarts 3 table ]
snouter [drowsily] More — kippers Wonder ’ow many times she’s bin on ’er
back to pay for that lot
mrs mcelligot [half-asleep] ’Twas a pity, ’twas a real pity, when Michael
went off on his jack an’ left me wid de bloody baby an’ all
mrs bendigo [furiously , following the dish of kippers with accusing finger ] Look
at that, girls’ Look at that’ Kippers' Don’t it make you bloody wild^ We
don’t get kippers for breakfast, do we, girls ? Bloody tarts swallermg down
kippers as fast as they can turn ’em out of the pan, and us ’ere with a cup of
tea between four of us and lucky to get that’ Kippers’
MR Tallboys [stage curate-wise ] The wages of sin is kippers
ginger Don’t breathe in my face, Deafie I can’t bleeding stand it
charlie [in his sleep ] Charles- Wisdom-drunk-and-mcapable-drunk^-yes-six-
shillings-move-on-wexi'
dorothy [on Mrs McElligot’s bosom] Oh, joy, joy’
[They are asleep ]
2
And so it goes on
Dorothy endured this life for ten days-to be exact, nine days and ten nights
It was hard to see what else she could do Her father, seemingly, had
abandoned her altogether, and though she had friends in London who would
readily have helped her, she did not feel that she could face them after what
had happened, or what was supposed to have happened And she dared not
apply to organized charity because it would almost certainly lead to the
discovery of her name, and hence, perhaps, to a fresh hullabaloo about the
‘Rector’s Daughter’
So she stayed m London, and became one of that curious tribe, rare but
A Clergyman's Daughter 36 1
never quite extinct-the tribe of women who are penniless and homeless, but
who make such desperate efforts to hide it that they very nearly succeed,
women who wash their faces at drinking fountains m the cold of the dawn, and
carefully uncrumple their clothes after sleepless nights, and carry themselves
with an air of reserve and decency, so that only their faces, pale beneath
sunburn, tell you for certain that they are destitute It was not m her to become
a hardened beggar like most of the people about her Her first twenty-four
hours on the Square she spent without any food whatever, except for the cup of
tea that she had had overnight and a third of a cup more that she had had at
Wilkins’s caffe m the morning But in the evening, made desperate by hunger
and the others’ example, she walked up to a strange woman, mastered her voice
with an effort, and said ‘Please, Madam, could you give me twopence^ I have
had nothing to eat smce yesterday ’ The woman stared, but she opened her
purse and gave Dorothy threepence Dorothy did not know it, but her
educated accent, which had made it impossible to get work as a servant, was an
invaluable asset to her as a beggar
After that she found that it was really very easy to beg the daily shilling or so
that was needed to keep her alive And yet she never begged~it seemed to her
that actually she could not do lt-except when hunger was past bearing or when
she had got to lay m the precious penny that was the passport to Wilkins’s caffe
m the morning With Nobby, on the way to the hopfields, she had begged
without fear or scruple But it had been different then; she had not known what
she was doing Now, it was only under the spur of actual hunger that she could
screw her courage to the point, and ask for a few coppers from some woman
whose face looked friendly It was always women that she begged from, of
course She did once try begging from a man-but only once
For the rest, she grew used to the life that she was leading-used to the
enormous sleepless nights, the cold, the dirt, the boredom, and the horrible
communism of the Square After a day or two she had ceased to feel even a
flicker of surprise at her situation. She had come, like everyone about her, to
accept this monstrous existence almost as though it were normal The dazed,
witless feeling that she had known on the way to the hopfields had come back
upon her more strongly than before It is the common effect of sleeplessness
and still more of exposure To live continuously in the open air, never going
under a roof for more than an hour or two, blurs your perceptions like a strong
light glaring in your eyes or a noise drumming in your ears. You act and plan
and suffer, and yet all the while it is as though everything were a little out of
focus, a little unreal The world, inner and outer, grows dimmer till it reaches
almost the vagueness of a dream
Meanwhile, the police were getting to know her by sight On the Square
people are perpetually coming and going, more or less unnoticed They arrive
from nowhere with their drums and their bundles, camp for a few days and
nights, and then disappear as mysteriously as they come If you stay for more
than a week or thereabouts, the police will mark you down as an habitual
beggar, and* they will arrest you sooner or later It is impossible for them to
enforce th©' begging laws at all regularly, but from time to time they make a
362 A Clergyman’s Daughter
sudden raid and capture two or three of the people they have had their eye on
And so it happened in Dorothy’s case
One evening she was ‘knocked off’, in company with Mrs McElligot and
another woman whose name she did not know They had been careless and
begged off a nasty old lady with a face like a horse, who had promptly walked
up to the nearest policeman and given them in charge
Dorothy did not mind very much Everything was dreamlike now- the face
of the nasty old lady, eagerly accusing them, and the walk to the station with a
young policeman’s gentle, almost deferential hand on her arm, and then the
white-tiled cell, with the fatherly sergeant handing her a cup of tea through the
grille and telling her that the magistrate wouldn’t be too hard on her if she
pleaded guilty In the cell next door Mrs McElligot stormed at the sergeant,
called him a bloody get, and then spent half the night in bewailing her fate But
Dorothy had no feeling save vague relief at being m so clean and warm a place
She crept immediately on to the plank bed that was fixed like a shelf to the wall,
too tired even to pull the blankets about her, and slept for ten hours without
stirring It was only on the following morning that she began to grasp the
reality of her situation, as the Black Maria rolled briskly up to Old Street
Police Court, to the tune of ‘Adeste fideles’ shouted by five drunks inside
CHAPTER 4
I
Dorothy had wronged her father in supposing that he was willing to let her
starve to death in the street He had, as a matter of fact, made efforts to get m
touch with her, though in a roundabout and not very helpful way
His first emotion on learning of Dorothy’s disappearance had been rage pure
and simple At about eight in the morning, when he was beginning to wonder
what had become of his shaving water, Ellen had come into his bedroom and
announced in a vaguely panic-stricken tone
‘Please, Sir, Miss Dorothy ain’t m the house, Sir I can’t find her nowhere 1 ’
‘What >! said the Rector
‘She ain’t in the house. Sir 1 And her bed don’t look as if it hadn’t been slept
m, neither It’s my belief as she’s gorn, Sir 1 ’
‘Gone 1 ’ exclaimed the Rector, partly sitting up in bed ‘What do you
mean-gone^’
‘Well, Sir, I believe she’s run away from ’ome, Sir! ’
■ ‘Run away from home' At this hour of the mornmg> And what about my
breakfast, pray>’
By the time the Rector got downstairs-unshaven, no hot water having
appeared— Ellen had gone down into the town to make fruitless inquiries for
Dorothy, An hour passed, and she did not return Whereupon there occurred a
A Clergyman’s Daughter 36 3
frightful, unprecedented thing-a thing never to be forgotten this side of the
grave, the Rector was obliged to prepare his own breakfast-yes, actually to
mess about with a vulgar black kettle and rashers of Danish bacon-with his
own sacerdotal hands
After that, of course, his heart was hardened against Dorothy for ever For
the rest of the day he was far too busy raging over unpunctual meals to ask
himself why she had disappeared and whether any harm had befallen her The
point was that the confounded girl (he said several times ’confounded girl’, and
came near to saying something stronger) had disappeared, and had upset the
whole household by doing so Next day, however, the question became more
urgent, because Mrs Sempnll was now publishing the story of the elopement
far and wide Of course, the Rector demed it violently, but in his heart he had a
sneaking suspicion that it might be true It was the kind of thing, he now
decided, that Dorothy would do A girl who would suddenly walk out of the
house without even taking thought for her father’s breakfast was capable of
anything
Two days later the newspapers got hold of the story, and a nosy young
reporter came down to Knype Hill and began asking questions The Rector
made matters worse by angrily refusing to interview the reporter, so that Mrs
Sempnll’s version was the only one that got into print For about a week, until
the papers got tired of Dorothy’s case and dropped her m favour of a
plesiosaurus that had been seen at the mouth of the Thames, the Rector
enjoyed a horrible notoriety He could hardly open a newspaper without
seeing some flaming headline about ‘Rector’s Daughter Further Revelations’,
or ‘Rector’s Daughter Is she in Vienna^ Reported seen in Low-class Cabaret’
Finally there came an article m the Sunday Spyhole , which began, ‘Down m a
Suffolk Rectory a broken old man sits staring at the wall’, and which was so
absolutely unbearable that the Rector consulted his solicitor about an action
for libel However, the solicitor was against it; it might lead to a verdict, he
said, but it would certainly lead to further publicity So the Rector did
nothing, and his anger against Dorothy, who had brought this disgrace upon
him, hardened beyond possibility of forgiveness
After this there came three letters from Dorothy, explaining what had
happened Of course the Rector never really believed that Dorothy had lost her
memory It was too thin a story altogether He believed that she either had
eloped with Mr Warburton, or had gone off on some similar escapade and had
landed herself penniless in Kent, at any rate-this he had settled once and for
all, and no argument would ever move him from lt-whatever had happened to
her was entirely her own fault The first letter he wrote was not to Dorothy
herself but to his cousin Tom, the baronet. For a man of the Rector’s
upbringing it was second nature, in any serious trouble, to turn to a rich
relative for help. He had not exchanged a word with his cousin for the last
fifteen years, since they had' quarrelled over a little matter of a borrowed fifty
pounds; still, he wrote fairly confidently,' asking Sir Thomas to get m touch
with Dorothy if it could be done; and to find her some kind of job m London
For of course, after What had happened* there could be no question of letting
364 A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
her come back to Knype Hill
Shortly after this there came two despairing letters from Dorothy, telling
him that she was m danger of starvation and imploring him to send her some
money The Rector was disturbed It occurred to him-it was the first time m
his life that he had seriously considered such a thing-that it is possible to
starve if you have no money So, after thinking it over for the best part of a
week, he sold out ten pounds’ worth of shares and sent a cheque for ten pounds
to his cousin, to be kept for Dorothy till she appeared At the same time he sent
a cold letter to Dorothy herself, telling her that she had better apply to Sir
Thomas Hare But several more days passed before this letter was posted,
because the Rector had qualms about addressing a letter to ‘Ellen
Millborough’-he dimly imagined that it was against the law to use false
names-and, of course, he had delayed far too long Dorothy was already m the
streets when the letter reached ‘Mary’s’
Sir Thomas Hare was a widower, a good-hearted, chuckle-headed man of
about sixty-five, with an obtuse rosy face and curling moustaches He dressed
by preference in checked overcoats and curly brimmed bowler hats that were
at once dashingly smart and four decades out of date At a first glance he gave
the impression of having carefully disguised himself as a cavalry major of the
’nineties, so that you could hardly look at him without thinking of devilled
bones with a b and s, and the tinkle of hansom bells, and the Pink ’Un in its
great ‘Pitcher’ days, and Lottie Collins and ‘Tarara-BOOM-deay’ But his chief
characteristic was an abysmal mental vagueness He was one of those people
who say ‘Don’t you know 5 ’ and ‘What 1 What 1 ’ and lose themselves m the
middle of their sentences When he was puzzled or in difficulties, his
moustaches seemed to bristle forward, giving him the appearance of a well-
meaning but exceptionally brainless prawn
So far as his own inclinations went Sir Thomas was not m the least anxious
to help his cousins, for Dorothy herself he had never seen, and the Rector he
looked on as a cadging poor relation of the worst possible type But the fact was
that he had had just about as much of this ‘Rector’s Daughter’ business as he
could stand The accursed chance that Dorothy’s surname was the same as his
own had made his life a misery for the past fortnight, and he foresaw further
and worse scandals if she were left at large any longer So, just before leaving
London for the pheasant shooting, he sent for his butler, who was also his
confidant and intellectual guide, and held a council of war
‘Look here, Blyth, dammit,’ said Sir Thomas prawnishly (Blyth was the
butler’s name), ‘I suppose you’ve seen all this damn’ stuff in the newspapers,
hey? This “Rector’s Daughter” stuff? About this damned niece of mine ’
Blyth was a small sharp-featured man with a voice that never rose above a
whisper It was as nearly silent as a voice can be while still remaining a voice
Only by watching his bps as well as listening closely could you catch the whole
of what he said In this case his lips signalled something to the effect that
Dorothy was Sir Thomas’s cousin, not his mece
‘What, my cousin, is she? ’ said Sir Thomas ‘So she is, by Jove 1 Well, look
here, Blyth, what I mean to say-it’s about time we got hold of the damn’ girl
A Clergyman' s Daughter 36$
and locked her up somewhere See what I mean? Get hold of her before there’s
any more trouble She’s knocking about somewhere m London, I believe
What’s the best way of getting on her track? Police? Private detectives and all
that? D’you think we could manage it? ’
Blyth’s lips registered disapproval It would, he seemed to be saying, be
possible to trace Dorothy without calling m the police and having a lot of
disagreeable publicity
‘Good man*’ said Sir Thomas ‘ Get to it, then Never mind what it costs I’d
give fifty quid not to have that “Rector’s Daughter” business over again And
for God’s sake, Blyth,’ he added confidentially, ‘once you’ve got hold of the
damn’ girl, don’t let her out of your sight Bring her back to the house and
damn’ well keep her here See what I mean? Keep her under lock and key till I
get back Or else God knows what she’ll be up to next ’
Sir Thomas, of course, had never seen Dorothy, and it was therefore
excusable that he should have formed his conception of her from the
newspaper reports
It took Blyth about a week to track Dorothy down On the morning after she
came out of the police-court cells (they had fined her six shillings, and, m
default of payment, detained her for twelve hours Mrs McElligot, as an old
offender, got seven days), Blyth came up to her, lifted his bowler hat a quarter
of an inch from his head, and inquired noiselessly whether she were not Miss
Dorothy Hare At the second attempt Dorothy understood what he was
saying, and admitted that she was Miss Dorothy Hare, whereupon Blyth
explained that he was sent by her cousm, who was anxious to help her, and that
she was to come home with him immediately
Dorothy followed him without more words said It seemed queer that her
cousm should take this sudden interest m her, but it was no queerer than the
other things that had been happening lately They took the bus to Hyde Park
Corner, Blyth paying the fares, and then walked to a large, expensive-looking
house with shuttered windows, on the borderland between Kmghtsbridge and
Mayfair They went down some steps, and Blyth produced a key and they went
in So, after an absence of something over six weeks, Dorothy returned to
respectable society, by the area door
She spent three days in the empty house before her cousin came home It
was a queer, lonely time There were several servants in the house, but she saw
nobody except Blyth, who brought her her meals and talked to her, noiselessly,
with a mixture of deference and disapproval He could not quite make up his
mmd whether she was a young lady of family or a rescued Magdalen, and so
treated her as something between the two The house had that hushed, corpse-
like air peculiar to houses whose master is away, so that you instinctively went
about on tiptoe and kept the blmds over the windows. Dorothy did not even
dare to enter any of the mam rooms She spent all the daytime lurking m a
dusty, forlorn room at the top of the house which was a sort of museum of bric-
a-brac dating from 1880 onwards. Lady Hare, dead these five years, had been
an industrious collector of rubbishf, and most of it had been stowed away m this
room when she died. It was a doubtful point whether the queerest object in the
$ 66 A Clergyman's Daughter
room was a yellowed photograph of Dorothy’s father, aged eighteen but with
respectable side-whiskers, standing self-consciously beside an ‘ordinary’
bicycle-this was m 1888, or whether it was a little sandalwood box labelled
‘Piece of Bread touched by Cecil Rhodes at the City and South Africa
Banquet, June 1897’ The sole books m the room were some grisly school
prizes that had been won by Sir Thomas’s children-he had three, the youngest
being the same age as Dorothy
It was obvious that the servants had orders not to let her go out of doors
However, her father’s cheque for ten pounds had arrived, and with some
difficulty she induced Blyth to get it cashed, and, on the third day, went out
and bought herself some clothes She bought herself a ready-made tweed coat
and skirt and a jersey to go with them, a hat, and a very cheap frock of artificial
printed silk, also a pair of passable brown shoes, three pairs of lisle stockings, a
nasty, cheap little handbag, and a pair of grey cotton gloves that would pass for
suCde at a little distance That came to eight pounds ten, and she dared not
spend more As for underclothes, nightdresses, and handkerchiefs, they would
have to wait After all, it is the clothes that show that matter
Sir Thomas arrived on the following day, and never really got over the
surprise that Dorothy’s appearance gave him He had been expecting to see
some rouged and powdered siren who would plague him with temptations to
which alas* he was no longer capable of succumbing, and this countrified,
spinsterish girl upset all his calculations Certain vague ideas that had been
floating about his mind, of finding her a job as a manicurist or perhaps as a
private secretary to a bookie, floated out of it agam From time to time Dorothy
caught him studying her with a puzzled, prawmsh eye, obviously wondering
how on earth such a girl could ever have figured in an elopement It was very
little use, of course, telling him that she had not eloped She had given him her
version of the story, and he had accepted it with a chivalrous ‘Of course,
m’dear, of course 1 ’ and thereafter, m every other sentence, betrayed the fact
that he disbelieved her
So for a couple of days nothmg definite was done Dorothy continued her
solitary life in the room upstairs, and Sir Thomas went to his club for most of
his meals, and in the evening there were discussions of the most unutterable
vagueness Sir Thomas was genuinely anxious to find Dorothy a job, but he
had great difficulty m remembering what he was talking about for more than a
few minutes at a time ‘Well, m’dear,’ he would start off, ‘you’ll understand, of
course, that I’m very keen to do what I can for you Naturally, bemg your
uncle and all that-what? What’s that? Not your uncle? No, I suppose I’m not,
by Jove 1 Cousm-that’s it, cousin. Well, now, m’dear, being your cousin-now,
what was I saying’’ Then, when Dorothy had guided him back to the subject,
he would throw out some such suggestion as, ‘Well, now, for instance, m’dear,
how would you like to be companion to an old lady? Some dear old girl, don’t
yqu know-black mittens and rheumatoid arthritis. Die and leave you ten
thousand quid and care of the parrot What, what? ’ which did not get them
very much further Dorothy repeated a number of times that she would rather
be a housemaid or a parlourmaid* but Sir Thomas would not hear of it. The
A Clergyman's Daughter 367
very idea awakened in him a class-instinct which he was usually too vague-
mmded to remember ‘What 1 ’ he would say ‘A dashed skivvy? Girl of your
upbringing? No, m’dear-no, no 1 Can’t do that kind of thing, dash nT
But m the end everything was arranged, and with surprising ease, not by Sir
Thomas, who was incapable oftarrangmg anything, but by his solicitor, whom
he had suddenly thought of consulting And the solicitor, without even seeing
Dorothy, was able to suggest a job for her She could, he said, almost certainly
find a job as a schoolmistress Of all jobs, that was the easiest to get
Sir Thomas came home very pleased with this suggestion, which struck him
as highly suitable (Privately, he thought that Dorothy had just the kind of face
that a schoolmistress ought to have ) But Dorothy was momentarily aghast
when she heard of it
‘A schoolmistress 1 ’ she said ‘But I couldn’t possibly 1 I’m sure no school
would give me a job There isn’t a single subject I can teach ’
‘What? What’s that? Can’t teach? Oh, dash it 1 Of course you can 1 Where’s
the difficulty? ’
‘But I don’t know enough 1 I’ve never taught anybody anything, except
cooking to the Girl Guides You have to be properly qualified to be a teacher ’
‘Oh, nonsensei Teaching’s the easiest job m the world Good thick
ruler-rap ’em over the knuckles They’ll be glad enough to get hold of a
decently brought up young woman to teach the youngsters their abc That’s
the line for you, m’ dear-schoolmistress You’re just cut out for it ’
And sure enough, a schoolmistress Dorothy became The invisible solicitor
had made all the arrangements in less than three days It appeared that a
certain Mrs Creevy, who kept a girls’ day school m the suburb of Southbndge,
was m need of an assistant, and was quite willing to give Dorothy the job How
it had all been settled so quickly, and what kind of school it could be that would
take on a total stranger, and unqualified at that, in the middle of the term,
Dorothy could hardly imagine She did not know, of course, that a bribe of five
pounds, miscalled a premium, had changed hands
So, just ten days after her arrest for begging, Dorothy set out for Ringwood
House Academy, Brough Road, Southbndge, with a small trunk decently full
of clothes and four pounds ten in her purse-for Sir Thomas had made her a
present of ten pounds When she thought of the ease with which this job had
been found for her, and then of the miserable struggles of three weeks ago, the
contrast amazed her It brought home to her, as never before, the mysterious
power of money In fact, it remmded her of a favourite saying of Mr
Warburton’s, that if you took 1 Corinthians, chapter thirteen, and in every
verse wrote ‘money’ instead of ‘charity’, the chapter had ten times as much
meaning as before
2
Southbndge was a repellent suburb ten or a dozen miles from London
Brough Road lay somewhere at the heart of it, amid labyrinths of meanly
decent streets, all so mdistinguishably alike, with their ranks of semi-detached
houses, their privet and laurel hedges and plots of ailing shrubs at the
crossroads, that you could lose yourself there almost as easily as m a Brazilian
forest Not only the houses themselves, but even their names were the same
over and over again Readmg the names on the gates as you came up Brough
Road, you were conscious of being haunted by some half-remembered passage
of poetry, and when you paused to identify it, you realized that it was the first
two lines of Lycidas
Rmgwood House was a dark-looking, semi-detached house of yellow brick,
three storeys high, and its lower windows were hidden from the road by ragged
and dusty laurels Above the laurels, on the front of the house, was a board
inscribed in faded gold letters
RINGWOOD HOUSE ACADEMY FOR GIRLS
Ages 5 to 1 8
Music and Dancing Taught
Apply within for Prospectus
Edge to edge with this board, on the other half of the house, was another
board which read
RUSHINGTON GRANGE HIGH SCHOOL FOR BOYS
Ages 6 to 1 6
Book-keeping and Commercial Arithmetic a Speciality
Apply within for Prospectus
The district pullulated with small private schools, there were four of them in
Brough Road alone Mrs Creevy, the Principal of Rmgwood House, and Mr
Boulger, the Principal of Rushington Grange, were in a state of warfare,
though their interests m no way clashed with one another Nobody knew what
the feud was about, not even Mrs Creevy or Mr Boulger themselves, it was a
feud that they had inherited from earlier proprietors of the two schools In the
mormngs after breakfast they would stalk up and down their respective back
gardens, beside the very low wall that separated them, pretending not to see
one another and grinning with hatred,
Dorothy’s heart sank at the sight of Rmgwood House She had not been
expecting anything very magnificent or attractive, but she had expected
A Clergyman’s Daughter 36 9
something a little better than this mean, gloomy house, not one of whose
windows was lighted, though it was after 8 o’clock m the evening She knocked
at the door, and it was opened by a woman, tall and gaunt-lookmg m the dark
hallway, whom Dorothy took for a servant, but who was actually Mrs Creevy
herself Without a word, except to inquire Dorothy’s name, the woman led the
way up some dark stairs to a twilit, fireless drawing-room, where she turned up
a pinpoint of gas, revealing a black piano, stuffed horsehair chairs, and a few
yellowed, ghostly photos on the walls
Mrs Creevy was a woman somewhere in her forties, lean, hard, and angular,
with abrupt decided movements that indicated a strong will and probably a
vicious temper Though she was not m the least dirty or untidy there was
something discoloured about her whole appearance, as though she lived all her
life in a bad light, and the expression of her mouth, sullen and ill-shaped with
the lower lip turned down, recalled that of a toad She spoke in a sharp,
commanding voice, with a bad accent and occasional vulgar turns of speech
You could tell her at a glance for a person who knew exactly what she wanted,
and would grasp it as ruthlessly as any machine, not a bully exactly-you could
somehow infer from her appearance that she would not take enough interest in
you to want to bully you— but a person who would make use of you and then
throw you aside with no more compunction than if you had been a worn-out
scrubbing-brush
Mrs Creevy did not waste any words on greetings She motioned Dorothy to
a chair, with the air rather of commanding than of inviting her to sit down, and
then sat down herself, with her hands clasped on her skinny forearms
‘I hope you and me are gomg to get on well together. Miss Millborough,’ she
began m her penetrating, subhectoring voice (On the advice of Sir Thomas’s
everwise solicitor, Dorothy had stuck to the name of Ellen Millborough ) ‘And
I hope I’m not going to have the same nasty business with you as I had with my
last two assistants You say you haven’t had an experience of teaching before
this^’
‘Not in a school,’ said Dorothy-there had been a tarradiddle in her letter of
introduction, to the effect that she had had experience of ‘private teaching’
Mrs Creevy looked Dorothy over as though wondering whether to induct
her into the inner secrets of school-teaching, and then appeared to decide
against it
‘Well, we shall see,’ she said, ‘I must say,’ she added complainmgly, ‘it’s not
easy to get hold of good hardworking assistants nowadays You give them good
wages and good treatment, and you get no thanks for it The last one I had-the
one I’ve just had to get rid of-Miss Strong, wasn’t so bad so far as the teaching
part went, intact* she was a B A , and I don’t know what you could have better
than aB A , unless it’s an M A You don’t happen to be a B A, or an M A. , do
you, Miss Millborough? ’
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ said 4 Dorothy ' • • u *
‘Well, that’s a pity It looks so much-better on the prospectus- if you’re gota
few letters after your name. ^elllTerhaps it doesn’t matter, I don’t suppose
many of our parents’d know wfeatB Aj. stands for, and aren’t 80 Oh
3 jo A Clergyman's Daughter
showing their ignorance I suppose you can talk French, of course? ’
‘Well-I’ve learnt French *
‘Oh, that’s all right, then Just so as we can put it on the prospectus Well,
now, to come back to what I was saying, Miss Strong was all right as a teacher,
but she didn’t come up to my ideas on what I call the moral side We’re very
strong on the moral side at Ringwood House It’s what counts most with the
parents, you’ll find And the one before Miss Strong, Miss Brewer- well, she
had what I call a weak nature You don’t get on with girls if you’ve got a weak
nature The end of it all was that one morning one little girl crept up to the desk
with a box of matches and set fire to Miss Brewer’s skirt Of course I wasn’t
going to keep her after that In fact I had her out of the house the same
afternoon-and I didn’t give her any refs either, I can tell you 1 ’
‘You mean you expelled the girl who did it? ’ said Dorothy, mystified
‘What? The girP Not likely 1 You don’t suppose I’d go and turn fees away
from my door, do you? I mean I got rid of Miss Brewer, not the girl It’s no
good having teachers who let the girls get saucy with them We’ve got twenty-
one in the class just at present, and you’ll find they need a strong hand to keep
them down ’
‘You don’t teach yourself? ’ said Dorothy
‘Oh dear, no 1 ’ said Mrs Creevy almost contemptuously ‘I’ve got a lot too
much on my hands to waste my time teaching There’s the house to look after,
and seven of the children stay to dinner- I’ve only a daily woman at present
Besides, it takes me all my time getting the fees out of the parents After all, the
fees are what matter, aren’t they? ’
‘Yes I suppose so,’ said Dorothy
‘Well, we’d better settle about your wages,’ continued Mrs Creevy ‘In term
time I’ll give you your board and lodging and ten shillings a week, in the
holidays it’ll just be your board and lodging You can have the use of the
copper m the kitchen for your laundering, and I light the geyser for hot baths
every Saturday night, or at least most Saturday nights. You can’t have the use
of this room we’re in now, because it’s my reception-room, and I don’t want
you to go wasting the gas m your bedroom But you can have the use of the
mormng-room whenever you want it ’
‘Thank you,’ said Dorothy
‘Well, I should think that’ll be about all I expect you’re feeling ready for
bed You’ll have had your supper long ago, of course? ’
This was clearly intended to mean that Dorothy was not going to get any
food tonight, so she answered Yes, untruthfully, and the conversation was at
an end That was always Mrs Creevy’ s way- she never kept you talking an
instant longer than was necessary Her conversation was so very definite, so
exactly to the point, that it was not really conversation at all Rather, it was the
skeleton of conversation, like the dialogue m a badly written novel where
everyone talks a little too much in character But indeed, m the proper sense of
the word she did not talk, she merely said, in her brief shrewish way, whatever
it was necessary to say* and then got rid of you as promptly as possible She
now showed Dorothy along the passage to her bedroom, and lighted a gas-jot
A Clergyman’s Daughter gji
no bigger than an acorn, revealing a gaunt bedroom with a narrow white-
quilted bed, a rickety wardrobe, one chair and a wash-hand-stand with a frigid
white china basin and ewer It was very like the bedrooms in seaside lodging
houses, but it lacked the one thing that gives such rooms their air of homeliness
and decency-the text over the bed
‘This is your room/ Mrs Creevy said, ‘and I just hope you’ll keep it a bit
tidier than what Miss Strong used to And don’t go burning the gas half the
night, please, because I can tell what time you turn it off by the crack under the
door ’
With this parting salutation she left Dorothy to herself The room was
dismally cold, indeed, the whole house had a damp, chilly feeling, as though
fires were rarely lighted in it Dorothy got into bed as quickly as possible,
feeling bed to be the warmest place On top of the wardrobe, when she was
putting her clothes away, she found a cardboard box containing no less than
nine empty whisky bottles-relics, presumably, of Miss Strong’s weakness on
the moral side
At eight in the morning Dorothy went downstairs and found Mrs Creevy
already at breakfast in what she called the ‘morning-room’ This was a smallish
room adjoining the kitchen, and it had started life as the scullery; but Mrs
Creevy had converted it into the ‘morning-room’ by the simple process of
removing the sink and copper into the kitchen The breakfast table, covered
with a cloth of harsh texture, was very large and forbiddingly bare Up at Mrs
Creevy’ s end were a tray with a very small teapot and two cups, a plate on
which were two leathery fried eggs, and a dish of marmalade, in the middle,
just within Dorothy’s reach if she stretched, was a plate of bread and butter,
and beside her plate-as though it were the only thing she could be trusted
with-a cruet stand with some dried-up, clotted stuff inside the bottles
‘Good morning. Miss Millborough,’ said Mrs Creevy ‘It doesn’t matter
this morning, as this is the first day, but just remember another time that I
want you down here in time to help me get breakfast ready ’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Dorothy
‘I hope you’re fond of fried eggs for your breakfast^’ went on Mrs Creevy
Dorothy hastened to assure her that she was very fond of fried eggs
‘Well, that’s a good thing, because you’ll always have to have the same as
what I have So I hope you’re not going to be what I call dainty about your
food I always think,’ she added, picking up her knife and fork, ‘that a fried egg
tastes a lot better if you cut it well up before you eat it ’
She sliced the two eggs into thin strips, and then served them in such a way
that Dorothy received about two-thirds of an egg With some difficulty
Dorothy spun out her fraction of egg so as to make half a dozen mouthfuls of it,
and then, when she had taken a slice of bread and butter, she could not help
glancing hopefully in the direction of the dish of marmalade. But Mrs Creevy
was sitting with her lean left arm-not exactly round the marmalade, but in a
protective position on its' left flank, as though she suspected that Dorothy was
going to make an attack upon it Dorothy’s nerve failed her, and she had no
marmalade that mornmg-nor, indeed, for many mornings to come
3j2 A Clergyman's Daughter
Mrs Creevy did not speak again during breakfast, but presently the sound of
feet on the gravel outside, and of squeaky voices m the schoolroom, announced
that the girls were beginning to arrive They came m by a side-door that was
left open for them Mrs Creevy got up from the table and banged the breakfast
things together on the tray She was one of those women who can never move
anything without banging it about, she was as full of thumps and raps as a
poltergeist Dorothy carried the tray into the kitchen, and when she returned
Mrs Creevy produced a penny notebook from a drawer m the dresser and laid
it open on the table
‘Just take a look at this,’ she said ‘Here’s a list of the girls’ names that I’ve
got ready for you I shall want you to know the whole lot of them by this
evemng ’ She wetted her thumb and turned over three pages ‘Now, do you see
these three lists here? ’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy
‘Well, you’ll just have to learn those three lists by heart, and make sure you
know what girls are on which Because I don’t want you to go thinking that all
the girls are to be treated alike They aren’t- not by a long way, they aren’t
Different girls, different treatment-that’s my system Now, do you see this lot
on the first page? ’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy agam
‘Well, the parents of that lot are what I call the good payers You know what I
mean by that? They’re the ones that pay cash on the nail and no jibbing at an
extra half-guinea or so now and again You’re not to smack any of that lot, not
on any account This lot over here are the medium payers Their parents do pay
up sooner or later, but you don’t get the money out of them without you worry
them for it night and day You can smack that lot if they get saucy, but don’t go
and leave a mark their parents can see If you’ll take my advice, the best thing
with children is to twist their ears Have you ever tried that? ’
‘No,’ said Dorothy
‘Well, I find it answers better than anything It doesn’t leave a mark, and the
children can’t bear it Now these three over here are the bad payers Their
fathers are two terms behind already, and I’m thinking of a solicitor’s letter I
don’t care what you do to that lot-well, short of a police-court case, naturally
Now, shall I take you m and start you with the girls? You’d better bring that
book along with you, and just keep your eye on it all the time so as there’ll be no
mistakes ’
They went mto the schoolroom It was a largish room, with grey-papered
walls that were made yet greyer by the dullness of the light, for the heavy laurel
bushes outside choked the windows, and no direct ray of the sun ever
penetrated into the room There was a teacher’s desk by the empty fireplace,
and there were a dozen small double desks, a light blackboard, and, on the
mantelpiece, a black clock that looked like a miniature mausoleum, but there
were no maps, no pictures, nor even, as far as Dorothy could see, any books
The sole objects in the room that could be called ornamental were two sheets of
black paper pinned to the walls, with writing on them in chalk m beautiful
copperplate On one was ‘ Speech is Silver. Silence is Golden’, and on the other
A Clergyman’s Daughter 57 3
‘Punctuality is the Politeness of Princes’
The girls, twenty-one of them, were already sitting at their desks They had
grown very silent when they heard footsteps approaching, and as Mrs Creevy
came in they seemed to shrink down m their places like partridge chicks when a
hawk is soaring For the most part they were dull-lookmg, lethargic children
with bad complexions, and adenoids seemed to be remarkably common among
them The eldest of them might have been fifteen years old, the youngest was
hardly more than a baby The school had no uniform, and one or two of the
children were verging on raggedness
‘Stand up, girls,’ said Mrs Creevy as she reached the teacher’s desk ‘We’ll
start off with the morning prayer ’
The girls stood up, clasped their hands in front of them, and shut their eyes
They repeated the prayer in unison, m weak piping voices, Mrs Creevy leading
them, her sharp eyes darting over them all the while to see that they were
attending
‘Almighty and everlasting Father,’ they piped, ‘we beseech Thee that our
studies this day may be graced by Thy divine guidance Make us to conduct
ourselves quietly and obediently, look down upon our school and make it to
prosper, so that it may grow m numbers and be a good example to the
neighbourhood and not a disgrace like some schools of which Thou knowest,
O Lord Make us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, industrious, punctual, and
ladylike, and worthy m all possible respects to walk in Thy ways for Jesus
Christ’s sake, our Lord, Amen ’
This prayer was of Mrs Creevy’ s own composition When they had finished
it, the girls repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and then sat down
‘Now, girls,’ said Mrs Creevy, ‘this is your new teacher. Miss Millborough
As you know. Miss Strong had to leave us all of a sudden after she was taken so
bad in the middle of the arithmetic lesson, and I can tell you I’ve had a hard
week of it looking for a new teacher I had seventy-three applications before I
took on Miss Millborough, and I had to refuse them all because their
qualifications weren’t high enough Just you remember and tell your parents
that, all of you-seventy-three applications' Well, Miss Millborough is gomg
to take you m Latin, French, history, geography, mathematics, English
literature and composition, spelling, grammar, handwriting, and freehand
drawing, and Mr Booth will take you m chemistry as usual on Thursday
afternoons Now, what’s the first lesson on your time-table this morning? ’
‘History, Ma’am,’ piped one or two voices
‘Very well I expect Miss Millborough’ll start off by asking you a few
questions about the history you’ve been learning So just you do your best, all
of you, and let her see that all the trouble we’ve taken over you hasn’t been
wasted You’ll find they can be quite a sharp lot of girls when they try, Miss
Millborough ’
‘I’m sure they are, 9 said Dorothy.
‘Well, I’ll be leaving you, then And just you behave yourselves, girls' Don’t
you get trying it on with Miss Millborough like you did with Miss Brewer,
because I warn you she won’t stand it If I hear any noise coming from this
374 A Clergyman's Daughter
room, there’ll be trouble for somebody 5
She gave a glance round which included Dorothy and indeed suggested that
Dorothy would probably be the ‘somebody’ referred to, and departed
Dorothy faced the class She was not afraid of them-she was too used to
dealing with children ever to be afraid of them-but she did feel a momentary
qualm The sense of being an impostor (what teacher has not felt it at times*)
was heavy upon her It suddenly occurred to her, what she had only been
dimly aware of before, that she had taken this teaching job under flagrantly
false pretences, without having any kind of qualification for it The subject she
was now supposed to be teaching was history, and, like most ‘educated’ people,
she knew virtually no history How awful, she thought, if it turned out that
these girls knew more history than she did 1 She said tentatively
‘What period exactly were you doing with Miss Strong*’
Nobody answered Dorothy saw the older girls exchanging glances, as
though asking one another whether it was safe to say anything, and finally
deciding not to commit themselves
‘Well, whereabouts had you got to*’ she said, wondering whether perhaps
the word ‘period’ was too much for them
Again no answer
‘Well, now, surely you remember something about it* Tell me the names of
some of the people you were learning about m your last history lesson ’
More glances were exchanged, and a very plain little girl in the front row, m
a brown jumper and skirt, with her hair screwed into two tight pigtails,
remarked cloudily, ‘It was about the Ancient Britons ’ At this two other girls
took courage, and answered simultaneously One of them said, ‘Columbus’,
and the other ‘Napoleon’
Somehow, after that, Dorothy seemed to see her way more clearly It was
obvious that instead of being uncomfortably knowledgeable as she had feared,
the class knew as nearly as possible no history at all With this discovery her
stage-fright vanished She grasped that before she could do anything else with
them it was necessary to find out what, if anything, these children knew So,
instead of following the time-table, she spent the rest of the morning m
questioning the entire class on each subject m turn, when she had finished with
history (and it took about five minutes to get to the bottom of their historical
knowledge) she tried them with geography, with English grammar, with
French, with anthmetic-with everything, m fact, that they were supposed to
have learned By twelve o’clock she had plumbed, though not actually
explored, the frightful abysses of their ignorance
For they knew nothing, absolutely nothing-nothing, nothing, nothing, like
the Dadaists It was appalling that even children could be so ignorant. There
were only two girls in the class who knew whether the earth went round the
sun or the sun round the earth, and not a single one of them could tell Dorothy
who was the last king before George V, or who wrote Hamlet , or what was
meant by a vulgar fraction, or which ocean you crossed to get to America, the
Atlantic or the Pacific And the big girls of fifteen were not much better than
the tiny infants of eight, except that the former could at least read
A Clergyman's Daughter 375
consecutively and write neat copperplate That was the one thing that nearly
all of the older girls could do-they could write neatly Mrs Creevy had seen to
that And of course, here and there in the midst of their ignorance, there were
small, disconnected islets of knowledge, for example, some odd stanzas from
‘pieces of poetry’ that they had learned by heart, and a few Ollendorffian
French sentences such as c . Passez-moi le beurre , sM vous plait ’ and ( Lefils du
jar dimer a perdu son chapeau* 3 which they appeared to have learned as a parrot
learns ‘Pretty Poll’ As for their arithmetic, it was a little better than the other
subjects Most of them knew how to add and subtract, about half of them had
some notion of how to multiply, and there were even three or four who had
struggled as far as long division But that was the utmost limit of their
knowledge, and beyond, in every direction, lay utter, impenetrable night
Moreover, not only did they know nothing, but they were so unused to
being questioned that it was often difficult to get answers out of them at all It
was obvious that whatever they knew they had learned m an entirely
mechanical manner, and they could only gape m a sort of dull bewilderment
when asked to think for themselves However, they did not seem unwilling,
and evidently they had made up their minds to be ‘good’ -children are always
‘good’ with a new teacher, and Dorothy persisted, and by degrees the children
grew, or seemed to grow, a shade less lumpish She began to pick up, from the
answers they gave her, a fairly accurate notion of what Miss Strong’s rdgime
had been like
It appeared that, though theoretically they had learned all the usual school
subjects, the only ones that had been at all seriously taught were handwriting
and arithmetic Mrs Creevy was particularly keen on handwriting And
besides this they had spent great quantities of time-an hour or two out of every
day, it seemed-m drudging through a dreadul routine called ‘copies ’ ‘Copies’
meant copying things out of textbooks or off the blackboard Miss Strong
would write up, for example, some sententious little ‘essay’ (there was an essay
entitled ‘Spring’ which recurred m all the older girls’ books, and which began,
‘Now, when girlish April is tripping through the land, when the birds are
chanting gaily on the boughs and the dainty flowerets bursting from their
buds’, etc , etc ), and the girls would make fair copies of it in their copybooks,
and the parents, to whom the copybooks were shown from time to time, were
no doubt suitably impressed Dorothy began to grasp that everything that the
girls had been taught was in reality aimed at the parents Hence the ‘copies’,
the insistence on handwriting, and the parroting of ready-made French
phrases, they were cheap and easy ways of creating an impression Meanwhile,
the little girls at the bottom of the class seemed barely able to read and write,
and one of them-her name was Mavis Williams, and she was a rather sinister-
looking child of eleven, with eyes too far apart-could not even count This
child seemed to have done nothing at all during the past term and a half except
to write pothooks She had quite a pile of books filled with pothooks-page
after page of pothooks, looping on and on like the mangrove roots in some
tropical swamp
Dorothy tried not to hurt the children’s feelings by exclaiming at their
3j6 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
ignorance, but in her heart she was amazed and horrified She had not known
that schools of this description still existed m the civilized world The whole
atmosphere of the place was so curiously antiquated-so reminiscent of those
dreary little private schools that you read about in Victorian novels As for the
few textbooks that the class possessed, you could hardly look at them without
feeling as though you had stepped back into the mid nineteenth century There
were only three textbooks of which each child had a copy One was a shilling
arithmetic, pre Great War but fairly serviceable, and another was a horrid little
book called The Hundred Page History of Britain -a nasty little duodecimo
book with a gritty brown cover, and, for frontispiece, a portrait of Boadicea
with a Umon Jack draped over the front of her chariot Dorothy opened this
book at random, came to page 91, and read
After the French Revolution was over, the self-styled Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte
attempted to set up his sway, but though he won a few victories against continental troops, he soon
found that in. the ‘thm red line’ he had more than met his match Conclusions were tried upon the
field of Waterloo, where 50,000 Britons put to flight 70,000 Frenchmen— for the Prussians, our
allies, arrived too late for the battle With a ringing British cheer our men charged down the slope
and the enemy broke and fled We now come on to the great Reform Bill of 1 832, the first of those
beneficent reforms which have made British liberty what it is and marked us off from the less
fortunate nations [etc , etc ]
The date of the book was 1888 Dorothy, who had never seen a history book
of this description before, examined it with a feeling approaching horror
There was also an extraordinary little ‘reader’, dated 1863 It consisted mostly
of bits out of Fenimore Cooper, Dr Watts, and Lord T ennyson, and at the end
there were the queerest little ‘Nature Notes’ with woodcut illustrations There
would be a woodcut of an elephant, and underneath m small print ‘The
elephant is a sagacious beast He rejoices m the shade of the Palm Trees, and
though stronger than six horses he will allow a little child to lead him His food
is Bananas ’ And so on to the Whale, the Zebra, and Porcupine, and the
Spotted Camelopard There were also, in the teacher’s desk, a copy of
Beautiful Joe 3 a forlorn book called Peeps at Distant Lands } and a French
phrase-book dated 1891. It was called All you will need on your Parisian Trip ,
and the first phrase given was ‘Lace my stays, but not too tightly’ In the whole
room there was not such a thing as an atlas or a set of geometrical instruments
At eleven there was a break of ten minutes, and some of the girls played dull
little games at noughts and crosses or quarrelled over pencil-cases, and a few
who had got over their first shyness clustered round Dorothy’s desk and talked
to her They told her some more about Miss Strong and her methods of
teachings and how she used to twist their ears when they made blots on their
copybooks It appeared that Miss Strong had been a very strict teacher except
when she was ‘taken bad’, which happened about twice a week And when she
was taken bad she used to drink some medicine out of a little brown bottle, and
after drinking it she would grow quite jolly for a while and talk to them about
hex brother in Canada But on her last day- the time when she was taken so bad
during the arithmetic lesson-the medicine seemed to make her worse than
A Clergyman's Daughter 377
ever, because she had no sooner drunk it than she began sinking and fell across
a desk, and Mrs Creevy had to carry her out of the room
After the break there was another period of three quarters of an hour, and
then school ended for the morning Dorothy felt stiff and tired after three '
hours in the chilly but stuffy room, and she would have liked to go out of doors
for a breath of fresh air, but Mrs Creevy had told her beforehand that she must
come and help get dinner ready The girls who lived near the school mostly
went home for dinner, but there were seven who had dinner in the ‘morning-
room’ at tenpence a time It was an uncomfortable meal, and passed in almost
complete silence, for the girls were frightened to talk under Mrs Creevy’s eye
The dinner was stewed scrag end of mutton, and Mrs Creevy showed
extraordinary dexterity in serving the pieces of lean to the ‘good payers’ and
the pieces of fat to the ‘medium payers’ As for the three ‘bad payers’, they ate a
shamefaced lunch out of paper bags m the school-room
School began again at two o’clock Already, after only one morning’s
teaching, Dorothy went back to her work with secret shrinking and dread She
was beginning to realize what her life would be like, day after day and week
after week, m that sunless room, trying to drive the rudiments of knowledge
into unwilling brats But when she had assembled the girls and called their
names over, one of them, a little peaky child with mouse-coloured hair, called
Laura Firth, came up to her desk and presented her with a pathetic bunch of
browny-yellow chrysanthemums, ‘from all of us’ The girls had taken a liking
to Dorothy, and had subscribed fourpence among themselves, to buy her a
bunch of flowers
Something stirred m Dorothy’s heart as she took the ugly flowers She
looked with more seeing eyes than before at the anaemic faces and shabby
clothes of the children, and was all of a sudden horribly ashamed to think that
in the morning she had looked at them with indifference, almost with dislike
Now, a profound pity took possession of her The poor children, the poor
children 1 How they had been stunted and maltreated' And with it all they had
retained the childish gentleness that could make them squander their few
pennies on flowers for their teacher.
She felt quite differently towards her job from that moment onwards A
feeling of loyalty and affection had sprung up in her heart This school was her
school, she would work for it and be proud of it, and make every effort to turn it
from a place of bondage into a place human and decent. Probably it was very
little that she could do She was so inexperienced and unfitted for her job that
she must educate herself before she could even begin to educate anybody else
Still, she would do her best, she would do whatever willingness and energy
could do to rescue these children from the horrible darkness in which they bad
been kept.
3
During the next few weeks there were two things that occupied Dorothy to the
exclusion of all others One, getting her class into some kind of order, the
other, establishing a concordat with Mrs Creevy
The second of the two was by a great deal the more difficult Mrs Creevy’ s
house was as vile a house to live m as one could possibly imagine It was always
more or less cold, there was not a comfortable chair in it from top to bottom,
and the food was disgusting Teaching is harder work than it looks, and a
teacher needs good food to keep him going It was horribly dispiriting to have
to work on a diet of tasteless mutton stews, damp boiled potatoes full of little
black eyeholes, watery rice puddings, bread and scrape, and weak tea-and
never enough even of these Mrs Creevy, who was mean enough to take a
pleasure m skimping even her own food, ate much the same meals as Dorothy,
but she always had the lion’s share of them Every morning at breakfast the two
fried eggs were sliced up and unequally partitioned, and the dish of marmalade
remained for ever sacrosanct Dorothy grew hungrier and hungrier as the term
went on On the two evenings a week when she managed to get out of doors she
dipped into her dwindling store of money and bought slabs of plain chocolate,
which she ate in the deepest secrecy-for Mrs Creevy, though she starved
Dorothy more or less intentionally, would have been mortally offended if she
had known that she bought food for herself
The worst thing about Dorothy’s position was that she had no privacy and
very little time that she could call her own Once school was over for the day
her only refuge was the ‘morning-room’, where she was under Mrs Creevy’ s
eye, and Mrs Creevy’s leading idea was that Dorothy must never be left m
peace for ten minutes together She had taken it into her head, or pretended to
do so, that Dorothy was an idle person who needed keeping up to the mark
And so it was always, ‘Well, Miss Millborough, you don’t seem to have very
much to do this evening, do you? Aren’t there some exercise books that want
correcting? Or why don’t you get your needle and do a bit of sewing? I’m sure I
couldn’t bear to just sit in my chair doing nothing like you do 1 ’ She was for ever
finding household jobs for Dorothy to do, even making her scrub the
schoolroom floor on Saturday mornings when the girls did not come to school,
but this was done out of pure ill nature, for she did not trust Dorothy to do the
work properly, and generally did it again after her One evening Dorothy was
unwise enough to bring back a novel from the public library Mrs Creevy
flared up at the very sight of it ‘Well, really. Miss Millborough! I shouldn’t
A Clergyman’s Daughter 579
have thought you’d have had time to read 1 ’ she said bitterly She herself had
never read a book right through in her life, and was proud of it
Moreover, even when Dorothy was not actually under her eye, Mrs Creevy
had ways of making her presence felt She was for ever prowling in the
neighbourhood of the schoolroom, so that Dorothy never felt quite safe from
her intrusion, and when she thought there was too much noise she would
suddenly rap on the wall with her broom-handle in a way that made the
children jump and put them off their work At all hours of the day she was
restlessly, noisily active When she was not cooking meals she was banging
about with broom and dustpan, or harrying the charwoman, or pouncing down
upon the schoolroom to ‘have a look round’ in hopes of catching Dorothy or
the children up to mischief, or ‘doing a bit of gardemng’-that is, mutilating
with a pair of shears the unhappy little shrubs that grew amid wastes of gravel
m the back garden On only two evenings a week was Dorothy free of her, and
that was when Mrs Creevy sallied forth on forays which she called ‘going after
the girls’, that is to say, canvassing likely parents These evenings Dorothy
usually spent in the public library, for when Mrs Creevy was not at home she
expected Dorothy to keep out of the house, to save fire and gaslight On other
evenings Mrs Creevy was busy writing dunning letters to the parents, or
letters to the editor of the local paper, haggling over the price of a dozen
advertisements, or poking about the girls’ desks to see that their exercise books
had been properly corrected, or ‘doing a bit of sewing’ Whenever occupation
failed her for even five minutes she got out her workbox and ‘did a bit of
sewing’-generally restitchmg some bloomers of harsh white linen of which she
had pairs beyond number They were the most chilly looking garments that
one could possibly imagine, they seemed to carry upon them, as no nun’s coif
or anchorite’s hair shirt could ever have done, the impress of a frozen and
awful chastity The sight of them set you wondermg about the late Mr Creevy,
even to the point of wondering whether he had ever existed
Looking with an outsider’s eye at Mrs Creevy’ s manner of life, you would
have said that she had no pleasures whatever She never did any of the things
that ordinary people do to amuse themselves-never went to the pictures, never
looked at a book, never ate sweets, never cooked a special dish for dinner or
dressed herself in any kmd of finery Social life meant absolutely nothing to
her. She had no friends, was probably incapable of imagining such a thing as
friendship, and hardly ever exchanged a word with a fellow being except on
business Of religious belief she had not the smallest vestige Her attitude
towards religion, though she went to the Baptist Chapel every Sunday to
impress the parents with her piety, was a mean anti-clericalism founded on the
notion that the clergy are ‘only after your money’ She seemed a creature
utterly joyless, utterly submerged by the dullness of her existence. But in
reality it was not so There were several things from which she derived acute
and inexhaustible pleasure.
For instance, there was her avarice over money , It was the leading interest of
her life There are two kinds of avaricious person— Hie belch grasping type who
will ruin you lfhecan, but who never looks twice at, twopence^ and the petty
380 A Clergyman's Daughter
miser who has not the enterprise actually to make money, but who will always,
as the saying goes, take a farthing from a dunghill with his teeth Mrs Creevy
belonged to the second type By ceaseless canvassing and impudent bluff she
had worked her school up to twenty-one pupils, but she would never get it
much further, because she was too mean to spend money on the necessary
equipment and to pay proper wages to her assistant The fees the girls paid, or
didn’t pay, were five guineas a term with certain extras, so that, starve and
sweat her assistant as she might, she could hardly hope to make more than a
hundred and fifty pounds a year clear profit But she was fairly satisfied with
that. It meant more to her to save sixpence than to earn a pound So long as she
could think of a way of docking Dorothy’s dinner of another potato, or getting
her exercise books a halfpenny a dozen cheaper, or shoving an unauthorized
half guinea on to one of the ‘good payers” bills, she was happy after her
fashion
And again, m pure, purposeless maligmty-m petty acts of spite, even when
there was nothing to be gained by them- she had a hobby of which she never
weaned She was one of those people who experience a kind of spiritual orgasm
when they manage to do somebody else a bad turn Her feud with Mr Boulger
next door-a one-sided affair, really, for poor Mr Boulger was not up to Mrs
Creevy’s fighting weight-was conducted ruthlessly, with no quarter given or
expected So keen was Mrs Creevy’s pleasure in scoring off Mr Boulger that
she was even willing to spend money on it occasionally A year ago Mr Boulger
had written to the landlord (each of them was for ever writing to the landlord,
complaining about the other’s behaviour), to say that Mrs Creevy’s kitchen
chimney smoked mto his back windows, and would she please have it
heightened two feet The very day the landlord’s letter reached her, Mrs
Creevy called in the bricklayers and had the chimney lowered two feet It cost
her thirty shillings, but it was worth it After that there had been the long
guerrilla campaign of throwing things over the garden wall during the night,
and Mrs Creevy had finally won with a dustbinful of wet ashes thrown on to
Mr Boulger’s bed of tulips As it happened, Mrs Creevy won a neat and
bloodless victory soon after Dorothy’s arrival Discovering by chance that the
roots of Mr Boulger’s plum tree had grown under the wall into her own
garden, she promptly injected a whole tm of weed-killer mto them and killed
the tree This was remarkable as being the only occasion when Dorothy ever
heard Mrs Creevy laugh
But Dorothy was too busy, at first, to pay much attention to Mrs Creevy and
her nasty characteristics She saw quite clearly that Mrs Creevy was an odious
woman and that her own position was virtually that of a slave, but it did not
greatly worry her Her work was too absorbing, too all-important In
comparison with it, her own comfort and even her future hardly seemed to
matter.
It did not take her more than a couple of days to get her class mto running
order It was curious, but though she had no experience of teaching and no
preconceived theories about it, yet from the very first day she found herself, as
though by mstinct, rearranging, scheming, innovating There was so much
A Clergyman 3 s Daughter 381
that was crying out to be done The first thing, obviously, was to get rid of the
grisly routine of ‘copies’, and after Dorothy’s second day no more ‘copies’ were
done m the class, m spite of a sniff or two from Mrs Creevy The handwriting
lessons, also, were cut down Dorothy would have liked to do away with
handwriting lessons altogether so far as the older girls were concerned-it
seemed to her ridiculous that girls of fifteen should waste time m practising
copperplate-but Mrs Creevy would not hear of it She seemed to attach an
almost superstitious value to handwriting lessons And the next thmg, of
course, was to scrap the repulsive Hundred Page History and the preposterous
little ‘readers’ It would have been worse than useless to ask Mrs Creevy to buy
new books for the children, but on her first Saturday afternoon Dorothy
begged leave to go up to London, was grudgingly given it, and spent two
pounds three shillings out of her precious four pounds ten on a dozen second-
hand copies of a cheap school edition of Shakespeare, a big second-hand atlas,
some volumes of Hans Andersen’s stories for the younger children, a set of
geometrical instruments, and two pounds of plasticine With these, and
history books out of the public library, she felt that she could make a start
She had seen at a glance that what the children most needed, and what they
had never had, was individual attention So she began by dividing them up
into three separate classes, and so arranging things that two lots could be
working by themselves while she ‘went through’ something with the third It
was difficult at first, especially with the younger girls, whose attention
wandered as soon as they were left to themselves, so that you could never really
take your eyes off them And yet how wonderfully, how unexpectedly, nearly
all of them improved durmg those first few weeks' For the most part they were
not really stupid, only dazed by a dull, mechanical rigmarole For a week,
perhaps, they continued unteachable, and then, quite suddenly, their warped
little minds seemed to spring up and expand like daisies when you move the
garden roller off them
Quite quickly and easily Dorothy broke them in to the habit of thinking for
themselves She got them to make up essays out of their own heads instead of
copying out drivel about the birds chanting on the boughs and the flowerets
bursting from their buds She attacked their arithmetic at the foundations and
started the little girls on multiplication and piloted the older ones through long
division to fractions, she even got three of them to the point where there was
talk of starting on decimals She taught them the first rudiments of French
grammar in place of c Passez-moi le beurre , shl vous plait' and l Lefilsdujardmier
a perdu son chapeau ’ Finding that not a girl in the class knew what any of the
countries of the world looked like (though several of them knew that Quito was
the capital of Ecuador), she set them to making a large contour-map of Europe
in plasticine, on a piece of three-ply wood, copying it in scale from the atlas
The children adored making the map, they were always clamouring to be
allowed to go on with it. And she started the whole class, except the six
youngest girls and Mavis Williams, the pothook specialist, on reading
Macbeth Not a child among them had ever voluntarily read anything m her
life before, except perhaps the Girl's Own Paper ; but they tpok readily to
382 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
Shakespeare, as all children do when he is not made horrible with parsing and
analysing
History was the hardest thing to teach them Dorothy had not realized till
now how hard it is for children who come from poor homes to have even a
conception of what history means Every upper-class person, however lll-
mformed, grows up with some notion of history, he can visualize a Roman
centurion, a medieval knight, an eighteenth-century nobleman, the terms
Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution evoke some
meaning, even if a confused one, m his mind But these children came from
bookless homes and from parents who would have laughed at the notion that
the past has any meaning for the present They had never heard of Robin
Hood, never played at being Cavaliers and Roundheads, never wondered who
built the English churches or what Fid Def on a penny stands for There were
just two historical characters of whom all of them, almost without exception,
had heard, and those were Columbus and Napoleon Heaven knows
why-perhaps Columbus and Napoleon get into the newspapers a little oftener
than most historical characters They seemed to have swelled up m the
children’s minds, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, till they blocked out the
whole landscape of the past Asked when motor-cars were invented, one child,
aged ten, vaguely hazarded, ‘About a thousand years ago, by Columbus ’
Some of the older girls, Dorothy discovered, had been through the Hundred
Page History as many as four times, from Boadicea to the first Jubilee, and
forgotten practically every word of it Not that that mattered greatly, for most
of it was lies She started the whole class over again at Julius Caesar’s invasion,
and at first she tried taking history books out of the public library and reading
them aloud to the children, but that method failed, because they could
understand nothing that was not explained to them in words of one or two
syllables So she did what she could in her own words and with her own
inadequate knowledge, making a sort of paraphrase of what she read and
delivering it to the children; striving all the while to drive into their dull little
minds some picture of the past, and what was always more difficult, some
interest m it But one day a brilliant idea struck her. She bought a roll of cheap
plain wallpaper at an upholsterer’s shop, and set the children to making an
historical chart. They marked the roll of paper mto centuries and years, and
stuck scraps that they cut out of illustrated papers-pictures of kmghts in
armour and Spanish galleons and printing-presses and railway trains-at the
appropriate places Pinned round the walls of the room, the chart presented, as
the scraps grew in number, a Sort of panorama of English history The children
were even fonder of the chart than of the contour map. They always, Dorothy
found, showed more intelligence when it was a question of making something
instead of merely learning. There was even talk of making a contour map of the
world, four feet by four, m papierm&ch 6 , if Dorothy could ‘get round’ Mrs
Creevy to allow die preparation of the papierm&ch 6 -a messy process needing
buckets of wafer*
, Mrs Creevy watched Dorothy’s innovations with a jealous eye, but she did
. pot inferfere actively at first She was not going to show it, of course, but she
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 383
was secretly amazed and delighted to find that she had got hold of an assistant
who was actually willing to work When she saw Dorothy spending her own
money on textbooks for the children, it gave her the same delicious sensation
that she would have had m bringing off a successful swindle She did, however,
sniff and grumble at everything that Dorothy did, and she wasted a great deal
of time by insisting on what she called ‘thorough correction’ of the girls’
exercise books But her system of correction, like everything else m the school
curriculum, was arranged with one eye on the parents Periodically the
children took their books home for their parents’ inspection, and Mrs Creevy
would never allow anything disparaging to be written in them Nothing was to
be marked ‘bad’ or crossed out or too heavily underlined, mstead, m the
evenings, Dorothy decorated the books, under Mrs Creevy’s dictation, with
more or less applauding comments m red ink ‘A very creditable performance’,
and ‘Excellent 1 You are making great strides Keep it up 1 ’ were Mrs Creevy’s
favourites All the children in the school, apparently, were for ever ‘making
great strides’, in what direction they were stridmg was not stated The parents,
however, seemed willing to swallow an almost unlimited amount of this kind of
thing
There were times, of course, when Dorothy had trouble with the girls
themselves The fact that they were all of different ages made them difficult to
deal with, and though they were fond of her and were very ‘good’ with her at
first, they would not have been children at all if they had been invariably
‘good’ Sometimes they were lazy and sometimes they succumbed to that most
damnable vice of schoolgirls-giggling For the first few days Dorothy was
greatly exercised over little Mavis Williams, who was stupider than one would
have believed it possible for any child of eleven to be Dorothy could do
nothing with her at all At the first attempt to get her to do anything beyond
pothooks a look of almost subhuman blankness would come into her wide-set
eyes Sometimes, however, she had talkative fits in which she would ask the
most amazing and unanswerable questions For instance, she would open her
‘reader’, find one of the lllustrations-the sagacious Elephant, perhaps-and ask
Dorothy
‘Please, Miss, wass ’at thing there’’ (She mispronounced her words m a
cunous manner )
‘That’s an elephant, Mavis ’
‘Wass a elephant’’
‘An elephant’s a kind of wild animal ’
‘Wass a animal’’
‘Well-a dog’s an animal ’
‘Wass a dog? ’
And so on, more or less indefinitely About half-way through the fourth
morning Mavis held up her hand and said with a sly politeness that ought to
have put Dorothy on her guard
‘Please, Miss, may I be ’scused’’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy
One of the bigger girls put up her hand, blushed, and put her hand down
384 A Clergyman’s Daughter
again as though too bashful to speak On being prompted by Dorothy, she said
shamefacedly
‘Please, Miss, Miss Strong didn’t used to let Mavis go to the lavatory alone
She locks herself m and won’t come out, and then Mrs Creevy gets angry.
Miss ’
Dorothy dispatched a messenger, but it was too late Mavis remained in
latebra pudenda till twelve o’clock Afterwards, Mrs Creevy explained
privately to Dorothy that Mavis was a congenital idiot- or, as she put it, ‘not
right m the head’ It was totally impossible to teach her anything Of course,
Mrs Creevy didn’t ‘let on’ to Mavis’s parents, who believed that their child
was only ‘backward’ and paid their fees regularly Mavis was quite easy to deal
with You just had to give her a book and a pencil and tell her to draw pictures
and be quiet But Mavis, a child of habit, drew nothing but pothooks
-remaining quiet and apparently happy for hours together, with her tongue
hanging out, amid festoons of pothooks
But in spite of these minor difficulties, how well everything went during
those first few weeks 1 How ominously well, indeed 1 About the tenth of
November, after much grumbling about the price of coal, Mrs Creevy started
to allow a fire m the schoolroom The children’s wits brightened noticeably
when the room was decently warm And there were happy hours, sometimes,
when the fire crackled in the grate, and Mrs Creevy was out of the house, and
the children were working quietly and absorbedly at one of the lessons that
were their favourites Best of all was when the two top classes were reading
Macbeth , the girls squeaking breathlessly through the scenes, and Dorothy
pulling them up to make them pronounce the words properly and to tell them
who Bellona’s bridegroom was and how witches rode on broomsticks, and the
girls wanting to know, almost as excitedly as though it had been a detective
story, how Birnam Wood could possible come to Dunsinane and Macbeth be
killed by a man who was not of woman born Those are the times that make
teaching worth while-the times when the children’s enthusiasm leaps up, like
an answering flame, to meet your own, and sudden unlooked-for gleams of
intelligence reward your earlier drudgery No job is more fascinating than
teaching if you have a free hand at it Nor did Dorothy know, as yet, that that
‘if’ is one of the biggest ‘ifs’ m the world
Her job suited her, and she was happy in it She knew the minds of the
children intimately by this time, knew their individual peculiarities and the
special stimulants that were needed before you could get them to think She
was more fond of them, more interested in their development, more anxious to
do her best for them, than she would have conceived possible a short while ago
The complex, never-ended labour of teaching filled her life just as the round of
parish jobs had filled it at home She thought and dreamed of teaching, she
took books out of the public library and studied theories of education. She felt
that quite willingly she would go on teaching all her life, even at ten shillings a
week and her keep, if it could always be like this It was her vocation, she
thought*
' Almost an^ job that fully occupied her would have been a relief after the
A Clergyman’s Daughter 38 5
horrible futility of the time of her destitution But this was more than a mere
job, it was-so it seemed to her-a mission, a life-purpose Trying to awaken the
dulled minds of these children, trying to undo the swindle that had been
worked upon them in the name of education-that, surely, was something to
which she could give herself heart and souP So for the time being, in the
interest of her work, she disregarded the beastlmess of living in Mrs Creevy’s
house, and quite forgot her strange, anomalous position and the uncertainty of
her future
4
But of course, it could not last
Not many weeks had gone by before the parents began interfering with
Dorothy’s programme of work That-- trouble with the parents-is part of the
regular routine of life in a private school All parents are tiresome from a
teacher’s point of view, and the parents of children at fourth-rate private
schools are utterly impossible On the one hand, they have only the dimmest
idea of what is meant by education, on the other hand, they look on ‘schooling’
exactly as they look on a butcher’s bill or a grocer’s bill, and are perpetually
suspicious that they are being cheated They bombard the teacher with lll-
wntten notes making impossible demands, which they send by hand and
which the child reads on the way to school At the end of the first fortnight
Mabel Briggs, one of the most promising girls m the class, brought Dorothy
the following note
Dear Miss,-Would you please give Mabel a bit more arithmetic* I feel that what your givmg her
is not practacle enpugh All these maps and that She wants practacle work, not all this fancy stuff
So more arithmetic, please And remain,
Yours Faithfully,
Geo Briggs
p s Mabel says your talking of starting her on something called decimals I don’t want her taught
decimals, I want her taught arithmetic
So Dorothy stopped Mabel’s geography and gave her extra arithmetic
instead, whereat Mabel wept, More letters followed One lady was disturbed
to hear that her child was being given Shakespeare to read ‘She had heard’,
she wrote, ‘that this Mr Shakespeare was a writer of stage-plays, and was Miss
Millborough quite certain that he wasn’t a very immoral writer? For her own
part she had never so much as been to the pictures in her life, let alone to a
stage-play, and she felt that even in readmg stage-plays there was a very grave
danger,’ etc , etc She gave way, however, on being informed that Mr
Shakespeare was dead This seemed to reassure her Another parent wanted
y86 A Clergyman’s Daughter
more attention to his child’s handwriting, and another thought French was a
waste of time, and so it went on, until Dorothy’s carefully arranged time-table
was almost m ruins Mrs Creevy gave her clearly to understand that whatever
the parents demanded she must do, or pretend to do In many cases it was next
door to impossible, for it disorganized everything to have one child studying,
for instance, arithmetic while the rest of the class were doing history or
geography But m private schools the parents’ word is law Such schools exist,
like shops, by flattering their customers, and if a parent wanted his child taught
nothing but cat’s-cradle and the cuneiform alphabet, the teacher would have to
agree rather than lose a pupil
The fact was that the parents were growing perturbed by the tales their
children brought home about Dorothy’s methods They saw no sense
whatever in these new-fangled ideas of making plasticine maps and reading
poetry, and the old mechamcal routine which had so horrified Dorothy struck
them as eminently sensible They became more and more restive, and their
letters were peppered with the word ‘practical’, meaning m effect more
handwriting lessons and more arithmetic And even their notion of arithmetic
was limited to addition, subtraction, multiplication and ‘practice’, with long
division thrown m as a spectacular tour deforce of no real value Very few of
them could have worked out a sum in decimals themselves, and they were not
particularly anxious for their children to be able to do so either
However, if this had been all, there would probably never have been any
serious trouble The parents would have nagged at Dorothy, as all parents do,
but Dorothy would finally have learned-as, again, all teachers finally
learn- that if one showed a certain amount of tact one could safely ignore them
But there was one fact that was absolutely certain to lead to trouble, and that
was the fact that the parents of all except three children were Nonconformists,
whereas Dorothy was an Anglican It was true that Dorothy had lost her
faith-mdeed, for two months past, m the press of varying adventures, had
hardly thought either of her faith or of its loss But that made very little
difference, Roman or Anglican, Dissenter, Jew, Turk or infidel, you retain the
habits of thought that you have been brought up with Dorothy, born and bred
m the precmcts of the Church, had no understanding of the Nonconformist
mind With the best will in the world, she could not help doing things that
would cause offence to some of the parents
Almost at the beginning there was a skirmish over the Scripture
lessons-twice a week the children used to read a couple of chapters from the
Bible Old Testament and New Testament alternately- several of the parents
writing to say, would Miss Millborough please not answer the children when
they asked questions about the Virgin Msary, texts about the Virgin Mary were
to be passed over m silence, or, if possible, missed out altogether But it was
Shakespeare, that immoral writer, who brought things to a head The girls had
worked their way through Macbeth , pining to know how the witches’ prophecy
was to be fulfilled. They reached the closing scenes Birnam Wood had come to
Dunsinane-that part was settled, anyway, now what about the man who was
not of woman born* They came to the fatal passage
A Clergyman' s Daughter 387
macbeth Thou losest labour.
As easy may’st thou the intrenchant air
With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests,
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born
MACDUFF Despair thy charm.
And let the Angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb
Untimely ripp’d
The girls looked puzzled There was a momentary silence, and then a chorus
of voices round the room,
‘Please, Miss, what does that mean? ’
Dorothy explained She explained haltingly and incompletely, with a
sudden horrid misgivmg-a premonition that this was going to lead to
trouble-but still, she did explain. And after that, of course, the fun began
About half the children m the class went home and asked their parents the
meaning of the word ‘womb’ There was a sudden commotion, a flying to
and fro of messages, an electric thrill of horror through fifteen decent
Nonconformist homes That night the parents must have held some kmd of
conclave, for the following evening, about the time when school ended, a
deputation called upon Mrs Creevy Dorothy heard them arriving by ones and
twos, and guessed what was going to happen As soon as she had dismissed the
children, she heard Mrs Creevy call sharply down the stairs
‘Come up here a minute. Miss Millborough 1 ’
Dorothy went up, trying to control the trembling of her knees In the gaunt
drawing-room Mrs Creevy was standing grimly beside the piano, and six
parents were sitting round on horsehair chairs like a circle of inquisitors
There was the Mr Geo Briggs who had written the letter about Mabel’s
anthmetic-he was an alert-looking greengrocer with a dried-up, shrewish
wife-and there was a large, buffalo -like man with drooping moustaches and a
colourless, peculiarly flat wife who looked as though she had been flattened out
by the pressure of some heavy object-her husband, perhaps The names of
these two Dorothy did not catch There was also Mrs Williams, the mother of
the congenital idiot, a small, dark, very obtuse woman who always agreed with
the last speaker, and there was a Mr Poynder, a commerical traveller He was a
youngish to middle-aged man with a grey face, mobile lips, and a bald scalp
across which some strips of rather nasty-looking damp hair were carefully
plastered In honour of the parents’ visit, a fire composed of three large coals
was sulking in the grate
‘Sit down there, Miss Millborough,’ said Mrs Creevy, pointing to a hard
chair which stood like a stool of repentance in the middle of the ring of parents
Dorothy sat down
‘And now/ said Mrs Creevy, ‘just you hsten to what Mr Poynder’s got to say
to you,’
Mr Poynder had a great deal to say The other parents had evidently chosen
$88 A Clergyman's Daughter
him as their spokesman, and he talked till flecks of yellowish foam appeared at
the corners of his mouth And what was remarkable, he managed to do it all-so
nice was his regard for the decencies -without ever once repeating the word
that had caused all the trouble
‘I feel that I’m voicing the opinion of all of us,’ he said with his facile
bagman’s eloquence, ‘in saying that if Miss Millborough knew that this
play- Macduff, or whatever its name is- contained such words as- well, such
words as we’re speaking about, she never ought to have given it to the children
to read at all To my mind it’s a disgrace that schoolbooks can be printed with
such words in them I’m sure if any of us had ever known that Shakespeare was
that kind of stuff, we’d have put our foot down at the start It surprises me, I
must say Only the other morning I was reading a piece m my News Chronicle
about Shakespeare being the father of English Literature, well, if that’s
Literature, let’s have a bit less Literature, say I' I think everyone’ll agree with
me there And on the other hand, if Miss Millborough didn’t know that the
word- well, the word I’m referring to- was coming, she just ought to have gone
straight on and taken no notice when it did come There wasn’t the slightest
need to go explaining it to them Just tell them to keep quiet and not get asking
questions-that’s the proper way with children ’
‘But the children wouldn’t have understood the play if I hadn’t explained 1 ’
protested Dorothy for the third or fourth time
‘Of course they wouldn’t 1 You don’t seem to get my point, Miss
Millborough 1 We don’t want them to understand Do you think we want them
to go picking up dirty ideas out of books 1 * Quite enough of that already with all
these dirty films and these twopenny girls’ papers that they get hold of-all
these filthy, dirty love-stories with pictures of-well, I won’t go into it We
don’t send our children to school to have ideas put into their heads I’m
speaking for all the parents in saying this We’re all of decent God-fearing
folk-some of us are Baptists and some of us are Methodists, and there’s even
one or two Church of England among us, but we can sink our differences when
it comes to a case like this- and we try to bring our children up decent and save
them from knowing anything about the Facts of Life If I had my way, no
child-at any rate, no girl- would know anything about the Facts of Life till she
was twenty-one ’
There was a general nod from the parents, and the buffalo-like man added,
‘Yer, yer' I’m with you there, Mr Poynder Yer, yer*’ deep down m his inside
After dealing with the subject of Shakespeare, Mr Poynder added some
remarks about Dorothy’s new-fangled methods of teaching, which gave Mr
Geo Briggs the opportunity to rap out from time to time, ‘That’s it 1 Practical
work-that’s what we want-practical work 1 Not all this messy stuff like po’try
and making maps and sticking scraps of paper and such like Give ’em a good
bit of figuring and handwriting and bother the rest Practical work! You’ve
said it>’
This went on for about twenty minutes At first Dorothy attempted to
argue, but she saw Mrs Creevy angrily shaking her head at her over the
buffalo-like man’s shoulder, which she rightly took as a signal to be quiet By
A Clergyman's Daughter 389
the time the parents had finished they had reduced Dorothy very nearly to
tears, and after this they made ready to go But Mrs Creevy stopped them
‘ Just a minute, ladies and gentlemen,’ she said ‘Now that you’ve all had
your say-and I’m sure I’m most glad to give you the opportumty-I’d just like
to say a little something on my own account Just to make things clear, in case
any of you might think I was to blame for this nasty business that’s happened
And you stay here too, Miss Millborough 1 ’ she added
She turned on Dorothy, and, m front of the parents, gave her a venomous
‘talking to’ which lasted upwards of ten minutes The burden of it all was that
Dorothy had brought these dirty books into the house behind her back, that it
was monstrous treachery and ingratitude, and that if anything like it happened
again, out Dorothy would go with a week’s wages m her pocket She rubbed it
in and in and in Phrases like ‘girl that I’ve taken into my house’, ‘eating my
bread’, and even ‘living on my charity’, recurred over and over again The
parents sat round watching, and m their crass faces-faces not harsh or evil,
only blunted by ignorance and mean virtues-you could see a solemn approval,
a solemn pleasure in the spectacle of sm rebuked Dorothy understood this,
she understood that it was necessary that Mrs Creevy should give her her
‘talking to’ m front of the parents, so that they might feel that they were gettmg
their money’s worth and be satisfied But still, as the stream of mean, cruel
reprimand went on and on, such anger rose m her heart that she could with
pleasure have stood up and struck Mrs Creevy across the face Again and again
she thought, ‘I won’t stand it, I won’t stand it any longer 1 I’ll tell her what I
think of her and then walk straight out of the house 1 ’ But she did nothing of the
kind She saw with dreadful clarity the helplessness of her position Whatever
happened, whatever insults it meant swallowing, she had got to keep her job
So she sat still, with pink humiliated face, amid the circle of parents, and
presently her anger turned to misery, and she realized that she was going to
begin crying if she did not struggle to prevent it But she realized, too, that if
she began crying it would be the last straw and the parents would demand her
dismissal To stop herself, she dug her nails so hard into the palms that
afterwards she found that she had drawn a few drops of blood
Presently the ‘talking to’ wore itself out m assurances from Mrs Creevy that
this should never happen again and that the offending Shakespeares should be
burnt immediately The parents were now satisfied Dorothy had had her
lesson and would doubtless profit by it, they did not bear her any malice and
were not conscious of having humiliated her They said good-bye to Mrs
Creevy, said good-bye rather more coldly to Dorothy, and departed Dorothy
also rose to go, but Mrs Creevy signed to her to stay where she was
‘Just you wait a minute,’ she said ominously as the parents left the room ‘I
haven’t finished yet, not by a long way I haven’t ’
Dorothy sat down again She felt very weak at the knees, and nearer to tears
than ever Mrs Creevy, having shown the parents out by the front door, came
back with a bowl of water and threw it over the fire-for where was the sense of
burning good coals after the parents had gone^ Dorothy supposed that the
‘talking to’ was going to begin afresh. However, Mrs Creevy’s wrath seemed to
3yo A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
have cooled-at any rate, she had laid aside the air of outraged virtue that it had
been necessary to put on m front of the parents
‘I just want to have a bit of a talk with you. Miss Millborough,’ she said ‘It’s
about time we got it settled once and for all how this school’s going to be run
and how it’s not going to be run ’
c Yes,’ said Dorothy
‘Well, I’ll be straight with you When you came here I could see with half an
eye that you didn’t know the first thing about school-teaching, but I wouldn’t
have minded that if you’d just had a bit of common sense like any other girl
would have had Only it seems you hadn’t I let you have your own way for a
week or two, and the first thing you do is to go and get all the parents’ backs up
Well, I’m not going to have that over again From now on I’m going to have
things done my way, not your way Do you understand that? ’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy again
‘You’re not to think as I can’t do without you, mind,’ proceeded Mrs
Creevy ‘I can pick up teachers at two a penny any day of the week, M A s and
BAs and all Only the M A s and BAs mostly take to drink, or else
they-well, no matter what-and I will say for you you -don’t seem to be given to
the drink or anything of that kind I dare say you and me can get on all right if
you’ll drop these new-fangled ideas of yours and understand what’s meant by
practical school-teaching So just you listen to me ’
Dorothy listened With admirable clarity, and with a cynicism that was all
the more disgusting because it was utterly unconscious, Mrs Creevy explained
the technique of the dirty swindle that she called practical school-teaching
‘What you’ve got to get hold of once and for all,’ she began, ‘is that there’s
only one thing that matters m a school, and that’s the fees As for all this stuff
about “developing the children’s minds”, as you call it, it’s neither here nor
there It’s the fees I’m after, not developing the children's minds After all, it’s no
more than common sense It’s not to be supposed as anyone’d go to all the
trouble of keeping school and having the house turned upside down by a pack
of brats, if it wasn’t that there’s a bit of money to be made out of it The fees
come first, and everything else comes afterwards Didn’t I tell you that the
very first day you came here? ’
‘Yes,’ admitted Dorothy humbly
‘Well, then, it’s the parents that pay the fees, and it’s the parents you’ve got
to think about. Do what the parents want-that’s our rule here. I dare say all
this messing about with plasticine and paper-scraps that you go in for doesn’t
do the children any particular harm, but the parents don’t want it, and there’s
an end of it Well, there’s just two subjects that they do want their children
taught, and that’s handwriting and arithmetic Especially handwriting. That’s
something they can see the sense of And so handwriting’s the thing you’ve got
to keep on and on at Plenty of nice neat copies that the girls can take home, and
that the parents’ll show off to the neighbours and give us a bit of a free advert I
want you to give the children two hours a day just at handwriting and nothing
else,’
‘Two hours a day just at handwriting,’ repeated Dorothy obediently
A Clergyman's Daughter 391
‘Yes And plenty of arithmetic as well The parents are very keen on
arithmetic especially money-sums Keep your eye on the parents all the time
If you meet one of them m the street, get hold of them and start talking to them
about their own girl Make out that she’s the best girl in the class and that if she
stays just three terms longer she’ll be working wonders You see what I mean?
Don’t go and tell them there’s no room for improvement, because if you tell
them that , they generally take their girls away Just three terms longer-that’s
the thing to tell them And when you make out the end of term reports, just you
bring them to me and let me have a good look at them I like to do the marking
myself ’
Mrs Creevy’s eye met Dorothy’s She had perhaps been about to say that she
always arranged the marks so that every girl came out somewhere near the top
of the class, but she refrained Dorothy could not answer for a moment
Outwardly she was subdued, and very pale, but m her heart were anger and
deadly repulsion against which she had to struggle before she could speak She
had no thought, however, of contradicting Mrs Creevy The ‘talking to’ had
quite broken her spirit She mastered her voice, and said
‘I’m to teach nothing but handwriting and arithmetic-is that it? ’
‘Well, I didn’t say that exactly There’s plenty of other subjects that look
well on the prospectus French, for instance- French looks very well on the
prospectus But it’s not a subject you want to waste much time over Don’t go
filling them up with a lot of grammar and syntax and verbs and all that That
kind of stuff doesn’t get them anywhere so far as I can see Give them a bit of
“Parley vous Francey”, and “Passey moi le beurre”, and so forth, that’s a lot
more use than grammar And then there’s Latin-I always put Latin on the
prospectus But I don’t suppose you’re very great on Latm, are you? ’
‘No,’ admitted Dorothy
‘Well, it doesn’t matter You won’t have to teach it None of our parents’d
want their children to waste time over Latm But they like to see it on the
prospectus. It looks classy Of course there’s a whole lot of subjects that we
can’t actually teach, but we have to advertise them all the same Book-keeping
and typing and shorthand, for instance, besides music and dancing It all looks
well on the prospectus ’
‘Arithmetic, handwriting, French-is there anything else? ’ Dorothy said
‘Oh, well, history and geography and English Literature, of course. But just
drop that map-making business at once-it’s nothing but waste of time The
best geography to teach is lists of capitals Get them so that they can rattle off
the capitals of all the English counties as if it was the multiplication table
Then they’ve got something to show for what they’ve learnt, anyway And as
for history, keep on with the Hundred Page History of Bntian I won’t have
them taught out of those big history books you keep bringing home from the
library I opened one of those books the other day, and the first thing I saw was
a piece where it said the English had been beaten in some battle or other
There’s amice thing to go teaching children' The parents won’t stand for that
kind of dung, I can tell you'’
‘And Literature? ’ said Dorothy,
3$2 A Clergyman's Daughter
‘Well, of course they’ve got to do a bit of reading, and I can’t think why you
wanted to turn up your nose at those nice little readers of ours Keep on with
the readers They’re a bit old, but they’re quite good enough for a pack of
children, I should have thought And I suppose they might as well learn a few
pieces of poetry by heart Some of the parents like to hear their children say a
piece of poetry “The Boy stood on the Burning Deck”-that’s a very good
piece-and then there’s “The Wreck of the Steamer”-now, what was that ship
called^ “The Wreck of the Steamer Hesperus” A little poetry doesn’t hurt
now and again But don’t let’s have any more Shakespeare , please 1 ’
Dorothy got no tea that day It was now long past tea-time, but when Mrs
Creevy had finished her harangue she sent Dorothy away without saying
anything about tea Perhaps this was a little extra punishment for Vaffaire
Macbeth
Dorothy had not asked permission to go out, but she did not feel that she
could stay m the house any longer She got her hat and coat and set out down
the ill-lit road, for the public library It was late into November Though the
day had been damp the night wind blew sharply, like a threat, through the
almost naked trees, making the gas-lamps flicker in spite of their glass
chimneys, and stirring the sodden plane leaves that littered the pavement
Dorothy shivered slightly The raw wind sent through her a bone-deep
memory of the cold of T rafalgar Square And though she did not actually think
that if she lost her job it would mean going back to the sub-world from which
she had come-mdeed, it was not so desperate as that, at the worst her cousin or
somebody else would help her-still, Mrs Creevy’s ‘talking to’ had made
Trafalgar Square seem suddenly very much nearer It had driven into her a far
deeper understanding than she had had before of the great modern
commandment-the eleventh commandment which has wiped out all the
others ‘Thou shalt not lose thy job ’
But as to what Mrs Creevy had said about ‘practical school-teaching’, it had
been no more than a realistic facing of the facts She had merely said aloud
what most people in her position think but never say Her oft-repeated phrase,
‘It’s the fees I’m after’, was a motto that might be-mdeed, ought to
be- written over the doors of every private school m England.
There are, by the way, vast numbers of private schools in England Second-
rate, third-rate, and fourth-rate (Rmgwood House was a specimen of the
fourth-rate school), they exist by the dozen and the score m every London
suburb and every provincial town At any given moment there are somewhere
m the neighbourhood of ten thousand of them, of which less than a thousand
are subject to Government mspection And though some of them are better
than others, and a certain number, probably, are better than the council
schools with which they compete, there is the same fundamental evil in all of
them, that is, that they have ultimately no purpose except to make money.
Often, except that there is nothing illegal about them, they are started in
exactly the same spirit as one would start a brothel or a bucket shop Some
snuffy little man of business (it is quite usual for these schools to be owned by
people who don’t teach themselves) says one morning to his wife
A Clergyman's Daughter 393
‘Emma, I got a notion 1 What you say to us two keeping school, eh? There’s
plenty of cash m a school, you know, and there ain’t the same work m it as what
there is m a shop or a pub Besides, you don’t risk nothing, no over’ead to
worry about, ’cept jest your rent and few desks and a blackboard But we’ll do
it in style Get in one of these Oxford and Cambridge chaps as is out of a job
and’ll come cheap, and dress ’im up in a gown and-what do they call them
little square ’ats with tassels on top? That ’ud fetch the parents, eh? You jest
keep your eyes open and see if you can’t pick on a good district where there’s
not too many on the same game already ’
He chooses a situation in one of those middle-class districts where the
people are too poor to afford the fees of a decent school and too proud to send
their children to the council schools, and ‘sets up’ By degrees he works up a
connexion m very much the same manner as a milkman or a greengrocer, and if
he is astute and tactful and has not too many competitors, he makes his few
hundreds a year out of it
Of course, these schools are not all alike Not every principal is a grasping
low-minded shrew like Mrs Creevy, and there are plenty of schools where the
atmosphere is kindly and decent and the teaching is as good as one could
reasonably expect for fees of five pounds a term On the other hand, some of
them are crying scandals Later on, when Dorothy got to know one of the
teachers at another private school in Southbndge, she heard tales of schools
that were worse by far than Ringwood House She heard of a cheap boarding-
school where travelling actors dumped their children as one dumps luggage m
a railway cloakroom, and where the children simply vegetated, doing
absolutely nothing, reachmg the age of sixteen without learning to read, and
another school where the days passed m a perpetual not, with a broken-down
old hack of a master chasing the boys up and down and slashing at them with a
cane, and then suddenly collapsing and weeping with his head on a desk, while
the boys laughed at him So long as schools are run primarily for money, things
hke this will happen The expensive private schools to which the rich send
their children are not, on the surface, so bad as the others, because they can
afford a proper staff, and the Public School examination system keeps them up
to the mark, but they have the same essential taint
It was only later, and by degrees, that Dorothy discovered these facts about
private schools. At first, she used to suffer from an absurd fear that one day the
school mspectors would descend upon Ringwood House, find out what a sham
and a swindle it all was, and raise the dust accordingly Later on, however, she
learned that this could never happen Ringwood House was not ‘recognized’,
and therefore was not liable to be inspected One day a Government inspector
did, indeed, visit the school, but beyond measuring the dimensions of the
schoolroom to see whether each girl had her right number of cubic feet of air,
he did nothing; he had no power to do more Only the tiny minority of
‘recognized’ schools— less than one in ten-are officially tested to decide
whether they keep up a reasonable educational standard As for the others,
they are free to teach or not teach exactly as they choose No one controls or
inspects them except the children’s parents- the blind leading the blind.
5
Next day Dorothy began altering her programme in accordance with Mrs
Creevy’s orders The first lesson of the day was handwriting, and the second
was geography
‘That’ll do, girls,’ said Dorothy as the funereal clock struck ten ‘We’ll start
our geography lesson now ’
The girls flung their desks open and put their hated copybooks away with
audible sighs of relief There were murmurs of ‘Oo, jography 1 Good 1 ’ It was
one of their favourite lessons The two girls who were ‘monitors’ for the week,
and whose job it was to clean the blackboard, collect exercise books and so
forth (children will fight for the privilege of doing jobs of that kind), leapt from
their places to fetch the half-finished contour map that stood against the wall
But Dorothy stopped them
‘Wait a moment Sit down, you two We aren’t going to go on with the map
this morning ’
There was a cry of dismay ‘Oh, Miss 1 Why can’t we, Miss? Please let’s go on
with it •*
‘No I’m afraid we’ve been wasting a little too much time over the map
lately We’re going to start learning some of the capitals of the English
counties I want every girl in the class to know the whole lot of them by the end
of the term ’
The children’s faces 'fell Dorothy saw it, and added with an attempt at
bnghtness-that hollow, undeceiving brightness of a teacher trying to palm off
a boring subject as an interesting one
‘Just think how pleased your parents will be when they can ask you the
capital of any county in England and you can tell it them 1 ’
The children were not m the least taken in They writhed at the nauseous
prospect
‘Oh, capitals' Learning capitals'. That’s just what we used to do with Miss
Strong, Please, Miss, why can’t we go on with the map? ’
‘Now don’t argue Get your notebooks out and take them down as I give
them to you And afterwards we’ll say them all together ’
Reluctantly, the children fished out their notebooks, still groaning ‘Please,
Miss, can we go on with the map next time? ’
‘I don’t know. We’ll see ’
That afternoon the map was removed from the schoolroom, and Mrs Creevy
scraped the plasticine off the board and threw it away It was the same with all
A Clergyman's Daughter 395
the other subjects, one after another All the changes that Dorothy had made
were undone They went back to the routine of interminable ‘copies’ and
interminable ‘practice’ sums, to the learmng parrot-fashion of c Passez-moi le
beurre 3 and c Le fils du jar dimer a perdu son chapeau' , to the Hundred Page
History and the insufferable little ‘reader’ (Mrs Creevy had impounded the
Shakespeares, ostensibly to burn them The probability was that she had sold
them ) Two hours a day were set apart for handwriting lessons The two
depressing pieces of black paper, which Dorothy had taken down from the
wall, were replaced, and their proverbs written upon them afresh m neat
copperplate As for the historical chart, Mrs Creevy took it away and burnt it
When the children saw the hated lessons, from which they had thought to
have escaped for ever, coming back upon them one by one, they were first
astonished, then miserable, then sulky But it was far worse for Dorothy than
for the children After only a couple of days the rigmarole through which she
was obliged to drive them so nauseated her that she began to doubt whether
she could go on with it any longer Again and again she toyed with the idea of
disobeying Mrs Creevy Why not, she would think, as the children whined and
groaned and sweated under their miserable bondage-why not stop it and go
back to proper lessons, even if it was only for an hour or two a day? Why not
drop the whole pretence of lessons and simply let the children play? It would
be so much better for them than this Let them draw pictures or make
something out of plasticine or begm making up a fairy tale-anythmg real,
anything that would interest them, instead of this dreadful nonsense But she
dared not At any moment Mrs Creevy was liable to come m, and if she found
the children ‘messing about’ instead of getting on with their routine work,
there would be fearful trouble So Dorothy hardened her heart, and obeyed
Mrs Creevy’s instructions to the letter, and things were very much as they had
been before Miss Strong was ‘taken bad’
The lessons reached such a pitch of boredom that the brightest spot m the
week was Mr Booth’s so-called chemistry lecture on Thursday afternoons Mr
Booth was a seedy, tremulous man of about fifty, with long, wet, cowdung-
coloured moustaches He had been a Public School master once upon a time,
but nowadays he made just enough for a life of chrome sub-drunkenness by
delivering lectures at two and sixpence a time The lectures were unrelieved
drivel Even m his palmiest days Mr Booth had not been a particularly brilliant
lecturer, and now, when he had had his first go of delirium tremens and lived m
a daily dread of his second, what chemical knowledge he had ever had was fast
deserting him He would stand dithering in front of the class, saymg the same
thing over and over again and trying vainly to remember what he was talking
about ‘Remember, girls,’ he would say in his husky, would-be fatherly voice,
‘the number of the elements is ninety-three-ninety-three elements, girls-you
all of you know what an element is, don’t you? -there are just ninety-three of
them-remember that number, girls-nmety-three,’ until Dorothy (she had to
stay in the schoolroom during the chemistry lectures, because Mrs Creevy
considered that it didn't do to leave the girls alone with a man) was miserable
with vicarious shame All the lectures* started with the ninety-three elements,
396 A Clergyman’s Daughter
and never got very much further There was also talk of ‘a very interesting
little experiment that I’m going to perform for you next week, girls- very
interesting you’ll find it- we’ll have it next week without fail-a very interesting
little experiment’, which, needless to say, was never performed Mr Booth
possessed no chemical apparatus, and his hands were far too shaky to have
used it even if he had had any The girls sat through his lectures m a suety
stupor of boredom, but even he was a welcome change from handwriting
lessons
The children were never quite the same with Dorothy after the parents’
visit They did not change all m a day, of course They had grown to be fond of
‘old Millie’, and they expected that after a day or two of tormenting them with
handwriting and ‘commercial arithmetic’ she would go back to something
interesting But the handwriting and arithmetic went on, and the popularity
Dorothy had enjoyed, as a teacher whose lessons weren’t boring and who
didn’t slap you, pinch you, or twist your ears, gradually vanished Moreover,
the story of the row there had been over Macbeth was not long m leaking out
The children grasped that old Millie had done something wrong-they didn’t
exactly know what-and had been given a ‘talking to’ It lowered her in their
eyes There is no dealing with children, even with children who are fond of
you, unless you can keep your prestige as an adult, let that prestige be once
damaged, and even the best-hearted children will despise you
So they began to be naughty in the normal, traditional way Before, Dorothy
had only had to deal with occasional laziness, outbursts of noise and silly
giggling fits, now there were spite and deceitfulness as well The children
revolted ceaselessly against the horrible routine They forgot the short weeks
when old Millie had seemed quite a good sort and school itself had seemed
rather fun Now, school was simply what it had always been, and what indeed
you expected it to be-a place where you slacked and yawned and whiled the
time away by pinching your neighbour and trying to make the teacher lose her
temper, and from which you burst with a yell of relief the instant the last lesson
was over Sometimes they sulked and had fits of crying, sometimes they argued
m the maddening persistent way that children have, f Why should we do this?
Why does anyone have to learn to read and write? ’ over and over again, until
Dorothy had to stand over them and silence them with threats of blows She
was growing almost habitually irritable nowadays, it surprised and shocked
her, but she could not stop it Every morning she vowed to herself, ‘Today I
will not lose my temper’, and every morning, with depressing regularity, she
did lose her temper, especially at about half past eleven when the children were
at their worst Nothing in the world is quite so irritating as dealing with
mutinous children Sooner or later, Dorothy knew, she would lose control of
herself and begm hitting them It seemed to her an unforgivable thing to do, to
hit a child, but nearly all teachers come to it in the end It was impossible now
to get any child to work except when your eye was upon it You had only to
turn your back for an instant and blotting-paper pellets were flying to and fro
Nevertheless, with ceaseless slave-driving the children’s handwriting and
‘commercial arithmetic’ did certainly show some improvement, and no doubt
A Clergyman’ s Daughter
397
the parents were satisfied
The last few weeks of the term were a very bad time For over a fortnight
Dorothy was quite penniless, for Mrs Creevy had told her that she couldn’t
pay her her term’s wages ‘till some of the fees came in’ So she was deprived of
the secret slabs of chocolate that had kept her going, and she suffered from a
perpetual slight hunger that made her languid and spiritless There were
leaden mornings when the minutes dragged like hours, when she struggled
with herself to keep her eyes away from the clock, and her heart sickened to
think that beyond this lesson there loomed another just like it, and more of
them and more, stretching on into what seemed like a dreary eternity Worse
yet were the times when the children were in their noisy mood and it needed a
constant exhausting effort of the will to keep them under control at all, and
beyond the wall, of course, lurked Mrs Creevy, always listening, always ready
to descend upon the schoolroom, wrench the door open, and glare round the
room with ‘Now then 1 What’s all this noise about, please^’ and the sack m her
eye
Dorothy was fully awake, now, to the beastliness of living in Mrs Creevy’s
house The filthy food, the cold, and the lack of baths seemed much more
important than they had seemed a little while ago Moreover, she was
beginning to appreciate, as she had not done when the joy of her work was
fresh upon her, the utter loneliness of her position Neither her father nor Mr
Warburton had written to her, and m two months she had made not a single
friend in Southbndge For anyone so situated, and particularly for a woman, it
is all but impossible to make friends She had no money and no home* of her
own, and outside the school her sole places of refuge were the public library,
on the few evenings when she could get there, and church on Sunday
mornings She went to church regularly, of course-Mrs Creevy had insisted
on that She had settled the question of Dorothy’s religious observances at
breakfast on her first Sunday morning
‘I’ve just been wondering what Place of Worship you ought to go to,’ she
said ‘I suppose you were brought up C of E , weren’t you>’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy
‘Hm, well I can’t quite make up my mind where to send you There’s St
George’s-that’s the C of E -and there’s the Baptist Chapel where I go
myself Most of our parents are Nonconformists, and I don’t know as they’d
quite approve of a C of E teacher You can’t be too careful with the parents
They had a bit of a scare two years ago when it turned out that the teacher I had
then was actually a Roman Catholic, if you please f Of course she kept it dark as
long as she could, but it came out in the end, and three of the parents took their
children away I got rid of her the same day as I found it out, naturally ’
Dorothy was silent
‘ Still, ? went on Mrs Creevy, ‘we have got three C of E pupils, and I don’t
know as the Church connexion mightn’t be worked up a bit So perhaps you’d
better risk it and go to St George’s But you want to be a bit careful, you know
I’m told St George’s is one of these churches where they go in for a lot of
bowing and scraping and crossing yourself and all that We’ve got two parents
398 A Clergyman's Daughter
that are Plymouth Brothers, and they’d throw a fit if they heard you’d been
seen crossing yourself So don’t go and do that 3 whatever you do ’
‘Very well,’ said Dorothy
‘And just you keep your eyes well open during the sermon Have a good look
round and see if there’s any young girls m the congregation that we could get
hold of If you see any likely looking ones, get on to the parson afterwards and
try and find out their names and addresses ’
So Dorothy went to St George’s It was a shade ‘Higher’ than St Athelstan’s
had been, chairs, not pews, but no incense, and the vicar (his name was Mr
Gore-Williams) wore a plain cassock and surplice except on festival days As
for the services, they were so like those at home that Dorothy could go through
them, and utter all the responses at the right moment, in a state of the
completest abstraction
There was never a moment when the power of worship returned to her
Indeed, the whole concept of worship was meaningless to her now, her faith
had vanished, utterly and irrevocably It is a mysterious thing, the loss of
faith-as mysterious as faith itself Like faith, it is ultimately not rooted in
logic, it is a change m the climate of the mind But however little the church
services might mean to her, she did not regret the hours she spent m church
On the contrary, she looked forward to her Sunday mornings as blessed
interludes of peace, and that not only because Sunday morning meant a respite
from Mrs Creevy’s prying eye and nagging voice In another and deeper sense
the atmosphere of the church was soothing and reassuring to her For she
perceived that in all that happens m church, however absurd and cowardly its
supposed purpose may be, there is somethmg-it is hard to define, but
something of decency, of spiritual comehness-that is not easily found in the
world outside It seemed to her that even though you no longer believe, it is
better to go to church than not, better to follow m the ancient ways, than to
drift in rootless freedom. She knew very well that she would never again be
able to utter a prayer and mean it, but she knew also that for the rest of her life
she must contmue with the observances to which she had been bred. Just this
much remained to her of the faith that had once, like the bones m a living
frame, held all her life together
But as yet she did not think very deeply about the loss of her faith and what it
might mean to her in the future. She was too busy merely existing, merely
struggling to make her nerves hold out for the rest of that miserable term For
as the term drew to an end, the job of keeping the class m order grew more and
more exhausting. The girls behaved atrociously, and they were all the bitterer
against Dorothy because they had once been fond of her She had deceived
them, they felt She had started off by being decent, and now she had turned
out to be just a beastly old teacher like the rest of them-a nasty old beast who
kept on and on with those awful handwriting lessons and snapped your head
off if you so much as made a blot on your book. Dorothy caught them eyeing
her face, sometimes, with the aloof, cruel scrutiny of children They had
thought her pretty once, and now they thought her ugly, old, and scraggy She
had grown, indeed, much thinner since she had been at Rmgwood House
A Clergyman’s Daughter 399
They hated her now, as they had hated all their previous teachers
Sometimes they baited her quite deliberately The older and more
intelligent girls understood the situation well enough-understood that Millie
was under old Creevy’s thumb and that she got dropped on afterwards when
they had been making too much noise, sometimes they made all the noise they
dared, just so as to bring old Creevy m and have the pleasure of watching
Millie’s face while old Creevy told her off There were times when Dorothy
could keep her temper and forgive them all they did, because she realized that
it was only a healthy instinct that made them rebel against the loathsome
monotony of their work But there were other times when her nerves were
more on edge than usual, and when she looked round at the score of silly little
faces, grinning or mutinous, and found it possible to hate them Children are
so blind, so selfish, so merciless They do not know when they are tormenting
you past bearing, and if they did know they would not care You may do your
very best for them, you may keep your temper in situations that would try a
saint, and yet if you are forced to bore them and oppress them, they will hate
you for it without ever asking themselves whether it is you who are to blame
How true-when you happen not to be a school-teacher yourself-how true
those often-quoted lines sound-
Under a cruel eye outworn
The little ones spend the day
m sighing and dismay 1
But when you yourself are the cruel eye outworn, you realize that there is
another side to the picture
The last week came, and the dirty farce of ‘exams’, was carried through The
system, as explained by Mrs Creevy, was quite simple. You coached the
children m, for example, a series of sums until you were quite certain that they
could get them right, and then set them the same sums as an arithmetic paper
before they had time to forget the answers, and so with each subject m turn
The children’s papers were, of course, sent home for their parents’ inspection
And Dorothy wrote the reports under Mrs Creevy’s dictation, and she had to
write ‘excellent’ so many times that-as sometimes happens when you write a
word over and over again-she forgot how to spell it and began writing m
‘excelent’, ‘exsellent‘, ‘ecsellent’, ‘eccelent’
The last day passed in fearful tumults Not even Mrs Creevy herself could
keep the children m order By midday Dorothy’s nerves were in rags, and Mrs
Creevy gave her a ‘talking to’ in front of the seven children who stayed to
dinner In the afternoon the noise was worse than ever, and at last Dorothy,
overcome, appealed to the girls almost tearfully to stop
‘Girls 1 ’ she called out, rising her voice to make herself heard through the
dm ‘ Please stop it, please' You’re behaving horribly to me Do you think it’s
kind to go on like this?
’
That was fatal, of course Never, never, never throw yourself on the mercy
of a child* There was an instant’s hush, and then one child cried out, loudly
and derisively, ‘Mill-iee 1 ’ The next moment the whole class had taken it up.
zfoo A Clergyman’s Daughter
even the imbecile Mavis, chanting all together 'Mill-iee' Mill-iee 1 Mill-iee*’ At
that, something within Dorothy seemed to snap She paused for an instant,
picked out the girl who was making the most noise, walked up to her, and gave
her a smack across the ear almost as hard as she could hit Happily it was only
one of the ‘medium payers’
6
On the first day of the holidays Dorothy received a letter from Mr Warburton
My Dear Dorothy [he wrote], — Or should I call you Ellen, as I understand that is your new
name’ You must, I am afraid, have thought it very heartless of me not to have written sooner, but I
assure you that it was not until ten days ago that I even heard anything about our supposed
escapade I have been abroad, first in various parts of France, then in Austria and then m Rome,
and, as you know, I avoid my fellow countrymen most strenuously on these trips They are
disgusting enough even at home, but in foreign parts their behaviour makes me so ashamed of
them that I generally try to pass myself off as an American
When I got to Knype Hill your father refused to see me, but I managed to get hold of Victor
Stone, who gave me your address and the name you are using He seemed rather reluctant to do so,
and I gathered that even he, like everyone else in this poisonous town, still believes that you have
misbehaved yourself in some way I think the theory that you and I eloped together has been
dropped, but you must, they feel, have done something scandalous A young woman has left home
suddenly, therefore there must be a man in the case, that is how the provincial mind works, you
see I need not tell you that I have been contradicting the whole story with the utmost vigour You
will be glad to hear that I managed to comer that disgusting hag, Mrs Sempnll, and give her a
piece of my mind, and I assure you that a piece of my mind is distinctly formidable But the woman
is simply sub-human I could get nothing out of her except hypocritical snivellings about ‘poor,
poor Dorothy’
I hear that your father misses you very much, and would gladly have you home again if it were
not for the scandal His meals are never punctual nowadays, it seems He gives it out that you ‘went
away to recuperate from a slight illness and have now got an excellent post at a girls’ school’ You
will be surpised to hear of one thing that has happened to him He has been obliged to pay off all his
debts 1 1 am told that the tradesmen rose in a body and held what was practically a creditors’
meeting in the Rectory Not the kind of thing that could have happened at Plumstead
Episcopi-but these are democratic days, alas' You, evidently, were the only person who could
keep the tradesmen permanently at bay
And now I must tell you some of my own news, etc , etc , etc
At this point Dorothy tore the letter up in disappointment and even m
annoyance He might have shown a little more sympathy* she thought It was
just like Mr Warburton after getting her into serious trouble-for after all, he
was principally to blame for what had happened-to be so flippant and
unconcerned about it But when she had thought it over she acquitted him of
heartlessness. He had done what little was possible to help her, and he could
not be expected to pity her for troubles of which he had not heard Besides, his
own life had been a senes of resounding scandals; probably he could not
understand that to a woman a scandal is a senous matter
A Clergyman’s Daughter 401
At Christmas Dorothy’s father also wrote* and what was more* sent her a
Christmas present of two pounds It was evident from the tone of his letter that
he had forgiven Dorothy by this time What exactly he had forgiven her was
not certain, because it was not certain what exactly she had done, but still* he
had forgiven her The letter started with some perfunctory but quite friendly
inquiries He hoped her new job suited her, he wrote And were her rooms at
the school comfortable and the rest of the staff congemaP He had heard that
they did one very well at schools nowadays-very different from what it had
been forty years ago Now, m his day, etc , etc * etc He had, Dorothy
perceived, not the dimmest idea of her present circumstances At the mention
of schools his mind flew to Winchester, his old school, such a place as
Ringwood House was beyond his imagining
The rest of the letter was taken up with grumblings about the way things
were going m the parish The Rector complained of being worried and
overworked The wretched churchwardens kept bothering him with this and
that, and he was growing very tired of Proggett’s reports about the collapsing
belfry, and the daily woman whom he had engaged to help Ellen was a great
nuisance and had put her broom-handle through the face of the grandfather
clock in his study-and so on, and so forth, for a number of pages He said
several times in a mumbling roundabout way that he wished Dorothy were
there to help him, but he did not actually suggest that she should come home
Evidently it was still necessary that she should remain out of sight and out of
mind-a skeleton m a distant and well-locked cupboard
The letter filled Dorothy with sudden painful homesickness She found
herself pining to be back at her parish visiting and her Girl Guides’ cooking
class, and wondering unhappily how her father had got on without her all this
while and whether those two women were looking after him properly She was
fond of her father, in a way that she had never dared to show, for he was not a
person to whom you could make any display of affection It surprised and
rather shocked her to realize how little he had been m her thoughts during the
past four months There had been periods of weeks at a time when she had
forgotten his existence But the truth was that the mere business of keeping
body and soul together had left her with no leisure for other emotions
Now, however, school work was over, and she had leisure and to spare, for
though Mrs Creevy did her best she could not invent enough household jobs to
keep Dorothy busy for more than part of the day She made it quite plain to
Dorothy that during the holidays she was nothing but a useless expense, and
she watched her at her meals (obviously feeling it an outrage that she should
eat when she wasn’t working) in a way that finally became unbearable So
Dorothy kept out of the house as much as possible, and, feeling fairly rich with
her wages (four pounds ten, for nine weeks) and her father’s two pounds, she
took to buying sandwiches at the ham and beef shop in the town and eating her
dinner out of doors Mrs Creevy acquiesced, half sulkily because she liked to
have Dorothy in the house to nag at her, and half pleased at the chance of
skimping a few more meals
Dorothy went for long solitary walks, exploring Southbridge and ns yet
402 A Clergyman' s Daughter
more desolate neighbours, Dorley, Wembridge, and West Holton Winter had
descended, dank and windless, and more gloomy m those colourless
labyrinthine suburbs than in the bleakest wilderness On two or three
occasions, though such extravagance would probably mean hungry days later
on, Dorothy took a cheap return ticket to Iver Heath or Burnham Beeches
The woods were sodden and wintry, with great beds of drifted beech leaves
that glowed like copper m the still, wet air, and the days were so mild that you
could sit out of doors and read if you kept your gloves on On Christmas Eve
Mrs Creevy produced some sprigs of holly that she had saved from last year,
dusted them, and nailed them up, but she did not, she said, intend to have a
Christmas dinner She didn’t hold with all this Christmas nonsense, she
said-it was just a lot of humbug got up by the shopkeepers, and such an
unnecessary expense, and she hated turkey and Christmas pudding anyway
Dorothy was relieved, a Christmas dinner m that joyless ‘morning-room’ (she
had an awful momentary vision of Mrs Creevy m a paper hat out of a cracker)
was something that didn’t bear thinking about She ate her Christmas
dmner-a hard-boiled egg, two cheese sandwiches, and a bottle of
lemonade-m the woods near Burnham, against a great gnarled beech tree,
over a copy of George Gissmg’s The Odd Women
On days when it was too wet to go for walks she spent most of her time m the
public library-becoming, indeed, one of the regular habituees of the library,
along with the out-of-work men who sat drearily musing over illustrated
papers which they did not read, and the elderly discoloured bachelor who lived
in ‘rooms’ on two pounds a week and came to the library to study books on
yachting by the hour together It had been a great relief to her when the term
ended, but this feeling soon wore off, indeed, with never a soul to talk to, the
days dragged even more heavily than before There is perhaps no quarter of
the inhabited world where one can be quite so completely alone as m the
London suburbs In a big town the throng and bustle give one at least the
illusion of companionship, and in the country everyone is interested m
everyone else-too much so, indeed But in places like Southbndge, if you have
no family and no home to call your own, you could spend half a lifetime
without managing to make a friend. There are women m such places, and
especially derelict gentlewomen m ill-paid jobs, who go for years upon end m
almost utter solitude It was not long before Dorothy found herself m a
perpetually low-spirited, jaded state m which, try as she would, nothing
seemed able to interest her And it was in the hateful ennui of this time-the
corrupting ennui that lies in wait for every modem soul- that she first came to a
full understanding of what it meant to have lost her faith
She tried drugging herself with books, and it succeeded for a week or so But
after a while very nearly all books seemed wearisome and unintelligible; for the
mind will not work to any purpose when it is quite alone In the end she found
that she could not cope with anything more difficult than a detective story She
took walks of ten and fifteen miles, trying to tire herself into a better mood, but
the mean suburban roads, and the damp, miry paths through the woods, the
naked trees, the sodden moss and great spongy fungi, afflicted her with a
A Clergyman’s Daughter 403
deadly melancholy It was human companionship that she needed, and there
seemed no way of getting it At nights when she walked back to the school and
looked at the warm-lit windows of the houses, and heard voices laughing and
gramophones playing within, her heart swelled with envy Ah, to be like those
people in there-to have at least a home, a family, a few friends who were
interested in you 1 There were days when she pined for the courage to speak to
strangers m the street Days, too, when she contemplated shamming piety m
order to scrape acquaintance with the Vicar of St George’s and his family, and
perhaps get the chance of occupying herself with a little parish work, days,
even, when she was so desperate that she thought of joining the YWCA
But almost at the end of the holidays, through a chance encounter at the
library, she made friends with a little woman named Miss Beaver, who was
geography mistress at Toot’s Commercial College, another of the private
schools in Southbridge Toot’s Commerical College was a much larger and
more pretentious school than Ringwood House-it had about a hundred and
fifty day-pupils of both sexes and even rose to the dignity of having a dozen
boarders-and its curriculum was a somewhat less blatant swindle It was one
of those schools that are aimed at the type of parent who blathers about ‘up-to-
date business training’, and its watch-word was Efficiency, meaning a
tremendous parade of hustling, and the banishment of all humane studies One
of its features was a kind of catechism called the Efficiency Ritual, which all the
children were required to learn by heart as soon as they joined the school It
had questions and answers such as
Q What is the secret of success’
A The secret of success is efficiency
Q What is the test of efficiency’
A The test of efficiency is success
And so on and so on It was said that the spectacle of the whole school, boys
and girls together, reciting the Efficiency Ritual under the leadership of the
Headmaster-they had this ceremony two mornings a week instead of
prayers-was most impressive
Miss Beaver was a prim little woman with a round body, a thm face, a
reddish nose, and the gait of a guinea-hen After twenty years of slave-driving
she had attained to an income of four pounds a week and the privilege of ‘living
out’ instead of having to put the boarders to bed at nights She lived in
‘rooms’-that is, m a bed-sitting room-to Which she was sometimes able to
invite Dorothy when both of them had a free evening How Dorothy looked
forward to those visits' They were only possible at rare intervals, because Miss
Beaver’s landlady ‘didn’t approve of visitors’, and even when you got there
there was nothmg much to do except to help solve the crossword puzzle out of
the Daily Telegraph and look at the photographs Miss Beaver had taken on her
trip (this trip had been the summit and glory of her life) to the Austrian Tyrol
in 1913 But still, how much it meant to sit talking to somebody in a friendly
way and to drink a cup of tea less wishy-washy than Mrs Creevy’s' Miss
Beaver had a spirit lamp in a japanned travelling case (it had been with her to
the Tyrol in 1913) on which she brewed herself pots of tea as black as coal-tar.
404 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
swallowing about a bucketful of this stuff during the day She confided to
Dorothy that she always took a Thermos flask to school and had a nice hot cup
of tea during the break and another after dinner Dorothy perceived that by
one of two well-beaten roads every third-rate schoolmistress must travel Miss
Strong’s road; via whisky to the workhouse, or Miss Beaver’s road, via strong
tea to a decent death m the Home for Decayed Gentlewomen
Miss Beaver was m truth a dull little woman She was a memento mon , or
rather memento senescere , to Dorothy Her soul seemed to have withered until it
was as forlorn as a dried-up cake of soap m a forgotten soap dish She had come
to a point where life in a bed-sitting room under a tyrannous landlady and the
‘efficient’ thrusting of Commercial Geography down children’s retching
throats, were almost the only destiny she could imagine Yet Dorothy grew to
be very fond of Miss Beaver, and those occasional hours that they spent
together in the bed-sitting room, doing the Daily Telegraph crossword over a
nice hot cup of tea, were like oases in her life
She was glad when the Easter term began, for even the daily round of slave-
driving was better than the empty solitude of the holidays Moreover, the girls
were much better m hand this term, she never again found it necessary to
smack their heads For she had grasped now that it is easy enough to keep
children m order if you are ruthless with them from the start Last term the
girls had behaved badly, because she had started by treating them as human
beings, and later on, when the lessons that interested them were discontinued,
they had rebelled like human beings But if you are obliged to teach children
rubbish, you mustn’t treat them as human beings You must treat them like
ammals-driving, not persuading Before all else, you must teach them that it is
more painful to rebel than to obey Possibly this kind of treatment is not very
good for children, but there is no doubt they understand it and respond to it
She learned the dismal arts of the school-teacher She learned to glaze her
mind against the interminable boring hours, to economize her nervous energy,
to be merciless and ever- vigilant, to take a kind of pride and pleasure in seeing
a futile rigmarole well done She had grown, quite suddenly it seemed, much
tougher and maturer Her eyes had lost the half-childish look that they had
once had, and her face had grown thinner, making her nose seem longer At
times it was quite definitely a schoolmarm’s face, you could imagine pince-nez
upon it But she had not become cynical as yet She still knew that these
children were the victims of a dreary swindle, still longed, if it had been
possible, to do something better for them If she harried them and stuffed their
heads with rubbish, it was for one reason alone because whatever happened
she had got to keep her job
There was very little noise in the schoolroom this term Mrs Creevy,
anxious as she always was for a chance of finding fault, seldom had reason to
rap on the wall with her broom-handle One morning at breakfast she looked
rather hard at Dorothy, as though weighing a decision, and then pushed the
dish of marmalade across the table
‘Have some marmalade if you like, Miss MillbOrough,’ she said, quite
graciously for her
A Clergyman 1 s Daughter 405
It was the first time that marmalade had crossed Dorothy's bps since she had
come to Rmgwood House She flushed slightly ‘So the woman realizes that I
have done my best for her,’ she could not help thinking
Thereafter she had marmalade for breakfast every morning And m other
ways Mrs Creevy’s manner became-not indeed, gemal, for it could never be
that, but less brutally offensive There were even times when she produced a
grimace that was intended for a smile, her face, it seemed to Dorothy, creased
with the effort About this time her conversation became peppered with
references to ‘next term’ It was always ‘Next term we’ll do this’, and ‘Next
term I shall want you to do that’, until Dorothy began to feel that she had won
Mrs Creevy’s confidence and was being treated more like a colleague than a
slave At that a small, unreasonable but very exciting hope took root m her
heart Perhaps Mrs Creevy was going to raise her wages' It was profoundly
unlikely, and she tried to break herself of hoping for it, but could not quite
succeed If her wages were raised even half a crown a week, what a difference it
would make'
The last day came With any luck Mrs Creevy might pay her wages
tomorrow, Dorothy thought She wanted the money very badly indeed, she
had been penniless for weeks past, and was not only unbearably hungry, but
also m need of some new stockings, for she had not a pair that were not darned
almost out of existence The following morning she did the household jobs
allotted to her, and then, instead of going out, waited in the ‘morning-room’
while Mrs Creevy banged about with her broom and pan upstairs Presently
Mrs Creevy came down
‘Ah, so there you are. Miss Millborough 1 ’ she said m a peculiar meaning
tone ‘I had a sort of an idea you wouldn’t be m such a hurry to get out of doors
this morning Well, as you are here, I suppose I may as well pay you your
wages ’
‘Thank you,’ said Dorothy
‘And after that,’ added Mrs Creevy, ‘I’ve got a little something as I want to
say to you ’
Dorothy’s heart stirred Did that ‘little something’ mean the longed-for rise
m wages ^ It was just conceivable Mrs Creevy produced a worn, bulgy leather
purse from a locked drawer m the dresser, opened it and licked her thumb
‘Twelve weeks and five days,’ she said ‘Twelve weeks is near enough No
need to be particular to a day That makes six pounds ’
She counted out five dingy pound notes and two ten-shilling notes; then,
examining one of the notes and apparently finding it too clean, she put it back
into her purse and fished out another that had been torn in half She went to
the dresser, got a piece of transparent sticky paper and carefully stuck the two
halves together Then she handed it, together with the other six, to Dorothy
‘There you are, Miss Millborough,’ she said ‘And now, will you just leave
the house at once, pleased I shan’t be wanting you any longer ’
‘You won’t be-’
Dorothy’s entrails seemed to have turned to ice All the blood drained out of
her face But even now, in her terror and despair, she was not absolutely sure of
^o5 A Clergyman's Daughter
the meaning of what had been said to her She still half thought that Mrs
Creevy merely meant that she was to stay out of the house for the rest of the
day
‘You won’t be wanting me any longer? ’ she repeated faintly
‘No I’m getting m another teacher at the beginning of next term And it
isn’t to be expected as I’d keep you through the holidays all free for nothings is
it? ’
‘But you don’t mean that you want me to leave - that you’re dismissing me? ’
‘Of course I do What else did you think I meant? ’
‘But you’ve given me no notice 1 ’ said Dorothy
‘Notice 1 ’ said Mrs Creevys getting angry immediately ‘What’s it got to do
withyoM whether I give you notice or not? You haven’t got a written contracts
have you? ’
‘No I suppose not ’
‘Well, then' You’d better go upstairs and start packing your box It’s no
good your staying any longer, because I haven’t got anything m for your
dinner ’
Dorothy went upstairs and sat down on the side of the bed She was
trembling uncontrollably, and it was some minutes before she could collect her
wits and begin packing She felt dazed The disaster that had fallen upon her
was so sudden, so apparently causeless, that she had difficulty in believing that
it had actually happened But m truth the reason why Mrs Creevy had sacked
her was quite simple and adequate
Not far from Rmgwood House there was a poor, moribund little school
called The Gables, with only seven pupils The teacher was an incompetent
old hack called Miss Allcock, who had been at thirty-eight different schools m
her life and was not fit to have charge of a tame canary But Miss Allcock had
one outstanding talent, she was very good at double-crossing her employers
In these third-rate and fourth-rate private schools a sort of piracy is constantly
gomg on Parents are ‘got round’ and pupils stolen from one school to another
Very often the treachery of the teacher is at the bottom of it. The teacher
secretly approaches the parents one by one (‘Send your child to me and I’ll
take her at ten shillings a term cheaper’), and when she has corrupted a
sufficient number she suddenly deserts and ‘sets up’ on her own, or carries the
children off to another school Miss Allcock had succeeded m stealing three
out of her employer’s seven pupils, and had come to Mrs Creevy with the offer
of them In return, she was to have Dorothy’s place and a fifteen-per-cent
commission on the pupils she brought
There were weeks of furtive chaffering before the bargain was clinched,
Miss Allcock being finally beaten down from fifteen per cent to twelve and a
half Mrs Creevy privately resolved to sack old Allcock the instant she was
certain, that the three children she brought with her would stay
Simultaneously, Miss Allcock was planning to begin stealing old Creevy’s
pupils as soon as she had got a footing in the school.
Having decided to sack Dorothy, it was obviously most important to prevent
her from finding it out For, of course, if she knew what was going to happen,
A Clergyman’s Daughter 407
she would begin stealing pupils on her own account, or at any rate wouldn’t do
a stroke of work for the rest of the term (Mrs Creevy prided herself on
knowing human nature ) Hence the marmalade, the creaky smiles, and the
other ruses to allay Dorothy’s suspicions Anyone who knew the ropes would
have begun thinking of another job the very moment when the dish of
marmalade was pushed across the table
Just half an hour after her sentence of dismissal, Dorothy, carrying her
handbag, opened the front gate It was the fourth of April, a bright blowy day,
too cold to stand about m, with a sky as blue as a hedgesparrow’s egg, and one
of those spiteful spring winds that come tearing along the pavement m sudden
gusts and blow dry, stinging dust into your face Dorothy shut the gate behind
her and began to walk very slowly m the direction of the mam-lme station
She had told Mrs Creevy that she would give her an address to which her
box could be sent, and Mrs Creevy had instantly exacted five shillings for the
carriage So Dorothy had five pounds fifteen in hand, which might keep her for
three weeks with careful economy What she was going to do, except that she
must start by going to London and finding a suitable lodging, she had very
little idea But her first panic had worn off, and she realized that the situation
was not altogether desperate No doubt her father would help her, at any rate
for a while, and at the worst, though she hated even the thought of doing it, she
could ask her cousin’s help a second time Besides, her chances of finding a job
were probably fairly good She was young, she spoke with a genteel accent, and
she was willing to drudge for a servant’s wages-qualities that are much sought
after by the proprietors of fourth-rate schools Very likely all would be well
But that there was an evil time ahead of her, a time of job-huntmg, of
uncertainty and possibly of hunger-that, at any rate, was certain
CHAPTER 5
However, it turned out quite otherwise For Dorothy had not gone five yards
from the gate when a telegraph boy came riding up the street in the opposite
direction, whistling and looking at the names of the houses, He saw the name
Rmgwood House, wheeled his bicycle round, propped it against the kerb, and
accosted Dorothy
‘Miss Mill-burrow live ’ere^’ he said, jerking his head m the direction of
Rmgwood House
‘Yes lam Miss Millborough ’
‘Gotter wait case there’s a answer,’ said the boy, taking an orange-coloured
envelope from his belt
Dorothy put down her bag She had once more begun trembling violently.
And whether this was from joy or fear she was not certain, for two conflicting
408 A Clergyman’s Daughter
thoughts had sprung almost simultaneously into her brain One, ‘This is some
kind of good news’’ The other, ‘Father is seriously ill’’ She managed to tear the
envelope open, and found a telegram which occupied two pages, and which she
had the greatest difficulty in understanding It ran
Rejoice in the lord o ye righteous note of exclamation great news note of exclamation your
reputation absolutely reestablished stop mrs sempnll fallen into the pit that she hath digged stop
action for libel stop no one believes her any longer stop your father wishes you return home
immediately stop am coming up to town myself comma will pick you up if you like stop arriving
shortly after this stop wait for me stop praise him with the loud cymbals note of exclamation much
love stop
No need to look at the signature It was from Mr Warburton, of course
Dorothy felt weaker and more tremulous than ever She was dimly aware the
telegraph boy was asking her something
‘Any answer? ’ he said for the third or fourth time
‘Not today, thank you,’ said Dorothy vaguely
The boy remounted his bicycle and rode off, whistling with extra loudness
to show Dorothy how much he despised her for not tipping him But Dorothy
was unaware of the telegraph’s boy’s scorn The only phrase of the telegram
that she had fully understood was ‘your father wishes you return home
immediately’, and the surprise of it had left her m a semi-dazed condition For
some indefinite time she stood on the pavement, until presently a taxi rolled up
the street, with Mr Warburton inside it He saw Dorothy, stopped the taxi,
jumped out and came across to meet her, beaming He seized her both hands
‘Hullo’’ he cried, and at once threw his arm pseudo-paternally about her and
drew her against him, heedless of who might be looking ‘How are you'* But by
Jove, how thm you’ve got’ I can feel all your ribs Where is this school of
yours? ’
Dorothy, who had not yet managed to get free of his arm, turned partly
round and cast a glance towards the dark windows of Rmgwood House
‘What’ That place? Good God, what a hole’ What have you done with your
luggage? 5 . *
‘It’s inside I’ve left them the money to send it on. I thip^||ffl be all right ’
‘Oh, nonsense' Why pay? We’ll take it with us It can go on top of the taxi ’
‘No, no' Let them send it, I daren’t go back Mrs Creevy would be horribly
angry ’
‘Mrs Creevy? Who’s Mrs Creevy? ’
‘The headmistress-at least, she owns the school ’
‘What, a dragon, is she? Leave her to me- I’ll deal with her Perseus and the
Gorgon, what? You are Andromeda Hi! ’ he called to the taxi-driver
The two of them went up to the front door and Mr Warburton knocked
Somehow, Dorothy never believed that they would succeed m getting her box
from Mrs Creevy. In fact, she half expected to see them come out flying for
their lives, and Mrs Creevy after them with her broom However, in a couple
of minutes they reappeared, the taxi-driver carrying the box on his shoulder
Mr Warburton handed Dorothy into the taxi and, as they sat down, dropped
half af crown into her hand
A Clergyman's Daughter 409
‘What a woman 1 What a woman’’ he said comprehensively as the taxi bore
them away ‘How the devil have you put up with it all this time? ’
‘What is this? ’ said Dorothy, looking at the com
‘Your half-crown that you left to pay for the luggage Rather a feat getting it
out of the old girl, wasn’t it? ’
‘But I left five shillings’’ said Dorothy
‘What’ The woman told me you only left half a crown By God, what
impudence’ We’ll go back and have the half-crown out of her Just to spite
her’’ He tapped on the glass
‘No, no’’ said Dorothy, laying her hand on his arm ‘It doesn’t matter in the
least Let’s get away from here-nght away I couldn’t bear to go back to that
place agai n-eveA'
It was quite true She felt that she would sacrifice not merely half a crown,
but all the money in her possession, sooner than set eyes on Rmgwood House
again So they drove on, leaving Mrs Creevy victorious It would be
interesting to know whether this was another of the occasions when Mrs
Creevy laughed
Mr Warburton insisted on taking the taxi the whole way into London, and
talked so voluminously in the quieter patches of the traffic that Dorothy could
hardly get a word in edgeways It was not till they had reached the inner
suburbs that she got from him an explanation of the sudden change m her
fortunes
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘what is it that’s happened? I don’t understand Why is it
all right for me to go home all of a sudden? Why don’t people believe Mrs
Semprill any longer? Surely she hasn’t confessed? ’
‘Confessed? Not she’ But her sins have found her out, all the same It was
the kind of thing that you pious people would ascribe to the finger of
Providence Cast thy bread upon the waters, and all that She got herself into a
nasty mess-an action for libel We’ve talked of nothing else in Knype Hill for
the last fortnight I though you would have seen somethmg about it in the
newspapers ’
‘I’ve hardly looked at a paper for ages Who brought an action for libel? Not
my father, surely? ’
‘Good gracious, no’ Clergymen can’t bring actions for libel It was the bank
manager Do you remember her favourite story about him-how he was
keeping a woman on the bank’s money, and so forth? ’
‘Yes, I think so ’
‘A few months ago she was foolish enough to put some of it m wntmg. Some
kind friend-some female friend, I presume-took the letter round to the bank
manager He brought an action-Mrs Semprill was ordered to pay a hundred
and fifty pounds damages I don’t suppose she paid a halfpenny, but still,
that’s the end of her career as a scandalmonger. You can go on blackening
people’s reputations for years, and everyone will believe you, more or less,
even when it? s perfectly obvious that you’re lying But once you’ve been
proved a liar in open cour% ymi’se disqualified* so to speak, Mrs SemprUlts
done for, so far aaKnyffe Hill goes. She left thetown betweendays-practically
qio A Clergyman's Daughter
did a moonlight flit, m fact I believe she’s inflicting herself on Bury St
Edmunds at present ’
‘But what has all that got to do with the things she said about you and me? ’
‘Nothing-nothing whatever But why worry? The point is that you’re
reinstated, and all the hags who’ve been smacking their chops over you for
months past are saying, “Poor, poor Dorothy, how shockingly that dreadful
woman has treated her 1 ”’
‘You mean they think that because Mrs Sempnll was telling lies m one case
she must have been telling lies m another? ’
‘No doubt that’s what they’d say if they were capable of reasoning it out At
any rate, Mrs Sempnll’s m disgrace, and so all the people she’s slandered must
be martyrs Even my reputation is practically spotless for the time being ’
‘And do you think that’s really the end of it? Do you think they honestly
believe that it was all an accident-that I only lost my memory and didn’t elope
with anybody? ’
‘Oh, well, I wouldn’t go as far as that In these country places there’s always
a certain amount of suspicion knocking about Not suspicion of anything in
particular, you know, just generalized suspicion A sort of instinctive rustic
dirty-mindedness I can imagine its being vaguely rumoured m the bar parlour
of the Dog and Bottle in ten years’ time that you’ve got some nasty secret m
your past, only nobody can remember what Still, your troubles are over If I
were you I wouldn’t give any explanations till you’re asked for them The
official theory is that you had a bad attack of flu and went away to recuperate I
should stick to that You’ll find they’ll accept it all right Officially, there’s
nothing against you ’
Presently they got to London, and Mr Warburton took Dorothy to lunch at
a restaurant in Coventry Street, where they had a young chicken, roasted, with
asparagus and tiny, pearly- white potatoes that had been ripped untimely from
their mother earth, and also treacle tart and a nice warm bottle of Burgundy,
but what gave Dorothy the most pleasure of all, after Mrs Creevy’s lukewarm
water tea, was the black coffee they had afterwards After lunch they took
another taxi to Liverpool Street Station and caught the 2 45 It was a four-
hour journey to Knype Hill
Mr Warburton insisted on travelling first-class, and would not hear of
Dorothy paying her own fare, he also, when Dorothy was not looking, tipped
the guard to let them have a carnage to themselves It was one of those bright
cold days which are spring or winter according as you are indoors or out From
behind the shut windows of the carnage the too-blue sky looked warm and
kind, and all the slummy wilderness through which the tram was ratthng-the
labyrinths of little dingy-coloured houses, the great chaotic factories, the miry
canals, and derelict bmlding lots littered with rusty boilers and overgrown by
smoke-blackened weeds-all were redeemed and gilded by the sun Dorothy
hardly spoke for the first half-hour of the journey For the moment -she was too
happy to talk She did not even think of anything in particular, but merely sat
there luxuriating in the glass-filtered sunlight, m the comfort of the padded
seat and the feeling of having escaped from Mrs Creevy’s clutches But she was
A Clergyman's Daughter 41 j
aware that this mood could not last very much longer Her contentment, like
the warmth of the wme that she had drunk at lunch, was ebbing away, and
thoughts either painful or difficult to express were taking shape m her mind
Mr Warburton had been watching her face, more observantly than was usual
for him, as though trying to gauge the changes that the past eight months had
worked m her
‘You look older,’ he said finally
‘I am older,’ said Dorothy
‘Yes, but you look- well, more completely grown up Tougher Something
has changed m your face You look-if you’ll forgive the expression-as though
the Girl Guide had been exorcized from you for good and all I hope seven
devils haven’t entered into you instead’’ Dorothy did not answer, and he
added ‘I suppose, as a matter of fact, you must have had the very devil of a
time’’
‘Oh, beastly' Sometimes too beastly for words Do you know that
sometimes-’
She paused She had been about to tell him how she had had to beg for her
food, how she had slept in the streets, how she had been arrested for beggmg
and spent a mght in the police cells, how Mrs Creevy had nagged at her and
starved her But she stopped, because she had suddenly realized that these
were not the things that she wanted to talk about Such things as these, she
perceived, are of no real importance, they are mere irrelevant accidents, not
essentially different from catching a cold in the head or having to wait two
hours at a railway junction They are disagreeable, but they do not matter The
truism that all real happenings are in the mind struck her more forcibly than
ever before, and she said
‘Those things don’t really matter I mean, things like having no money and
not having enough to eat Even when you’re practically starvmg-it doesn’t
change anything inside you ’
‘Doesn’t it’ I’ll take your word for it I should be very sorry to try ’
‘Oh, well, it’s beastly while it’s happening, of course, but it doesn’t make any
real difference, it’s the things that happen inside you that matter ’
‘Meaning’’ said Mr Warburton
‘Oh— things change m your mind And then the whole world changes,
because you look at it differently ’
She was still looking out of the window The tram had drawn clear of the
eastern slums and was running at gathering speed past willow-bordered
streams and low-lying meadows upon whose hedges the first buds made a faint
soft greenness, like a cloud In a field near the line a month-old calf, flat as a
Noah’s Ark animal, was bounding stiff-legged after its mother, and in a cottage
garden an old labourer, with slow, rheumatic movements, was turning over the
soil beneath a pear tree covered with ghostly bloom His spade flashed in the
sun as the train passed. The depressing hymn-line ‘Change and decay in ail
arouhd I see’ moved through Dorothy’s mind It was true what she had said
just now Somethin# had happened m her heart, and the world was a little
emptier, a little poorer from that minute. On such a day as this, last spring or
412 A Clergyman’s Daughter
any earlier spring, how joyfully, and how unthinkingly, she would have
thanked God for the first blue skies and the first flowers of the reviving year 1
And now, seemingly, there was no God to thank, and nothmg-not a flower or a
stone or a blade of grass-nothing m the universe would ever be the same again
‘Things change m your mind,’ she repeated ‘I’ve lost my faith,’ she added,
somewhat abruptly, because she found herself half ashamed to utter the words
‘You’ve lost your zuhaD’ said Mr Warburton, less accustomed than she to
this kind of phraseology
‘My faith Oh, you know what I mean 1 A few months ago, all of a sudden, it
seemed as if my whole mmd had changed Everything that I’d believed m till
then-everythmg-seemed suddenly meaningless and almost silly God-what
I’d meant by God-immortal life. Heaven and Hell-everything It had all
gone And it wasn’t that I’d reasoned it out, it just happened to me It was like
when you’re a child, and one day, for no particular reason, you stop believing
m fairies I just couldn’t go on believing m it any longer ’
‘You never did believe in it,’ said Mr Warburton unconcernedly
‘But I did, really I did* I know you always thought I didn’t-you thought I
was just pretending because I was ashamed to own up But it wasn’t that at all
I believed it just as I believe that I’m sitting in this carriage ’
‘Of course you didn’t, my poor child* How could you, at your age? You were
far too intelligent for that But you’d been brought up in these absurd beliefs,
and you’d allowed yourself to go on thinking, m a sort of way, that you could
still swallow them You’d built yourself a life-pattern-if you’ll excuse a bit of
psychological jargon-that was only possible for a believer, and naturally it was
beginning to be a strain on you In fact, it was obvious all the time what was the
matter with you I should say that in all probability that was why you lost your
memory ’
‘What do you mean? ’ she said, rather puzzled by this remark
He saw that she did not understand, and explained to her that loss of
memory is only a device, unconsciously used, to escape from an impossible
situation The mmd, he said, will play curious tricks when it is in a tight
comer Dorothy had never heard of anything of this kind before, and she could
not at first accept his explanation Nevertheless she considered it for a
moment, and perceived that, even if it were true, it did not alter the
fundamental fact
‘I don’t see that it makes any difference,’ she said finally
‘Doesn’t it? I should have said it made a considerable difference ’
‘But don’t you see, if my faith is gone, what does it matter whether I’ve only
lost it now or whether I’d really lost it years ago? All that matters is that it’s
gone, and I’ve got to begin my life all over again ’
‘Surely I don’t take you to mean,’ said Mr Warburton, ‘that you actually
regret losmg your faith, as you call it? One might as well regret losmg a goitre
Mmd you, I’m speaking, as it were, without the book-as a man who never had
very much faith to lose The little I had passed away quite painlessly at the age
of nine But it’s hardly the kind of thing I should have thought anyone would
regret losing Used you not, if I remember rightly, to do horrible things like
A Clergyman’s Daughter 413
getting up at five in the morning to go to Holy Communion on an empty belly’
Surely you’re not homesick for that kind of thing’ 5
‘I don’t believe m it any longer, if that’s what you mean And I see now that a
lot of it was rather silly But that doesn’t help The point is that all the beliefs I
had are gone, and I’ve nothing to put in their place ’
‘But good God r why do you want to put anything in their place’ You’ve got
rid of a load of superstitious rubbish, and you ought to be glad of it Surely it
doesn’t make you any happier to go about quaking in fear of Hell fire’’
‘But don’t you see-you must see-how different everything is when all of a
sudden the whole world is empty’’
‘Empty’’ exclaimed Mr Warburton ‘What do you mean by saying it’s
empty’ I call that perfectly scandalous in a girl of your age It’s not empty at
all, it’s a deuced sight too full, that’s the trouble with it We’re here today and
gone tomorrow, and we’ve no time to enjoy what we’ve got ’
‘But how can one enjoy anything when all the meaning’s been taken out of
it’’
‘Good gracious 1 What do you want with a meaning’ When I eat my dinner I
don’t do it to the greater glory of God, I do it because I enjoy it The world’s
full of amusing things-books, pictures, wine, travel, fnends-everything I’ve
never seen any meaning m it all, and I don’t want to see one Why not take life
as you find it’’
‘But-’
She broke off, for she saw already that she was wasting words m trying to
make herself clear to him He was quite incapable of understanding her
difficulty-incapable of realizing how a mind naturally pious must recoil from a
world discovered to be meaningless Even the loathsome platitudes of the
pantheists would be beyond his understanding Probably the idea that life was
essentially futile, if he thought of it at all, struck him as rather amusing than
otherwise And yet with all this he was sufficiently acute He could see the
difficulty of her own particular position, and he adverted to it a moment later
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I can see that things are going to be a little awkward for
you when you get home You’re going to be, so to speak, a wolf m sheep’s
clothing Parish work-Mothers’ Meetings, prayers with the dying, and all
that-I suppose it might be a little distasteful at times Are you afraid you won’t
be able to keep it up-is that the trouble’’
‘Oh, no I wasn’t thinking of that I shall go on with it, just the same as
before It’s what I’m most used to Besides, Father needs my help He can’t
afford a curate, and the work’s got to be done ’
‘Then what’s the matter? Is it the hypocrisy that’s worrying you’ Afraid that
the consecrated bread might stick in your throat, and so forth’ I shouldn’t
trouble Half the parsons’ daughters in England are probably m the same
difficulty And quite nine-tenths of the parsons, I should say*’
‘It’s partly that I shall have t<? be always pretending- oh, you can’t imagine
in what ways 1 But that’s not the worst Perhaps that part of it doesn’t matter,
really Perhaps it’s better to be a hypocrite- z/wt kind of hypocnte-than some
things,’
4/4 A Clergyman's Daughter
‘Why do you say that kind of hypocrite? I hope you don’t mean that
pretending to believe is the next best thing to believing? ’
‘Yes I suppose that’s what I do mean Perhaps it’s better-less selfish-to
pretend one believes even when one doesn’t, than to say openly that one’s an
unbeliever and perhaps help turn other people into unbelievers too ’
‘My dear Dorothy,’ said Mr Warburton, ‘your mind, if you’ll excuse my
saying so, is m a morbid condition No, dash it 1 it’s worse than morbid, it’s
downright septic You’ve a sort of mental gangrene hanging over from your
Christian upbringing You tell me that you’ve got rid of these ridiculous
beliefs that were stuffed into you from your cradle upwards, and yet you’re
taking an attitude to life which is simply meaningless without those beliefs Do
you call that reasonable? ’
‘I don’t know No perhaps it’s not But I suppose it’s what comes naturally
to me ’
‘What you’re trying to do, apparently,’ pursued Mr Warburton, ‘is to make
the worst of both worlds You stick to the Christian scheme of things, but you
leave Paradise out of it And I suppose, if the truth were known, there are quite
a lot of your kind wandering about among the rums of C of E You’re
practically a sect m yourselves,’ he added reflectively ‘the Anglican Atheists.
Not a sect I should care to belong to, I must say ’
They talked for a little while longer, but not to much purpose In reality the
whole subject of religious belief and religious doubt was boring and
incomprehensible to Mr Warburton Its only appeal to him was as a pretext for
blasphemy Presently he changed the subject, as though giving up the attempt
to understand Dorothy’s outlook
‘This is nonsense that we’re talking,’ he said ‘You’ve got hold of some very
depressmg ideas, but you’ll grow out of them later on, you know Christianity
isn’t really an incurable disease However, there was something quite different
that I was going to say to you I want you to listen to me for a moment You’re
coming home, after being away eight months, to what I expect you realize is a
rather uncomfortable situation. You had a hard enough life before-at least,
what I should call a hard life- and now that you aren’t quite suqh a good Girl
Guide as you used to be, it’s going to be a great deal harder Now, do you thmk
it’s absolutely necessary to go back to it? ’
‘But I don’t see what else I can do, unless I could get another job I’ve really
no alternative ’
Mr Warburton, with his head cocked a little on one side, gave Dorothy a
rather curious look
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, in a more serious tone than usual, ‘there’s at
least one other alternative that I could suggest to you ’
‘You mean that I could go on being a schoolmistress? Perhaps that’s what I
ought to do, really. I shall come back to it in the end, m any case ’
‘No. I don’t think that’s what I should advise ’
All this time Mr Warburton, unwilling as ever to expose his baldness, had
been wearing his rakish, rather broad-brimmed grey felt hat Now, however,
he took it off and laid it carefully on the empty seat beside him His naked
A Clergyman's Daughter 41$
cranium, with only a wisp or two of golden hair lingering in the
neighbourhood of the ears, looked like some monstrous pink pearl Dorothy
watched him with a slight surprise
‘I am taking my hat off,’ he said, £ in order to let you see me at my very worst
You will understand why m a moment Now, let me offer you another
alternative besides going back to your Girl Guides and your Mothers’ Union,
or imprisoning yourself in some dungeon of a girls’ school ’
‘What do you mean 5 *’ said Dorothy
‘I mean, will you-think well before you answer, I admit there are some very
obvious objections, but-will you marry me 5 ’
Dorothy’s lips parted with surprise Perhaps she turned a little paler With a
hasty, almost unconscious recoil she moved as far away from him as the back of
the seat would allow But he had made no movement towards her He said with
complete equanimity
‘You know, of course, that Dolores [Dolores was Mr Warburton’s ex-
mistress] left me a year ago 5 *’
‘But I can’t, I can’t f ’ exclaimed Dorothy ‘You know I can’t 1 I’m not-like
that I thought you always knew I shan’t ever marry ’
Mr Warburton ignored this remark
‘I grant you,’ he said, still with exemplary calmness, ‘that I don’t exactly
come under the heading of eligible young men I am somewhat older than you
We both seem to be putting our cards on the table today, so I’ll let you into a
great secret and tell you that my age is forty-nine And then I’ve three children
and a bad reputation It’s a marriage that your father would- well, regard with
disfavour And my income is only seven hundred a year But still, don’t you
think it’s worth considering 1 ’
‘I can’t, you know why I can’t 1 ’ repeated Dorothy
She took it for granted that he ‘knew why she couldn’t’, though she had
never explained to him, or to anyone else, why it was impossible for her to
marry Very probably, even if she had explained, he would not have
understood her He went on speaking, not appearing to notice what she had
said
‘Let me put it to you’, he said, ‘in the form of a bargain Of course, I needn’t
tell you that it’s a great deal more than that I’m not a marrying kind of man, as
the saying goes, and I shouldn’t ask you to marry me if you hadn’t a rather
special attraction for me But let me put the business side of it first. You need a
home and a livelihood, I need a wife to keep me m order I’m sick of these
disgusting women I’ve spent my life with, if you’ll forgive my mentioning
them, and I’m rather anxious to settle down A bit late m the day, perhaps, but
better late than never Besides, I need somebody to look after the children, the
bastards , you know I don’t expect you to find me overwhelmingly attractive,’
he added, running a hand reflectively over his bald crown, ‘but on the other
hand I am very easy to get on wifh Immoral people usually are, as a matter of
fact And from your own point of view the scheme would have certain
advantages Why should you spend your life delivering parish magazines and
rubbing nastly old women’s legs with Elliman’s embrocation 5 * You would be
416 A Clergyman’s Daughter
happier married, even to a husband with a bald head and a clouded past
You’ve had a hard, dull life for a girl of your age, and your future isn’t exactly
rosy Have you really considered what your future will be like if you don’t
marry? ’
‘I don’t know I have to some extent,’ she said
As he had not attempted to lay hands on her or to offer any endearments, she
answered his question without repeating her previous refusal He looked out of
the window, and went on m a musing voice, much quieter than his normal
tone, so that at first she could barely hear him above the rattle of the train, but
presently his voice rose, and took on a note of seriousness that she had never
heard in it before, or even imagined that it could hold
‘Consider what your future would be like,’ he repeated ‘It’s the same future
that lies before any woman of your class with no husband and no money Let us
say your father will live another ten years By the end of that time the last
penny of his money will have gone down the sink The desire to squander it
will keep him alive just as long as it lasts, and probably no longer All that time
he will be growing more senile, more tiresome, more impossible to live with,
he will tyrannize over you more and more, keep you shorter and shorter of
money, make more and more trouble for you with the neighbours and the
tradesmen And you will go on with that slavish, worrying life that you have
lived, struggling to make both ends meet, drilling the Girl Guides, reading
novels to the Mothers’ Union, polishing the altar brasses, cadging money for
the organ fund, making brown paper jackboots for the schoolchildren’s plays,
keeping your end up m the vile little feuds and scandals of the church hen-
coop Year after year, winter and summer, you will bicycle from one reeking
cottage to another, to dole out pennies from the poor box and repeat prayers
that you don’t even believe in any longer You will sit through interminable
church services which in the end will make you physically sick with their
sameness and futility Every year your life will be a little bleaker, a little fuller
of those deadly little jobs that are shoved off on to lonely women And
remember that you won’t always be twenty-eight All the while you will be
fading, withering, until one mormng you will look m the glass and realize that
you aren’t a girl any longer, only a skinny old maid. You’ll fight against it, of
course You’ll keep your physical energy and your girlish mannensms-you’ll
keep them just a little bit too long Do you know that type of bnght-too
bright-spmster who says “topping” and “ripping” and “nght-ho”, and
prides herself on being such a good sport, and she’s such a good sport that she
makes everyone feel a little unwelP And she’s so splendidly hearty at tennis
and so handy at amateur theatricals, and she throws herself with a kind of
desperation into her Girl Guide work and her parish visiting, and she’s the life
and soul of Church socials, and always, year after year, she thinks of herself as a
young girl still and never realizes that behind her back everyone laughs at her
for a poor, disappointed old maid? That’s what you’ll become, what you must
become, however much you foresee it and try to avoid it There’s no other
future possible to you unless you marry Women who don’t marry wither
up-r-they wither up like aspidistras in back-parlour windows; and the devilish
A Clergyman's Daughter 417
thing is that they don’t even know that they’re withering ’
Dorothy sat silent and listening with intent and horrified fascination She
did not even notice that he had stood up, with one hand on the door to steady
him against the swaying of the train She was as though hypnotized, not so
much by his voice as by the visions that his words had evoked m her He had
described her life, as it must inevitably be, with such dreadful fidelity that he
seemed actually to have carried her ten years onward into the menacmg future,
and she felt herself no longer a girl full of youth and energy, but a desperate,
worn virgm of thirty-eight As he went on he took her hand, which was lying
idle on the arm of the seat, and even that she scarcely noticed
‘After ten years,’ he continued, ‘your father will die, and he will leave you
with not a penny, only debts You will be nearly forty, with no money, no
profession, no chance of marrying, just a derelict parson’s daughter like the ten
thousand others m England And after that, what do you suppose will become
of you^ You will have to find yourself a job- the sort of job that parsons’
daughters get A nursery governess, for mstance, or companion to some
diseased hag who will occupy herself in thinking of ways to humiliate you Or
you will go back to school-teachmg, English mistress m some grisly girls’
school, seventy-five pounds a year and your keep, and a fortnight in a seaside
boarding-house every August And all the time withering, drying up, growing
more sour and more angular and more friendless And therefore-’
As he said ‘therefore’ he pulled Dorothy to her feet She made no resistance
His voice had put her under a spell As her mind took m the prospect of that
forbidding future, whose emptiness she was far more able to appreciate than
he, such a despair had grown in her that if she had spoken at all it would have
been to say, ‘Yes, I will marry you ’ He put his arm very gently about her and
drew her a little towards him, and even now she did not attempt to resist Her
eyes, half hypnotized, were fixed upon his When he put his arm about her it
was as though he were protecting her, sheltering her, drawing her away from
the brink of grey, deadly poverty and back to the world of friendly and
desirable things-to security and ease, to comely houses and good clothes, to
books and friends and flowers, to summer days and distant lands So for nearly
a minute the fat, debauched bachelor and the thin, spmstensh girl stood face to
face, their eyes meeting, their bodies all but touching, while the tram swayed
them in its motion, and clouds and telegraph poles and bud-misted hedges and
fields green with young wheat raced past unseen,
Mr Warburton tightened his grip and pulled her against him It broke the
spell The visions that had held her helpless-visions of poverty and of escape
from poverty-suddenly vanished and left only a shocked realization of what
was happening to her She was m the arms of a man-a fattish, oldish man' A"
wave of disgust and deadly fear went through her, and her entrails seemed to
shrink and freeze His thick male body was pressing her backwards and
downwards, has large, pink facef smooth, but to her eyes old, was bearing down
upon her own The harsh odour of maleness forced itself into her nostrils She
recoiled. Furry thighs of satyrs! She began to struggle furiously^ though
indeed he made hardly any effort to. retam her, and in a moment she had
4i8 A Clergyman's Daughter
wrenched herself free and fallen back into her seat, white and trembling She
looked up at him with eyes which, from fear and aversion, were for a moment
those of a stranger
Mr Warburton remained on his feet, regarding her with an expression of
resigned, almost amused disappointment He did not seem m the least
distressed As her calmness returned to her she perceived that all he had said
had been no more than a trick to play upon her feelings and cajole her into
saying that she would marry him, and what was stranger yet, that he had said it
without seriously caring whether she married him or not He had, m fact,
merely been amusing himself Very probably the whole thing was only another
of his periodical attempts to seduce her
He sat down, but more deliberately than she, taking care of the creases of his
trousers as he did so
‘If you want to pull the communication cord,’ he said mildly, ‘you had better
let me make sure that I have five pounds in my pocket-book *
After that he was quite himself again, or as nearly himself as anyone could
possibly be after such a scene, and he went on talking without the smallest
symptom of embarrassment His sense of shame, if he had ever possessed one,
had perished many years ago Perhaps it had been killed by overwork m a
lifetime of squalid affairs with women
For an hour, perhaps, Dorothy was ill at ease, but after that the tram reached
Ipswich, where it stopped for a quarter of an hour, and there was the diversion
of going to the refreshment room for a cup of tea For the last twenty miles of
the journey they talked quite amicably Mr Warburton did not refer again to
his proposal of marriage, but as the tram neared Knype Hill he returned, less
seriously than before, to the question of Dorothy’s future
‘So you really propose’, he said ‘to go back to your parish work? “The trivial
round, the common task? ” Mrs Pither’s rheumatism and Mrs Lewm’s corn-
plaster and all the rest of it? The prospect doesn’t dismay you? ’
‘I don’t know- sometimes it does But I expect it’ll be all right once I’m back
at work I’ve got the habit, you see ’
‘And you really feel equal to years of calculated hypocrisy? For that’s what it
amounts to, you know Not afraid of the cat getting out of the bag? Quite sure
you won’t find yourself teaching the Sunday School kids to say the Lord’s
Prayer backwards, or reading Gibbon’s fifteenth chapter to the Mothers’
Umon instead of Gene Stratton Porter? ’
‘I don’t think so Because, you see, I do feel that that kind of work, even if it
means saying prayers that one doesn’t believe m, and even if it means teaching
children things that one doesn’t always think are true-I do feel that m a way
it’s useful. ’
‘Useful? ’ said Air Warburton distastefully ‘You’re a little too fond of that
depressing word “useful” Hypertrophy of the sense of duty- that’s what’s the
matter with you Now, to me, it seems the merest common sense to have a bit
of fun while the going’s good. ’
‘That’s just hedonism,’ Dorothy objected
‘M^ dear child, can you show me a philosophy of life that isn’t hedonism?
A Clergyman’s Daughter 419
Your verminous Christian samts are the biggest hedonists of all They’re out
for an eternity of bliss, whereas we poor sinners don’t hope for more than a few
years of it Ultimately we’re all trying for a bit of fun, but some people take it in
such perverted forms Your notion of fun seems to be massaging Mrs Pither’s
legs ’
‘It’s not that exactly, but-oh 1 somehow I can’t explain'’
What she would have said was that though her faith had left her, she had not
changed, could not change, did not want to change, the spiritual background of
her mind, that her cosmos, though now it seemed to her empty and
meaningless, was still in a sense the Christian cosmos, that the Christian way of
life was still the way that must come naturally to her But she could not put this
into words, and felt that if she tried to do so he would probably begin making
fun of her So she concluded lamely
‘Somehow I feel that it’s better for me to go on as I was before ’
‘j Exactly the same as before? The whole bill of fare? The Girl Guides, the
Mothers’ Umon, the Band of Hope, the Companionship of Marriage, parish
visiting and Sunday School teaching. Holy Communion twice a week and here
we go round the doxology-bush, chanting Gregorian plain-song? You’re quite
certain you can manage it? ’
Dorothy smiled m spite of herself ‘Not plain-song Father doesn’t like it ’
‘And you think that, except for your inner thoughts, your life will be
precisely what it was before you lost your faith? There will be no change m
your habits? ’
Dorothy thought Yes, there would be changes m her habits, but most of
them would be secret ones The memory of the disciplinary pin crossed her
mind It had always been a secret from everyone except herself and she decided
not to mention it
‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘perhaps at Holy Communion I shall kneel down on
Miss Mayfill’s right instead of on her left ’
2
A week had gone by
Dorothy rode up the hill from the town and wheeled her bicycle in at the
Rectory gate It was a fine evening, clear and cold, and the sun, unclouded, was
sinking in remote, greenish skies Dorothy noticed that the ash tree by the gate
was m bloom, with clotted dark red blossoms that looked like festerings from a
wound
She was rather tired She had had a busy week of it, what with visiting all the
women on her list in turn and trying to get the parish affairs into some kind of
order again. Everything was in a fearful mess after her absence* The church
420 A Clergyman's Daughter
was dirty beyond all belief-in fact, Dorothy had had to spend the best part of a
day cleaning up with scrubbing-brushes, broom and dustpan, and the beds of
‘mouse dirts’ that she had found behind the organ made her wince when she
thought of them (The reason why the mice came there was because Georgie
Frew, the organ-blower, would bring penny packets of biscuits into church and
eat them during the sermon ) All the Church associations had been neglected,
with the result that the Band of Hope and the Companionship of Marriage had
now given up the ghost, Sunday School attendance had dropped by half, and
there was internecine warfare going on in the Mothers’ Union because of some
tactless remark that Miss Foote had made The belfry was m a worse state than
ever The parish magazine had not been delivered regularly and the money for
it had not been collected None of the accounts of the Church Funds had been
properly kept up, and there was nineteen shillings unaccounted for m all, and
even the pansh registers were m a muddle-and so on and so on, ad infinitum
The Rector had let everymg slide
Dorothy had been up to her eyes m work from the moment of reaching
home Indeed, things had slipped back into their old routine with astonishing
swiftness. It was as though it had been only yesterday that she had gone away.
Now that the scandal had blown over, her return to Knype Hill had aroused
very little curiosity Some of the women on her visiting list, particularly Mrs
Pither, were genmnely glad to see her back, and Victor Stone, perhaps, seemed
just a little ashamed of havmg temporarily believed Mrs SemprilFs libel, but
he soon forgot it in recounting to Dorothy his latest triumph in the Church
Times Various of the coffee-ladies, of course, had stopped Dorothy in the
street with ‘My dear, how very nice to see you back again’ You have been away
a long time! And you know, dear, we all thought it such a shame when that
horrible woman was going round telling those stories about you But I do hope
you’ll understand, dear, that whatever anyone else may have thought, I never
believed a word of them’, etc. , etc , etc But nobody had asked her the
uncomfortable questions that she had been fearing ‘I’ve been teaching m a
school near London’ had satisfied everyone, they had not even asked her the
name of the school. Never, she saw, would she have to confess that she had
slept in Trafalgar Square and been arrested for begging The fact is that people
who live m small country towns have only a very dim conception of anything
that happens more than ten miles from their own front door The world
outside is a terra incognita , inhabited, no doubt, by dragons and
anthropophagi, but not particularly interesting
Even Dorothy’s father had greeted her as though she had only been away for
the week-end He was in his study when she arrived, musingly smoking his
pipe in front of the grandfather clock, whose glass, smashed by the
charwoman’s broom-handle four months ago, was still unmended As
Dorothy came into the room he took his pipe out of his mouth and put it away
in his pocket with an absent-minded, old-mannish movement He looked a
great deal older, Dorothy thought
‘So here you are at last,’ he said ‘Did you have a good journey? ’
- Dorothy put her arms round his neck and touched his silver-pale cheek with
A Clergyman's Daughter 421
her lips As she disengaged herself he patted her shoulder with a just
perceptible trace more affection than usual
‘What made you take it into your head to run away like that? ’ he said
‘I told you, Father-I lost my memory 9
‘Hm,’ said the Rector, and Dorothy saw that he did not believe her, never
would believe her, and that on many and many a future occasion, when he was
in a less agreeable mood than at present, that escapade would be brought up
against her ‘Well , 9 he added, ‘when you’ve taken your bag upstairs, just bring
your typewriter down here, would you? I want you to type out my sermon 9
Not much that was of interest had happened m the town Ye Olde Tea
Shoppe was enlarging its premises, to the further disfigurement of the High
Street Mrs Pither’s rheumatism was better (thanks to the angelica tea, no
doubt), but Mr Pither had ‘been under the doctor 9 and they were afraid he had
stone in the bladder Mr Blifil- Gordon was now m Parliament, a docile
deadhead on the back benches of the Conservative Party Old Mr Tombs had
died just after Christmas, and Miss Foote had taken over seven of his cats and
made heroic efforts to find homes for the others Eva Twiss, the niece of Mr
Twiss the ironmonger, had had an illegitimate baby, which had died Proggett
had dug the kitchen garden and sowed a few seeds, and the broad beans and the
first peas were just showing The shop-debts had begun to mount up again
after the creditors’ meeting, and there was six pounds owing to Cargill Victor
Stone had had a controversy with Professor Coulton m the Church Times,
about the Holy Inquisition, and utterly routed him Ellen’s eczema had been
very bad all the winter Walph Blifil-Gordon had had two poems accepted by
the London Mercury
Dorothy went into the conservatory She had got a big job on
hand-costumes for a pageant that the schoolchildren were gomg to have on St
George’s Day, in aid of the organ fund Not a penny had been paid towards the
organ during the past eight months, and it was perhaps as well that the Rector
always threw the organ-people’s bills away unopened, for their tone was
growing more and more sulphurous Dorothy had racked her brams for a way
of raising some money, and finally decided on a historical pageant, beginning
with Julius Caesar and ending with the Duke of Wellington They might raise
two pounds by a pageant, she thought- with luck and a fine day, they might
even raise three pounds*
She looked round the conservatory She had hardly been in here since
coming home, and evidently nothing had been touched during her absence
Her things were lying just as she had left them, but the dust was thick on
everything. Her sewing-machine was on the table amid the old familiar litter of
scraps of cloth, sheets of brown paper, cotton-reels and pots of paint, and
though the needle had rusted, the thread was still in it And, yes* there were the
jackboots that she had been making the night she went away. She picked one of
them up and looked at it. Something stirred m her heart Yes, say what you
like, they were good jackboots! What a pity they had never been used!
However, they would come in useful for the pageant For Charles II,
perhaps-or, no, better not have Charles II, have Oliver Cromwell instead;
422 A Clergyman’s Daughter
because if you had Oliver Cromwell you wouldn’t have to make him a wig
Dorothy lighted the oilstove, found her scissors and two sheets of brown
paper, and sat down There was a mountain of clothes to be made Better start
off with Julius Caesar’s breastplate, she thought It was always that wretched
armour that made all the trouble' What did a Roman soldier’s armour look
like? Dorothy made an effort, and called to mind the statue of some idealized
curly-bearded emperor in the Roman Room at the British Museum You
might make a sort of rough breastplate out of glue and brown paper, and glue
narrow strips of paper across it to represent the plates of the armour, and then
silver them over No helmet to make, thank goodness' Julius Caesar always
wore a laurel wreath-ashamed of his baldness, no doubt, like Mr Warburton
But what about greaves? Did they wear greaves in Julius Caesar’s time? And
boots? Was a caligum a boot or a sandal?
After a few moments she stopped with the shears resting on her knee A
thought which had been haunting her like some mexorcizable ghost at every
unoccupied moment durmg the past week had returned once more to distract
her It was the thought of what Mr Warburton had said to her in the tram-of
what her life was going to be like hereafter, unmarried and without money
It was not that she was m any doubt about the external facts of her future
She could see it all quite clearly before her Ten years, perhaps, as unsalaried
curate, and then back to school-teaching Not necessarily in qmte such a
school as Mrs Creevy’s-no doubt she could do something rather better for
herself than that-but at least in some more or less shabby, more or less prison-
like school, or perhaps m some even bleaker, even less human kind of
drudgery Whatever happened, at the very best, she had got to face the destiny
that is common to all lonely and penniless women ‘The Old Maids of Old
England’, as somebody called them She was twenty-eight-just old enough to
enter their ranks
But it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter' That was the thing that you could
never drive into the heads of the Mr Warburtons of this world, not if you
talked to them for a thousand years, that mere outward things like poverty and
drudgery, and even loneliness, don’t matter m themselves It is the things that
happen in your heart that matter For just a moment-an evil moment-while
Mr Warburton was talking to her in the tram, she had known the fear of
poverty But she had mastered it, it was not a thing worth worrying about It
was not because of that that she had got to stiffen her courage and remake the
whole structure of her mmd
No, it was something far more fundamental, it was the deadly emptmesis that
she had discovered at the heart of things. She thought of how a year ago she
had sat in this chair, with these scissors in her hand, doing precisely what she
was doing now; and yet it was as though then and now she had been two
different beings Where had she gone, that well-meaning, ridiculous girl who
had prayed ecstatically m summer-scented fields and pricked her arm as a
punishment for sacrilegious thoughts? And where is any of ourselves of even a
year ago^And yet after all-and here lay the trouble- she was the same girl
Beliefs change, thoughts change, but there is some inner part of the soul that
A Clergyman’s Daughter 423
does not change Faith vanishes, but the need for faith remains the same as
before
And given only faith, how can anything else matter? How can anything
dismay you if only there is some purpose m the world which you can serve, and
which, while serving it, you can understand? Your whole life is illumined by
the sense of purpose There is no weariness m your heart, no doubts, no feeling
of futility, no Baudelairean ennui waiting for unguarded hours Every act is
significant, every moment sanctified, woven by faith as mto a pattern, a fabric
of never-ending joy
She began to meditate upon the nature of life You emerged from the womb,
you lived sixty or seventy years, and then you died and rotted And m every
detail of your life, if no ultimate purpose redeemed it, there was a quality of
greyness, of desolation, that could never be described, but which you could
feel like a physical pang at your heart Life, if the grave really ends it, is
monstrous and dreadful No use trying to argue it away Think of life as it
really is, think of the details of life, and then think that there is no meaning m it,
no purpose, no goal except the grave Surely only fools or self-deceivers, or
those whose lives are exceptionally fortunate, can face that thought without
flinching?
She shifted her position in her chair But after all there must be some
meaning, some purpose in it all 1 The world cannot be an accident. Everything
that happens must have a cause-ultimately, therefore, a purpose Since you
exist, God must have created you, and since He created you a conscious being.
He must be conscious The greater doesn’t come out of the less He created
you, and He will kill you, for His oWn purpose. But that purpose is inscrutable
It is in the nature of thmgs that you can never discover it, and perhaps even if
you did discover it you would be averse to it Your life and death, it may be, are
a single note in the eternal orchestra that plays for His diversion And suppose
you don’t like the tune? She thought of that dreadful unfrocked clergyman m
Trafalgar Square Had she dreamed the things he said, or had he really said
them? ‘Therefore with Demons and Archdemons and with all the company of
Hell’ But that was silly, really For your not liking the tune was also part of the
tune
Her mind struggled with the problem, while perceiving that there was no
solution There was, she saw clearly, no possible substitute for faith; no pagan
acceptance of life as sufficient to itself, no pantheistic cheer-up stuff, no
pseudo-religion of ‘progress’ with visions of glittering Utopias and ant-heaps
of steel and concrete It is all or nothing Either life on earth is a preparation for
something greater and more lasting, or it is meaningless, dark, and dreadful
Dorothy started. A frizzling sound was coming from the glue-pot She had
forgotten to put any water in the saucepan, and the glue was beginning to bum
She took the saucepan, hastened to the scullery sink to replenish it, then
brought it back and put it on the oilstove again I simply must get that
breastplate done before supper 1 she thought After Julius Caesar there was
William the Conqueror to be thought of More armour! And presently she
must go along to the kitchen and remind EUen to boil some potatoes to go with
424 A Clergyman's Daughter
the mmced beef for supper, also there was her ‘memo list’ to be written out for
tomorrow She shaped the two halves of the breastplate, cut out the armholes
and neckholes, and then stopped agam
Where had she got to? She had been saying that if death ends all, then there
is no hope and no meaning m anything Well, what then?
The action of going to the scullery and refilling the saucepan had changed
the tenor of her thoughts She perceived, for a moment at least, that she had
allowed herself to fall into exaggeration and self-pity What a fuss about
nothing, after all* As though m reality there were not people beyond number in
the same case as herself 1 All over the world, thousands, millions of them,
people who had lost their faith without losing their need of faith ‘Half the
parsons’ daughters m England,’ Mr Warburton had said He was probably
right And not only parsons’ daughters, people of every description-people m
illness and loneliness and failure, people leading thwarted, discouraging
lives-people who needed faith to support them, and who hadn’t got it Perhaps
even nuns m convents, scrubbmg floors and singing Ave Marias , secretly
unbelieving
And how cowardly, after all, to regret a superstition that you had got rid
of-to want to believe something that you knew m your bones to be untrue 1
And yet-'
Dorothy had put down her scissors Almost from force of habit, as though
her return home, which had not restored her faith, had restored the outward
habits of piety, she knelt down beside her chair She buried her face m her
hands She began to pray
‘Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief Lord, I believe, I believe, help
Thou my unbelief ’
It was useless, absolutely useless Even as she spoke the words she was aware
of their uselessness, and was half ashamed of her action She raised her head
And at that moment there stole into her nostrils a warm, evil smell, forgotten
these eight months but unutterably familiar-the smell of glue The water in
the saucepan was bubbling noisily Dorothy jumped to her feet and felt the
handle of the glue-brush- The glue was softemng-would be liquid m another
five minutes
The grandfather clock m her father’s study struck six. Dorothy started She
realized that she had wasted twenty minutes, and her conscience stabbed her
so hard that all the questions that had been worrymg her fled out of her mmd
What on earth have I been doing all this time? she thought, and at that moment
it really seemed to her that she did not know what she had been doing. She
admonished herself Come on, Dorothy 1 No slacking, please 1 You’ve got to get
that breastplate done before supper She sat down, filled her mouth with pins
and began pinning the two halves of the breastplate together, to get it into
shape before the glue should be ready
The smell of glue was the answer to her prayer. She did not know this. She
did not reflect, consciously, that the solution to her difficulty lay m accepting
the fact that there was no solution; that if one gets on with the job that lies to
hand, the ultimate purpose of the job fades into insignificance, that faith and
A Clergyman' s Daughter _ 425
no faith are very much the same provided that one is doing what is customary,
useful, and acceptable She could not formulate these thoughts as yet, she
could only live them Much later, perhaps, she would formulate them and
draw comfort from them
There was still a minute or two before the glue would be ready to use
Dorothy finished pinning the breastplate together, and in the same instant
began mentally sketching the innumerable costumes that were yet to be made
After William the Conqueror-was it chain mail in William the Conqueror’s
day? -there were Robin Hood- Lincoln Green and a bow and arrow-and
Thomas k Becket m his cope and mitre, and Queen Elizabeth’s ruff, and a
cocked hat for the Duke of Wellington And I must go and see about those
potatoes at half past six, she thought And there was her ‘memo list’ to be
written out for tomorrow Tomorrow was Wednesday-mustn’t forget to set
the alarm clock for half past five She took a slip of paper and began writing out
the ‘memo list’
70c HC
Mrs J baby next month go and see her
Breakfast Bacon
She paused to think of fresh items Mrs J was Mrs Jowett, the blacksmith’s
wife, she came sometimes to be churched after her babies were born, but only
if you coaxed her tactfully beforehand And I must take old Mrs Frew some
paregoric lozenges, Dorothy thought, and then perhaps she’ll speak to Georgie
and stop him eating those biscuits during the sermon She added Mrs Frew to
her list And then what about tomorrow’s dinner-luncheon? We simply must
pay Cargill something* she thought And tomorrow was the day of the
Mothers’ Union tea, and they had finished the novel that Miss Foote had been
reading to them The question was, what to get for them next? There didn’t
seem to be any more books by Gene Stratton Porter, their favourite What
about Warwick Deeping? Too highbrow, perhaps? And I must ask Proggett to
get us some young cauliflowers to plant out, she thought finally
The glue had liquefied Dorothy took two fresh sheets of brown paper,
sliced them into narrow strips, and-rather awkwardly, because of the
difficulty of keeping the breastplate convex-pasted the strips horizontally
across it, back and front By degrees it stiffened under her hands When she
had reinforced it all over she set it on end to look at it. It really wasn’t half bad*
One more coatmg of paper and it would be almost like real armour We must
make that pageant a success* she thought What a pity we can’t borrow a horse
from somebody and have Boadicea in her chariot* We might make five pounds
if we had a really good chariot, with scythes on the wheels And what about
Hengist and Horsa? Cross-gartering and winged helmets Dorothy sliced two
more sheets of brown paper mto strips, and took up the breastplate to give it its
final coating.
