’ sighed Mrs Semprill ‘But, my dear Dorothy, as though one
ever wanted or needed to look 1 The trouble is that one can’t help seeing all the
dreadful wickedness that goes on m this town ’
Mrs Semprill was always genuinely astonished if you accused her of looking
for subjects for scandal Nothing, she would protest, pained her more than the
A Clergyman's Daughter 281
spectacle of human wickedness, but it was constantly forced upon her
unwilling eyes, and only a stern sense of duty impelled her to make it public
Dorothy’s remarks, so far from silencing her, merely set her talking about the
general corruption of Knype Hill, of which Molly Freeman’s misbehaviour
was only one example And so from Molly Freeman and her six young men she
proceeded to Dr Gaythorne, the town medical officer, who had got two of the
nurses at the Cottage Hospital with child, and then to Mrs Corn, the Town
Clerk’s wife, found lymg m a field dead drunk on eau-de-Cologne, and then to
the curate at St Wedekind’s m Millborough, who had involved himself m a
grave scandal with a choirboy, and so it went on, one thing leading to another
For there was hardly a soul m the town or the surrounding country about
whom Mrs Sempnll could not disclose some festering secret if you listened to
her long enough
It was noticeable that her stories were not only dirty and libellous, but they
had nearly always some monstrous tinge of perversion about them Compared
with the ordinary scandalmongers of a country town, she was Freud to
Boccaccio From hearing her talk you would have gathered the impression that
Knype Hill with its thousand inhabitants held more of the refinements of evil
than Sodom, Gomorrah, and Buenos Aires put together Indeed, when you
reflected upon the lives led by the inhabitants of this latter-day City of the
Plam-from the manager of the local bank squandering his clients’ money on
the children of his second and bigamous marriage, to the barmaid of the Dog
and Bottle serving drinks in the taproom dressed only in high-heeled satin
slippers, and from old Miss Channon, the music-teacher, with her secret gm
bottle and her anonymous letters, to Maggie White, the baker’s daughter, who
had borne three children to her own brother-when you considered these
people, all, young and old, rich and poor, sunken in monstrous and Babylonian
vices, you wondered that fire did not come down from Heaven and consume
the town forthwith But if you listened just a little longer, the catalogue of
obscenities became first monstrous and then unbearably dull For in a town m
which everyone is either a bigamist, a pederast, or a drug-taker, the worst
scandal loses its sting In fact, Mrs Sempnll was something worse than a
slanderer, she was a bore
As to the extent to which her stories were believed, it varied At times the
word would go round that she was a foul-mouthed old cat and everything she
said was a pack of lies, at other times one of her accusations would take effect
on some unfortunate person, who would need months or even years to live it
down She had certainly been instrumental m breaking off not less than half a
dozen engagements and starting innumerable quarrels between husbands and
wives
All this while Dorothy had been making abortive efforts to shake Mrs
Semprill off.
ever wanted or needed to look 1 The trouble is that one can’t help seeing all the
dreadful wickedness that goes on m this town ’
Mrs Semprill was always genuinely astonished if you accused her of looking
for subjects for scandal Nothing, she would protest, pained her more than the
A Clergyman's Daughter 281
spectacle of human wickedness, but it was constantly forced upon her
unwilling eyes, and only a stern sense of duty impelled her to make it public
Dorothy’s remarks, so far from silencing her, merely set her talking about the
general corruption of Knype Hill, of which Molly Freeman’s misbehaviour
was only one example And so from Molly Freeman and her six young men she
proceeded to Dr Gaythorne, the town medical officer, who had got two of the
nurses at the Cottage Hospital with child, and then to Mrs Corn, the Town
Clerk’s wife, found lymg m a field dead drunk on eau-de-Cologne, and then to
the curate at St Wedekind’s m Millborough, who had involved himself m a
grave scandal with a choirboy, and so it went on, one thing leading to another
For there was hardly a soul m the town or the surrounding country about
whom Mrs Sempnll could not disclose some festering secret if you listened to
her long enough
It was noticeable that her stories were not only dirty and libellous, but they
had nearly always some monstrous tinge of perversion about them Compared
with the ordinary scandalmongers of a country town, she was Freud to
Boccaccio From hearing her talk you would have gathered the impression that
Knype Hill with its thousand inhabitants held more of the refinements of evil
than Sodom, Gomorrah, and Buenos Aires put together Indeed, when you
reflected upon the lives led by the inhabitants of this latter-day City of the
Plam-from the manager of the local bank squandering his clients’ money on
the children of his second and bigamous marriage, to the barmaid of the Dog
and Bottle serving drinks in the taproom dressed only in high-heeled satin
slippers, and from old Miss Channon, the music-teacher, with her secret gm
bottle and her anonymous letters, to Maggie White, the baker’s daughter, who
had borne three children to her own brother-when you considered these
people, all, young and old, rich and poor, sunken in monstrous and Babylonian
vices, you wondered that fire did not come down from Heaven and consume
the town forthwith But if you listened just a little longer, the catalogue of
obscenities became first monstrous and then unbearably dull For in a town m
which everyone is either a bigamist, a pederast, or a drug-taker, the worst
scandal loses its sting In fact, Mrs Sempnll was something worse than a
slanderer, she was a bore
As to the extent to which her stories were believed, it varied At times the
word would go round that she was a foul-mouthed old cat and everything she
said was a pack of lies, at other times one of her accusations would take effect
on some unfortunate person, who would need months or even years to live it
down She had certainly been instrumental m breaking off not less than half a
dozen engagements and starting innumerable quarrels between husbands and
wives
All this while Dorothy had been making abortive efforts to shake Mrs
Semprill off.
Orwell - A Clergyman's Daughter
CHAPTER I
I
As the alarm clock on the chest of drawers exploded like a horrid little bomb of
bell metal, Dorothy, wrenched from the depths of some complex, troubling
dream, awoke with a start and lay on her back looking mto the darkness m
extreme exhaustion
The alarm clock continued its nagging, feminine clamour, which would go
on for five minutes or thereabouts if you did not stop it Dorothy was aching
from head to foot, and an insidious and contemptible self-pity, which usually
seized upon her when it was time to get up m the morning, caused her to bury
her head under the bedclothes and try to shut the hateful noise out of her ears
She struggled against her fatigue, however, and, according to her custom,
exhorted herself sharply in the second person plural Come on, Dorothy, up
you get 1 No snoozing, please 1 Proverbs vi, 9 Then she remembered that if the
noise went on any longer it would wake her father, and with a hurried
movement she bounded out of bed, seized the clock from the chest of drawers,
and turned off the alarm It was kept on the chest of drawers precisely in order
that she should have to get out of bed to . silence it Still m darkness, she knelt
down at her bedside and repeated the Lord’s Prayer, but rather distractedly,
her feet being troubled by the cold
It was just half past five, and coldish for an August morning Dorothy (her
name was Dorothy Hare, and she was the only child of the Reverend Charles
Hare, Rector of St Athelstan’s, Knype Hill, Suffolk) put on her aged
flannelette dressing-gown and felt her way downstairs There was a chill
morning smell of dust, damp plaster, and the fried dabs from yesterday’s
supper, and from either side of the passage on the second floor she could hear
the antiphonal snoring of her father and of Ellen, the maid of all work With
care-for the kitchen table had a nasty trick of reaching out of the darkness and
banging you on the hip-bone-Dorothy felt her way into the kitchen, lighted
the candle on the mantelpiece, and, still aching with fatigue, knelt down and
raked the ashes out of the range
The kitchen fire was a ‘beast’ to light The chimney was crooked and there-
fore perpetually half choked, and the fire, before it would light, expected to be
dosed with a cupful of kerosene, like a drunkard’s morning nip of gin Having
set the kettle to boil for her father’s shaving-water, Dorothy went upstairs and
turned on her bath. Ellen was still snoring, with heavy youthful snores She
was a good hard-working servant once she was awake, but she was one of
those girls whom the Devil and all his angels cannot get out of bed before
A Clergyman’ s Daughter
256
seven in the morning
Dorothy filled the bath as slowly as possible-the splashing always woke her
father if she turned on the tap too fast- and stood for a moment regarding the
pale, unappetizing pool of water Her body had gone goose-flesh all over She
detested cold baths, it was for that very reason that she made it a rule to take all
her baths cold from April to November Putting a tentative hand into the
water-and it was horribly cold- she drove herself forward with her usual
exhortations Come on, Dorothy! i n you go' No funking, please' Then she
stepped resolutely into the bath, sat down and let the icy girdle of water
slide up her body and immerse her all except her hair, which she had twisted
up behind her head The next moment she came to the surface gasping and
wriggling, and had no sooner got her breath back than she remembered her
‘memo list 5 , which she had brought down in her dressing-gown pocket and
intended to read She reached out for it, and, leaning over the side of the bath,
waist deep m icy water, read through the ‘memo list 5 by the light of the candle
on the chair
It ran
70c HC
Mrs T baby? Must visit
Breakfast Bacon Must ask father money (P)
Ask Ellen what stuff kitchen father’s tonic nb to ask about stuff for curtains
at Solepipe’s
Visiting call on Mrs P cutting from Daily M angelica tea good for
rheumatism Mrs L’s cornplaster
12 oc Rehearsal Charles I nb to order £lb glue 1 pot aluminium paint
Dinner (crossed out) Luncheon ?
Take round Parish Mag nb Mrs F owes 3/6d
4 30 pm Mothers 5 TJ tea don’t forget 2\ yards casement cloth
Flowers for church nb i tm Brasso
Supper Scrambled eggs
Type Father’s sermon what about new ribbon typewriter?
nb to fork between peas bindweed awful
Dorothy got out of her bath, and as she dried herself with a towel hardly
bigger than a table napkm-they could never afford decent-sized towels at the
Rectory-her hair came unpinned and fell down over her collar-bones in two
heavy strands It was thick, fine, exceedingly pale hair, and it was perhaps as
well that her father had forbidden her to bob it, for it was her only positive
beauty. For the rest, she was a girl of middle height, rather thin, but strong and
shapely, and her face was her weak point It was a thin, blonde, unremarkable
kind of face, with pale eyes and a nose just a shade too long, if you looked
closely you could see crow’s feet round the eyes, and the mouth, when it was in
repose, looked tired. Not definitely a spmstensh face as yet, but it certainly
would be so in a few years’ time Nevertheless, strangers commonly took her to
be several years younger than her real age (she was not quite twenty-eight)
A Clergymans Daughter 257
because of the expression of almost childish earnestness in her eyes Her left
forearm was spotted with tiny red marks like insect bites
Dorothy put on her nightdress again and cleaned her teeth-plam water, of
course, better not to use toothpaste before H C After all, either you are fasting
or you aren’t The R C s are quite right there-and, even as she did so,
suddenly faltered and stopped She put her toothbrush down A deadly pang,
an actual physical pang, had gone through her viscera
She had remembered, with the ugly shock with which one remembers
something disagreeable for the first time m the morning, the bill at Cargill’s,
the butcher’s, which had been owing for seven months That dreadful bill— it
might be nineteen pounds or even twenty, and there was hardly the remotest
hope of paying it- was one of the chief torments of her life At all hours of the
night or day it was waiting just round the corner of her consciousness, ready to
spring upon her and agonize her, and with it came the memory of a score of
lesser bills, mounting up to a figure of which she dared not even think Almost
involuntarily she began to pray, ‘Please God, let not Cargill send in his bill
again today 1 ’ but the next moment she decided that this prayer was worldly
and blasphemous, and she asked forgiveness for it Then she put on her
dressing-gown and ran down to the kitchen in hopes of putting the bill out of
mind
The fire had gone out, as usual Dorothy relaid it, dirtying her hands with
coal-dust, dosed it afresh with kerosene and hung about anxiously until the
kettle boiled Father expected his shaving-water to be ready at a quarter past
six Just seven minutes late, Dorothy took the can upstairs and knocked at her
father’s door
‘Come m, come in 1 ’ said a muffled, irritable voice
The room, heavily curtained, was stuffy, with a masculine smell The Rector
had lighted the candle on his bed-table, and was lying on his side, looking at his
gold watch, which he had just drawn from beneath his pillow His hair was as
white and thick as thistledown One dark bright eye glanced irritably over his
shoulder at Dorothy
‘Good morning, father ’
‘I do wish, Dorothy,’ said the Rector mdistinctly-his voice always sounded
muffled and senile until he put his false teeth m-‘yau would make some effort
to get Ellen out of bed m the mornings Or else be a little more punctual
yourself ’
‘I’m so sorry. Father The kitchen fire kept going out ’
‘Very well 1 Put it down on the dressing-table Put it down and draw those
curtains ’
It was daylight now, but a dull, clouded morning Dorothy hastened up to
her room and dressed herself with the lightning speed which she found neces-
sary six mornings out of seven There was only a tiny square of mirror m the
room, and even that she did not use She simply hung her gold cross about her
neck-plain gold cross, no crucifixes, please'-twisted her hair into a knot
behind, stuck a number of hairpins rather sketchily into it, and threw her
clothes (grey jersey, threadbare Irish tweed epat and skirt, stockings not quite
2 $8 A Clergyman's Daughter
matching the coat and skirt, and much- worn brown shoes) on to herself in the
space of about three minutes She had got to e do out’ the dmmg-room and her
father’s study before church, besides saying her prayers m preparation for
Holy Communion, which took her not less than twenty minutes
When she wheeled her bicycle out of the front gate the morning was still
overcast, and the grass sodden with heavy dew Through the mist that
wreathed the hillside St Athelstan’s Church loomed dimly, like a leaden
sphinx, its single bell tolling funereally boom! boom' boom' Only one of the
bells was now m active use, the other seven had been unswung from their cage
and had lam silent these three years past, slowly splintering the floor of the
belfry beneath their weight In the distance, from the mists below, you could
hear the offensive clatter of the bell in the R C church -a nasty, cheap, tinny
little thing which the Rector of St Athelstan’s used to compare with a muffin-
bell
Dorothy mounted her bicycle and rode swiftly up the hill, leaning over her
handlebars The bridge of her thin nose was pink in the morning cold A
redshank whistled overhead, invisible against the clouded sky Early in the
morning my song shall rise to Thee' Dorothy propped her bicycle against the
lychgate, and, finding her hands still grey with coal-dust, knelt down and
scrubbed them clean m the long wet grass between the graves Then the bell
stopped ringing, and she jumped up and hastened into church, just as
Proggett, the sexton, in ragged cassock and vast labourer’s boots, was
clumping up the aisle to take his place at the side altar
The church was very cold, with a scent of candle-wax and ancient dust It
was a large church, much too large for its congregation, and ruinous and more
than half empty The three narrow islands of pews stretched barely half-way
down the nave, and beyond them were great wastes of bare stone floor in which
a few worn inscriptions marked the sites of ancient graves The roof over the
chancel was sagging visibly, beside the Church Expenses box two fragments of
riddled beam explained mutely that this was due to that mortal foe of
Christendom, the death-watch beetle The light filtered, pale-coloured,
through windows of anaemic glass Through the open south door you could
see a ragged cypress and the boughs of a lime-tree, greyish m the sunless air
and swaying faintly
As usual, there was only one other communicant-old Miss Mayfill, of The
Grange The attendance at Holy Communion was so bad that the Rector could
not even get any boys to serve him, except on Sunday mornings, when the boys
liked showmg off m front of the congregation m their cassocks and surplices
Dorothy went into the pew behind Miss Mayfill, and, m penance for some sm
of yesterday, pushed away the hassock and knelt on the bare stones The
service was beginning The Rector, m cassock and short linen surplice, was
reciting the prayers in a swift practised voice, clear enough now that his teeth
were in, and curiously ungemal In his fastidious, aged face, pale as a silver
com, there was an expression of aloofness, almost of contempt ‘This is a valid
sacrament,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘and it is my duty to administer it to you
But remember that I am only your priest, not your friend As a human being I
A Clergyman's Daughter 259
dislike you and despise you ’ Proggett, the sexton, a man of forty with curly
grey hair and a red, harassed face, stood patiently by, uncomprehending but
reverent, fiddling with the little communion bell which was lost m his huge red
hands
Dorothy pressed her fingers against her eyes She had not yet succeeded m
concentrating her thoughts-mdeed, the memory of Cargill’s bill was still
worrying her intermittently The prayers, which she knew by heart, were
flowing through her head unheeded She raised her eyes for a moment, and
they began immediately to stray First upwards, to the headless roof-angels on
whose necks you could still see the sawcuts of the Puritan soldiers, then back
again, to Miss Mayfill’s black, quasi-pork-pie hat and tremulous jet ear-rings
Miss Mayfill wore a long musty black overcoat, with a little collar of greasy-
lookmg astrakhan, which had been the same ever since Dorothy could
remember It was of some very peculiar stuff, like watered silk but coarser,
with rivulets of black piping wandering all over it in no discoverable pattern It
might even have been that legendary and proverbial substance, black
bombazine Miss Mayfill was very old, so old that no one remembered her as
anything but an old woman A faint scent radiated from her-an ethereal scent,
analysable as eau-de-Cologne, mothballs, and a sub-flavour of gin
Dorothy drew a long glass-headed pm from the lapel of her coat, and
furtively, under cover of Miss Mayfill’s back, pressed the point against her
forearm Her flesh tingled apprehensively She made it a rule, whenever she
caught herself not attending to her prayers, to prick her arm hard enough to
make blood come It was her chosen form of self-discipline, her guard against
irreverence and sacrilegious thoughts
With the pm poised in readiness she managed for several moments to pray
more collectedly Her father had turned one dark eye disapprovingly upon
Miss Mayfill, who was crossing herself at intervals, a practice he disliked A
starling chattered outside With a shock Dorothy discovered that she was
looking vamgloriously at the pleats of her father’s surplice, which she herself
had sewn two years ago She set her teeth and drove the pm an eighth of an
inch into her arm
They were kneeling again It was the General Confession Dorothy recalled
her eyfes-- wandering, alasl yet again, this time to the stained-glass window on
her right, designed by Sir Warde Tooke, ar a, in 1851 and representing St
Athelstan’s welcome at the gate of Heaven by Gabriel and a legion of angels all
remarkably like one another and the Prince Consort-and pressed the pinpoint
against a different part of her arm She began to meditate conscientiously upon
the meaning of each phrase of the prayer, and so brought her mind back to a
more attentive state But even so she was all but obliged to use the pm again
when Proggett tinkled the bell m the middle of ‘Therefore with Angels and
Archangels’ -being visited, as always, by a dreadful temptation to begin
laughing at that passage. It was because of a story her father had told her once,
of how when he was a little boy, and serving the priest at the altar, the
communion bell had a screw-on dapper, which had come loose; and so the
priest had said ‘Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with aU the
260 A Clergyman' s Daughter
company of Heaven, we laud and magnify Thy glorious name, evermore
praising Thee, and saying. Screw it up, you little fat-head, screw it up'*
As the Rector finished the consecration Miss Mayfill began to struggle to her
feet with extreme difficulty and slowness, like some disjointed wooden
creature picking itself up by sections, and disengaging at each movement a
powerful whiff of mothballs There was an extraordinary creaking sound-
from her stays, presumably, but it was a noise as of bones grating against one
another You could have imagined that there was only a dry skeleton inside
that black overcoat
Dorothy remained on her feet a moment longer Miss Mayfill was creeping
towards the altar with slow, tottering steps She could barely walk, but she
took bitter offence if you offered to help her In her ancient, bloodless face her
mouth was surprisingly large, loose, and wet The underlip, pendulous with
age, slobbered forward, exposing a strip of gum and a row of false teeth as
yellow as the keys of an old piano On the upper lip was a fringe of dark, dewy
moustache It was not an appetizing mouth, not the kind of mouth that you
would like to see drinking out of your cup Suddenly, spontaneously, as
though the Devil himself had put it there, the prayer slipped from Dorothy’s
lips O God, let me not have to take the chalice after Miss Mayfill 1
The next moment, in self-horror, she grasped the meaning of what she had
said, and wished that she had bitten her tongue m two rather than utter that
deadly blasphemy upon the altar steps She drew the pm again from her lapel
and drove it into her arm so hard that it was all she could do to suppress a cry of
pam Then she stepped to the altar and knelt down meekly on Miss Mayfill’ s
left, so as to make quite sure of taking the chalice after her
Kneeling, with head bent and hands clasped against her knees, she set
herself swiftly to pray for forgiveness before her father should reach her with
the wafer But the current of her thoughts had been broken Suddenly it was
quite useless attempting to pray, her lips moved, but there was neither heart
nor meaning in her prayers She could hear Proggett’s boots shuffling and her
father’s clear low voice murmuring ‘Take and eat’, she could see the worn strip
of red carpet beneath her knees, she could smell dust and eau-de-Cologne and
mothballs, but of the Body and Blood of Christ, of the purpose for which she
had come here, she was as though deprived of the power to think A deadly
blankness had descended upon her mind It seemed to her that actually she
could not pray She struggled, collected her thoughts, uttered mechanically the
opening phrases of a prayer, but they were useless, meaningless-nothing but
the dead shells of words Her father was holding the wafer before her in his
shapely, aged hand He held it between finger and thumb, fastidiously,
somehow distastefully, as though it had been a spoon of medicine His eye was
upon Miss Mayfill, who was doubling herself up like a geometrid caterpillar,
with many creakmgs and crossing herself so elaborately that one might have
imagined that she was sketching a series of braid frogs on the front of her coat
For several seconds Dorothy hesitated and did not take the wafer She dared
not take it Better, far better to step down from the altar than to accept the
sacrament with such chaos m her heart*
A Clergyman’s Daughter 261
Then it happened that she glanced sidelong, through the open south door A
momentary spear of sunlight had pierced the clouds It struck downwards
through the leaves of the limes, and a spray of leaves m the doorway gleamed
with a transient, matchless green, greener than jade or emerald or Atlantic
waters It was as though some jewel of unimaginable splendour had flashed for
an instant, filling the doorway with green light, and then faded A flood of joy
ran through Dorothy’s heart The flash of living colour had brought back to
her, by a process deeper than reason, her peace of mmd, her love of God, her
power to worship Somehow, because of the greenness of the leaves, it was
again possible to pray O all ye green things upon the earth, praise ye the Lord'
She began to pray, ardently, joyfully, thankfully The wafer melted upon her
tongue She took the chalice from her father, and tasted with repulsion, even
with an added joy in this small act of self-abasement, the wet imprint of Miss
Mayfill’s lips on its silver rim
2
St Athelstan’s Church stood at the highest point of Knype Hill, and if you
chose to climb the tower you could see ten miles or so across the surrounding
country Not that there was anything worth looking at-only the low, barely
undulating East Anglian landscape, intolerably dull in summer, but re-
deemed m winter by the recurring patterns of the elms, naked and fanshaped
against leaden skies
Immediately below you lay the town, with the High Street running east and
west and dividing unequally The southern section of the town was the
ancient, agricultural, and respectable section On the northern side were the
buildings of the Blifil-Gordon sugar-beet refinery, and all round and leading
up to them were higgledy-piggledly rows of vile yellow brick cottages, mostly
inhabited by the employees of the factory The factory employees, who made
up more than half of the town’s two thousand inhabitants, were newcomers,
townfolk, and godless almost to a man
The two pivots, or foci, about which the social life of the town moved were
Knype Hill Conservative Club (fully licensed), from whose bow window, any
time after the bar was open, the large, rosy-gilled faces of the town’s 61ite were
to be seen gazing like chubby goldfish from an aquarium pane, and Ye Olde
Tea Shoppe, a little farther down the High Street, the principal rendezvous of
the Knype Hill ladies Not to be present at Ye Olde Tea Shoppe between ten
and eleven every morning, to drink your ‘morning coffee 5 and spend your half-
hour or so in that agreeable twitter of upper-middle-class voices (‘My dear, he
had nine spades to the ace-queen and he went one no trump, if you please
What, my dear, you don’t mean to say you’re paying for my coffee agamt Oh,
262 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
but my dear, it is simply too sweet of you 1 Now tomorrow I shall simply insist
upon paying for yours And just look at dear little Toto sitting up and looking
such a clever little man with his little black nose wiggling, and he would, would
he, the darling duck, he would, he would, and his mother would give him a
lump of sugar, she would, she would There , Toto' 5 ), was to be definitely out of
Knype Hill society The Rector in his acid way nicknamed these ladies ‘the
coffee brigade* Close to the colony of sham-picturesque villas inhabited by
the coffee brigade, but cut off from them by its larger grounds, was The
Grange, Miss Mayfill’s house It was a curious, machicolated, imitation castle
of dark red brick- somebody’s Folly, built about 1870-and fortunately almost
hidden among dense shrubberies
The Rectory stood half way up the hill, with its face to the church and its
back to the High Street It was a house of the wrong age, inconveniently large,
and faced with chronically peeling yellow plaster Some earlier Rector had
added, at one side, a large greenhouse which Dorothy used as a workroom, but
which was constantly out of repair The front garden was choked with ragged
fir-trees and a great spreading ash which shadowed the front rooms and made
it impossible to grow any flowers There was a large vegetable garden at the
back Proggett did the heavy digging of the garden in the spring and autumn,
and Dorothy did the sowing, planting, and weeding in such spare time as she
could command, in spite of which the vegetable garden was usually an
impenetrable jungle of weeds
Dorothy jumped off her bicycle at the front gate, upon which some officious
person had stuck a poster inscribed ‘Vote for Bhfil-Gordon and Higher
Wages 1 ’ (There was a by-election going on, and Mr Blifil-Gordon was
standing in the Conservative interest ) As Dorothy opened the front door she
saw two letters lying on the worn coconut mat One was from the Rural Dean,
and the other was a nasty, thm-looking letter from Catkin & Palm, her father’s
clerical tailors It was a bill undoubtedly The Rector had followed his usual
practice of collecting the letters that interested him and leaving the others
Dorothy was just bending down to pick up the letters, when she saw, with a
horrid shock of dismay, an unstamped envelope sticking to the letter-flap
It was a bill-for certain it was a bill 1 Moreover, as soon as she set eyes on it
she ‘knew’ that it was that horrible bill from Cargill’s, the butcher’s A sinking
feeling passed through her entrails For a moment she actually began to pray
that it might not be Cargill’s bill-that it might only be the bill for three and
nine from Solepipe’s, the draper’s, or the bill from the International or the
baker’s or the dairy-anythmg except Cargill’s bill 1 Then, mastering her pamc,
she took the envelope from the letter-flap and tore it open with a convulsive
movement
‘To account rendered. £ 21 7s 9d ’
This was written m the innocuous handwriting of Mr Cargill’s accountant-
But underneath, in thick, accusing-looking letters, was added and heavily
underlined ‘Shd like to bring to your notice that this bill has been owing a
very long time The earliest possible settlement will oblige, S Cargill ’
Dorothy had turned a shade paler, and was conscious of not wanting any
A Clergyman’s Daughter 26 3
breakfast She thrust the bill into her pocket and went into the dining-room It
was a smallish, dark room, badly m need of repapering, and, like every other
room m the Rectory, it had the air of having been furnished from the
sweepings of an antique shop The furniture was ‘good 5 , but battered beyond
repair, and the chairs were so worm-eaten that you could only sit on them in
safety if you knew their individual foibles There were old, dark, defaced steel
engravings hanging on the walls, one of them-an engraving of Van Dyck’s
portrait of Charles I -probably of some value if it had not been ruined by
damp
The Rector was standing before the empty grate, warming himself at an
imaginary fire and reading a letter that came from a long blue envelope He was
still wearing his cassock of black watered silk, which set off to perfection his
thick white hair and his pale, fine, none too amiable face As Dorothy came m
he laid the letter aside, drew out his gold watch and scrutinized it significantly
Tm afraid I’m a bit late, Father ’
‘Yes, Dorothy, you are a bit late,’ said the Rector, repeating her words with
delicate but marked emphasis ‘You are twelve minutes late, to be exact Don’t
you think, Dorothy, that when I have to get up at a quarter past six to celebrate
Holy Communion, and come home exceedingly tired and hungry, it would be
better if you could manage to come to breakfast without being a bit late ? ’
It was clear that the Rector was m what Dorothy called, euphemistically, his
‘uncomfortable mood’ He had one of those weary, cultivated voices which are
never definitely angry and never anywhere near good humour-one of those
voices which seem all the while to be saying, ‘I really cannot see what you are
making all this fuss about 1 ’ The impression he gave was of suffering
perpetually from other people’s stupidity and tiresomeness
‘I’m so sorry, Father 1 I simply had to go and ask after Mrs Tawney ’ (Mrs
Tawney was the ‘Mrs T’ of the ‘memo list’ ) ‘Her baby was born last night, and
you know she promised me she’d come and be churched after it was born But
of course she won’t if she thinks we aren’t taking any interest m her You know
what these women are-they seem so to hate bemg churched They’ll never
come unless I coax them into it ’
The Rector did not actually grunt, but he uttered a small dissatisfied sound
as he moved towards the breakfast table, It was intended to mean, first, that it
was Mr£ Tawney’s duty to come and be churched without Dorothy’s coaxing,
secondly, that Dorothy had no business to waste her time visiting all the riff-
raff of the town, especially before breakfast Mrs T awney was a labourer’s wife
and lived in partibus mfidelium, north of the High Street The Rector laid his
hand on the back of his chair, and, without speaking, cast Dorothy a glance
which meant ‘Are we ready now ? Or are there to be any more delays? ’
‘I think everything’s here, Father,’ said Dorothy ‘Perhaps if you’d just say
grace-’
‘Benedictus benedicat/ said the Rector, lifting the worn silver coverlet oft the
breakfast dish The silver coverlet, like the silver-gilt marmalade spoon, was a
family heirloom, the knives and forks, and most of the crockery, came from
Woolworths ‘Bacon again, I see,’ the Rector added, eyeing the three minute
264 A Clergyman’s Daughter
rashers that lay curled up on squares of fried bread
‘It’s all we’ve got m the house, I’m afraid,’ Dorothy said
The Rector picked up his fork between finger and thumb, and with a very
delicate movement, as though playing at spillikins, turned one of the rashers
over
‘I know, of course, 5 he said, ‘that bacon for breakfast is an English
institution almost as old as parliamentary government But still, don’t you
think we might occasionally have a change, Dorothy? ’
‘Bacon’s so cheap now,’ said Dorothy regretfully ‘It seems a sin not to buy
it This was only fivepence a pound, and I saw some quite decent-looking
bacon as low as threepence ’
‘Ah, Danish, I suppose? What a variety of Danish invasions we have had m
this country! First with fire and sword, and now with their abominable cheap
bacon Which has been responsible for the more deaths, I wonder? ’
Feeling a little better after this witticism, the Rector settled himself m his
chair and made a fairly good breakfast off the despised bacon, while Dorothy
(she was not having any bacon this mornmg-a penance she had set herself
yesterday for saying ‘Damn’ and idling for half an hour after lunch) meditated
upon a good conversational opening
There was an unspeakably hateful job in front of her-a demand for money
At the very best of times getting money out of her father was next door to
impossible, and it was obvious that this morning he was going to be even more
‘difficult’ than usual ‘Difficult’ was another of her euphemisms He’s had bad
news, I suppose, she thought despondently, looking at the blue envelope
Probably no one who had ever spoken to the Rector for as long as ten
minutes would have denied that he was a ‘difficult’ kind of man The secret of
his almost unfailing ill humour really lay in the fact that he was an
anachronism He ought never to have been born into the modern world, its
whole atmosphere disgusted and infuriated him A couple of centuries earlier,
a happy pluralist writing poems or collecting fossils while curates at £40 a year
administered his parishes, he would have been perfectly at home Even now, if
he had been a richer man, he might have consoled himself by shutting the
twentieth century out of his consciousness But to live m past ages is very
expensive, you can’t do it on less than two thousand a year The Rector,
tethered by his poverty to the age of Lenin and the Daily Mail , was kept in a
state of chrome exasperation which it was only natural that he should work off
on the person nearest to him-usually, that is, on Dorothy
He had been born m 1871, the younger son of the younger son of a baronet,
and had gone into the Church for the outmoded reason that the Church is the
traditional profession for younger sons His first cure had been in a large,
slummy parish m East London-a nasty, hoohgamsh place it had been, and he
looked back on it with loathing Even m those days the lower class (as he
made a point of calling them) were getting decidedly out of hand It was a little
better when he was curate-m-charge at some remote place m Kent (Dorothy
had been born m Kent), where the decently down-trodden villagers still
touched their hats to ‘parson’ But by that time he had married, and his
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 265
marriage had been diabolically unhappy, moreover, because clergymen must
not quarrel with their wives, its unhappiness had been secret and therefore ten
times worse He had come to Knype Hill m 1908, aged thirty-seven and with a
temper incurably soured-a temper which had ended by alienating every man,
woman, and child m the parish
It was not that he was a bad priest, merely as a priest In his purely clerical
duties he was scrupulously 'correct-perhaps a little too correct for a Low
Church East Anglian parish He conducted his services with perfect taste,
preached admirable sermons, and got up at uncomfortable hours of the
morning to celebrate Holy Communion every Wednesday and Friday But
that a clergyman has any duties outside the four walls of the church was a thing
that had never seriously occurred to him Unable to afford a curate, he left the
dirty work of the parish entirely to his wife, and after her death (she died in
1921) to Dorothy People used to say, spitefully and untruly, that he would
have let Dorothy preach his sermons for him if it had been possible The ‘lower
classes’ had grasped from the first what was his attitude towards them, and if
he had been a rich man they would probably have licked his boots, according to
their custom, as it was, they merely hated him Not that he cared whether they
hated him or not, for he was largely unaware of their existence But even with
the upper classes he had got on no better With the County he had quarrelled
one by one, and as for the petty gentry of the town, as the grandson of a baronet
he despised them, and was at no pains to hide it In twenty-three years he had
succeeded in reducmg the congregation of St Athelstan’s from six hundred to
something under two hundred
This was not solely due to personal reasons It was also because the old-
fashioned High Anglicanism to which the Rector obstinately clung was of a
kind to annoy all parties in the parish about equally Nowadays, a clergyman
who wants to keep his congregation has only two courses open to him Either it
must be Anglo-Catholicism pure and simple-or rather, pure and not simple,
or he must be daringly modern and broad-minded and preach comforting
sermons proving that there is no Hell and all good religions are the same The
Rector did neither On the one hand, he had the deepest contempt for the
Anglo-Catholic movement It had passed over his head, leaving him absolutely
untouched, ‘Roman Fever’ was his name for it On the other hand, he was too
‘High’ for the older members of his congregation From time to time he scared
them almost out of their wits by the use of the fatal word ‘Catholic’, not only in
its sanctified place in the Creeds, but also from the pulpit Naturally the
congregation dwindled year by year, and it was the Best People who were the
first to go Lord Pockthorne of Pockthome Court, who owned a fifth of the
county, Mr Leavis, the retired leather merchant, Sir Edward Huson of
Crabtree Hall, and such of the petty gentry as owned motor-cars, had all
deserted St Athelstan’s Most of them drove over on Sunday mornings to
Millborough, five miles away Millborough was a town of five thousand
inhabitants, and you had your choice of two churches, St Edmund’s and St
Wedekind’s. St Edmund’s was Modernist— text from Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’
blazoned over the altar, and communion wme out of liqueur glasses-and St
266 A Clergyman’s Daughter
Wedekind’s was Anglo-Catholic and m a state of perpetual guerrilla warfare
with the Bishop But Mr Cameron, the secretary of the Knype Hill
Conservative Club, was a Roman Catholic convert, and his children were in
the thick of the Roman Catholic literary movement They were said to have a
parrot which they were teaching to say ‘Extra ecclesiam nulla sains' In effect,
no one of any standing remained true to St Athelstan’s, except Miss Mayfill, of
The Grange Most of Miss Mayfill’ s money was bequeathed to the Church-so
she said, meanwhile, she had never been known to put more than sixpence m
the collection bag, and she seemed likely to go on living for ever
The first ten minutes of breakfast passed in complete silence Dorothy was
trying to summon up courage to speak-obviously she had got to start some
kind of conversation before raising the money-question-but her father was
not an easy man with whom to make small talk At times he would fall into such
deep fits of abstraction that you could hardly get him to listen to you, at other
times he was all too attentive, listened carefully to what you said and then
pointed out, rather wearily, that it was not worth saying Polite platitudes-the
weather, and so forth-generally moved him to sarcasm Nevertheless,
Dorothy decided to try the weather first
c It’s a funny kind of day, isn’t it’’ she said-aware, even as she made it, of the
inanity of this remark
‘What is funny’’ inquired the Rector
‘Well, I mean, it was so cold and misty this morning, and now the sun’s
come out and it’s turned quite fine ’
‘Is there anything particularly funny about that’’
That was no good, obviously He must have had bad news, she thought She
tried again
‘I do wish you’d come out and have a look at the things in the back garden
some time. Father The runner beans are doing so splendidly' The pods are
going to be over a foot long I’m going to keep all the best of them for the
Harvest Festival, of course I thought it would look so nice if we decorated the
pulpit with festoons of runner beans and a few tomatoes hanging m among
them ’
This was a faux pas The Rector looked up from his plate with an expression
of profound distaste
‘My dear Dorothy,’ he said sharply, ‘is it necessary to begin worrying me
about the Harvest Festival already’’
‘I’m sorry, Father' 5 said Dorothy, disconcerted ‘I didn’t mean to worry
you I just thought-’
‘Do you suppose’, proceeded the Rector, ‘it is any pleasure to me to have to
preach my sermon among festoons of runner beans’ I am not a greengrocer It
quite puts me off my breakfast to think of it When is the wretched thing due to
happen’’
‘It’s September the sixteenth, Father ’
‘That’s nearly a month hence For Heaven’s sake let me forget it a little
longer' I suppose we must have this ridiculous business once a year to tickle the
vanity of every amateur gardener m the parish But don’t let’s think of it more
A Clergyman’s Daughter 267
than is absolutely necessary *
The Rector had, as Dorothy ought to have remembered, a perfect
abhorrence of Harvest Festivals He had even lost a valuable parishioner- a Mr
Toagis, a surly retired market gardener-through his dislike, as he said, of
seeing his church dressed up to imitate a coster’s stall Mr Toagis, amma
naturaliter Nonconformistica , had been kept ‘Church’ solely by the privilege, at
Harvest Festival time, of decorating the side altar with a sort of Stonehenge
composed of gigantic vegetable marrows The previous summer he had
succeeded in growing a perfect leviathan of a pumpkin, a fiery red thing so
enormous that it took two men to lift it This monstrous object had been placed
in the chancel, where it dwarfed the altar and took all the colour out of the east
window In no matter what part of the church you were standing, the
pumpkin, as the saying goes, hit you in the eye Mr Toagis was m raptures He
hung about the church at all hours, unable to tear himself away from his
adored pumpkin, and even bringing relays of friends in to admire it From the
expression of his face you would have thought that he was quoting
Wordsworth on Westminster Bridge
Earth has not any thing to show more fair
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty 1
Dorothy even had hopes, after this, of getting him to come to Holy
Communion But when the Rector saw the pumpkin he was seriously angry,
and ordered ‘that revolting thing’ to be removed at once Mr Toagis had
instantly ‘gone chapel’, and he and his heirs were lost to the Church for ever
Dorothy decided to make one final attempt at conversation
‘We’re getting on with the costumes for Charles /,’ she said (The Church
School children were rehearsing a play entitled Charles I in aid of the organ
fund ) ‘But I do wish we’d chosen something a bit easier The armour is a
dreadful job to make, and I’m afraid the jackboots are going to be worse I
think next time we must really have a Roman or Greek play Something where
they only have to wear togas ’
This elicited only another muted grunt from the Rector School plays,
pageants, bazaars, jumble sales, and concerts in aid of were not quite so bad in
his eyes as Harvest Festivals, but he did not pretend to be interested m them
They were necessary evils, he used to say At this moment Ellen, the
maidservant, pushed open the door and came gauchely into the room with one
large, scaly hand holding her sacking apron against her belly She was a tall,
round-shouldered girl with mouse-coloured hair, a plaintive voice, and a bad
complexion, and she suffered chronically from eczema Her eyes flitted
apprehensively towards the Rector, but she addressed herself to Dorothy, for
she was too much afraid of the Rector to speak to him directly
‘Please, Miss-’ she began,
‘Yes, Ellen? ’
‘Please, Miss,’ went on Ellen plaintively, ‘Mr Porter’s m the kitchen, and he
says, please could the Rector come round and baptize Mrs Porter’s baby?
268 A Clergyman's Daughter
Because they don’t think as it’s going to live the day out, and it ain’t been
baptized yet, Miss ’
Dorothy stood up ‘Sit down,’ said the Rector promptly, with his mouth
full
‘What do they think is the matter with the baby? ’ said Dorothy
‘Well, Miss, it’s turning quite black And it’s had diarrhoea something
cruel ’
The Rector emptied his mouth with an effort ‘Must I have these disgusting
details while I am eating my breakfast? ’ he exclaimed He turned on Ellen
‘Send Porter about his business and tell him I’ll be round at his house at twelve
o’clock I really cannot think why it is that the lower classes always seem to
choose mealtimes to come pestering one,’ he added, casting another irritated
glance at Dorothy as she sat down
Mr Porter was a labouring man-a bricklayer, to be exact The Rector’s
views on baptism were entirely sound If it had been urgently necessary he
would have walked twenty miles through snow to baptize a dying baby But he
did not like to see Dorothy proposing to leave the breakfast table at the call of a
common bricklayer
There was no further conversation during breakfast Dorothy’s heart was
sinking lower and lower The demand for money had got to be made, and yet it
was perfectly obvious that it was foredoomed to failure His breakfast finished,
the Rector got up from the table and began to fill his pipe from the tobacco-jar
on the mantelpiece Dorothy uttered a short prayer for courage, and then
pinched herself Go on, Dorothy' Out with it' No funking, please' With an
effort she mastered her voice and said
‘Father-’
‘What is it’’ said the Rector, pausing with the match m his hand
‘Father, I’ve something I want to ask you Something important ’
The expression of the Rector’s face changed He had divined instantly what
she was gomg to say, and, curiously enough, he now looked less irritable than
before A stony calm had settled upon his face He looked like a rather
exceptionally aloof and unhelpful sphinx
‘Now, my dear Dorothy, I know very well what you are gomg to say I
suppose you are gomg to ask me for money again Is that it? ’
‘Yes, Father Because-’
‘Well, I may as well save you the trouble I have no money at all-absolutely
no money at all until next quarter You have had your allowance, and I can’t
give you a halfpenny more It’s quite useless to come worrying me now ’
‘But, Father-’
Dorothy’s heart sank yet lower. What was worst of all when she came to him
for money was the terrible, unhelpful calmness of his attitude He was never so
unmoved as when you were reminding him that he was up to his eyes in debt
Apparently he could not understand that tradesmen occasionally want to be
paid, and that no house can be kept going without an adequate supply of
money He allowed Dorothy eighteen pounds a month for all the household
expenses, including Ellen’s wages, and at the same time he was ‘dainty’ about
A Clergyman’s Daughter 269
his food and instantly detected any falling off in its quality The result was, of
course, that the household was perennially m debt But the Rector paid not the
smallest attention to his debts-indeed, he was hardly even aware of them
When he lost money over an investment, he was deeply agitated, but as for a
debt to a mere tradesman-well, it was the kind of thing that he simply could
not bother his head about
A peaceful plume of smoke floated upwards from the Rector’s pipe He was
gazing with a meditative eye at the steel engraving of Charles I and had
probably forgotten already about Dorothy’s demand for money Seeing him so
unconcerned, a pang of desperation went through Dorothy, and her courage
came back to her She said more sharply than before
‘Father, please listen to me 1 I must have some money soon 1 I simply must ]
We can’t go on as we’re doing We owe money to nearly every tradesman mthe
town It’s got so that some mornings I can hardly bear to go down the street
and think of all the bills that are owing Do you know that we owe Cargill
nearly twenty-two pounds? ’
‘What of it? ’ said the Rector between puffs of smoke
‘But the bill’s been mounting up for over seven months' He’s sent it m over
and over again We must pay it' It’s so unfair to him to keep him waiting for his
money like that'’
‘Nonsense, my dear child' These people expect to be kept waiting for their
money They like it It brings them more in the end Goodness knows how
much I owe to Catkin & Palm - 1 should hardly care to inquire They are
dunning me by every post But you don’t hear me complaining, do you 7 *’
‘But, Father, I can’t look at it as you do, I can’t' It’s so dreadful to be always
m debt' Even if it isn’t actually wrong, it’s so hateful It makes me so ashamed'
When I go into Cargill’s shop to order the joint, he speaks to me so shortly and
makes me wait after the other customers, all because our bill’s mounting up the
whole time And yet I daren’t stop ordering from him I believe he’d run us in
if I did ’
The Rector frowned ‘What' Do you mean to say the fellow has been
impertinent to you? ’
‘I didn’t say he’d been impertinent, Father But you can’t blame him if he’s
angry when his bill’s not paid ’
‘I most certainly can blame him' It is simply abominable how these people
take it upon themselves to behave nowadays-abominable' But there you are,
you see That is the kind of thing that we are exposed to m this delightful
century That is democracy -progress, as they are pleased to call it Don’t order
from the fellow again Tell him at once that you are taking your account
elsewhere That’s the only way to treat these people ’
‘But, Father, that doesn’t settle anything Really and truly, don’t you think
we ought to pay him ? Surely we can get hold of the money somehow? Couldn’t
you sell out some shares, or something? ’
‘My dear child, don’t talk to me about selling out shares! I have just had the
most disagreeable news from my broker He tells me that my Sumatra Tin
shares have dropped from seven and fourpence to six and a penny It means a
2jo A Clergyman's Daughter
loss of nearly sixty pounds I am telling him to sell out at once before they drop
any further ’
‘Then if you sell out you’ll have some ready money, won’t you? Don’t you
think it would be better to get out of debt once and for alP’
‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said the Rector more calmly, putting his pipe back m
his mouth ‘You know nothing whatever about these matters I shall have to
reinvest at once m something more hopeful-it’s the only way of getting my
money back ’
With one thumb m the belt of his cassock he frowned abstractedly at the
steel engraving His broker had advised United Celanese Here— m Sumatra
Tin, United Celanese, and numberless other remote and dimly imagined
companies- was the central cause of the Rector’s money troubles He was an
inveterate gambler Not, of course, that he thought of it as gambling, it was
merely a lifelong search for a ‘good investment’ On coming of age he had
inherited four thousand pounds, which had gradually dwindled, thanks to his
‘investments’, to about twelve hundred What was worse, every year he
managed to scrape together, out of his miserable income, another fifty pounds
which vanished by the same road It is a curious fact that the lure of a ‘good
investment’ seems to haunt clergymen more persistently than any other class
of man Perhaps it is the modern equivalent of the demons in female shape who
used to haunt the anchorites of the Dark Ages
‘I shall buy five hundred United Celanese,’ said the Rector finally
Dorothy began to give up hope Her father was now thinking of his
‘investments’ (she new nothing whatever about these ‘investments’, except
that they went wrong with phenomenal regularity), and in another moment the
question of the shop-debts would have slipped entirely out of his mind She
made a final effort
‘Father, let’s get this settled, please Do you think you’ll be able to let me
have some extra money fairly soon? Not this moment, perhaps-but m the next
month or two? ’
‘No, my dear, I don’t About Christmas time, possibly-it’s very unlikely
even then. But for the present, certainly not I haven’t a halfpenny I can spare ’
‘But, Father, it’s so horrible to feel we can’t pay our debts* It disgraces us so*
Last time Mr Welwyn-Foster was here’ (Mr Welwyn-Foster was the Rural
Dean) ‘Mrs Welwyn-Foster was going all round the town asking everyone the
most personal questions about us- asking how we spent our time, and how
much money we had, and how many tons of coal we used in a year, and
everything She’s always trying to pry into our affairs Suppose she found out
that we were badly in debt 1 ’
‘Surely it is our own business? I fail entirely to see what it has to do with Mrs
Welwyn-Foster or anyone else ’
‘But she’d repeat it all over the place-and she’d exaggerate it too* You know
what Mrs Welwyn-Foster is. In every parish she goes to she tries to find out
something disgraceful about the clergyman, and then she repeats every word
of it to the Bishop I don’t want to be uncharitable about her, but really she-’
Realizing that she did want to be uncharitable, Dorothy was silent
A Clergyman' s Daughter 271
‘She is a detestable woman/ said the Rector evenly ‘What of 1 t? Who ever
heard of a Rural Dean’s wife who wasn’t detestable? ’
‘But, Father, I don’t seem to be able to get you to see how serious things are 1
We’ve simply nothing to live on for the next month I don’t even know where
the meat’s coming from for today’s dinner ’
‘Luncheon, Dorothy, luncheon 1 ’ said the Rector with a touch of irritation ‘I
do wish you would drop that abominable lower-class habit of calling the
midday meal dinner >’
‘For luncheon, then Where are we to get the meat from? I daren’t ask
Cargill for another joint ’
‘Go to the other butcher-what’s his name? Salter-and take no notice of
Cargill He knows he’ll be paid sooner or later Good gracious, I don’t know
what all this fuss is about 1 Doesn’t everyone owe money to his tradesmen? I
distinctly remember’ -the Rector straightened his shoulders a little, and,
putting his pipe back into his mouth, looked into the distance, his voice
became reminiscent and perceptibly more agreeable- ‘I distinctly remember
that when I was up at Oxford, my father had still not paid some of his own
Oxford bills of thirty years earlier Tom’ (Tom was the Rector’s cousin, the
Baronet) ‘owed seven thousand before he came into his money He told me so
himself ’
At that, Dorothy’s last hope vanished When her father began to talk about
his cousin Tom, and about things that had happened ‘when I was up at
Oxford’, there was nothing more to be done with him It meant that he had
slipped into an imaginary golden past in which such vulgar things as butchers’
bills simply did not exist There were long periods together when he seemed
actually to forget that he was only a poverty-stricken country Rector-that he
was not a young man of family with estates and reversions at his back. The
aristocratic, the expensive attitude was the one that m all circumstances came
the most naturally to him And of course while he lived, not uncomfortably, in
the world of his imagination, it was Dorothy who had to fight the tradesmen
and make a leg of mutton last from Sunday to Wednesday But she knew the
complete uselessness of arguing with him any longer It would only end m
making him angry She got up from the table and began to pile the breakfast
things on to the tray
‘You’re absolutely certain you can’t let me have any money, Father? ’ she
said for the last time, at the door, with the tray m her arms
The Rector, gazing into the middle distance, amid comfortable wreaths of
smoke, did not hear her He was thinking, perhaps, of his golden Oxford days
Dorothy went out of the room distressed almost to the point of tears The
miserable question of the debts was once more shelved, as it had been shelved a
thousand times before, with no prospect of final solution.
3
On her elderly bicycle with the basketwork carrier on the handle-bars,
Dorothy free-wheeled down the hill, doing mental arithmetic with three
pounds nineteen and fourpence-her entire stock of money until next quarter-
day
She had been through the list of things that were needed m the kitchen But
indeed, was there anything that was not needed m the kitchen? Tea, coffee,
soap, matches, candles, sugar, lentils, firewood, soda, lamp oil, boot polish,
margarine, baking powder-there seemed to be practically nothing that they
were not running short of And at every moment some fresh item that she had
forgotten popped up and dismayed her The laundry bill, for example, and the
fact that the coal was running short, and the question of the fish for Friday
The Rector was ‘difficult’ about fish Roughly speaking, he would only eat the
more expensive kinds, cod, whiting, sprats, skate, herrings, and kippers he
refused
Meanwhile, she had got to settle about the meat for today’s
dmner-luncheon (Dorothy was careful to obey her father and call it luncheon ,
when she remembered it On the other hand, you could not m honesty call the
evening meal anything but ‘supper’, so there was no such meal as ‘dinner’ at
the Rectory ) Better make an omelette for luncheon today, Dorothy decided
She dared not go to Cargill again Though, of course, if they had an omelette
for luncheon and then scrambled eggs for supper, her father would probably
be sarcastic about it Last time they had eggs twice m one day, he had inquired
coldly, ‘Have you started a chicken farm, Dorothy? ’And perhaps tomorrow
she would get two pounds of sausages at the International, and that staved off
the meat-question for one day more
Thirty-nine further days, with only three pounds mneteen and fburpence to
provide for them, loomed up in Dorothy’s imagination, sending through her a
wave of self-pity which she checked almost instantly. Now then, Dorothy 1 No
snivelling, please' It all comes right somehow if you trust in God Matthew vi,
25 The Lord will provide Will He? Dorothy removed her right hand from
the handle-bars and felt for the glass-headed pm, but the blasphemous
thought faded. At this moment she became aware of the gloomy red face
of Proggett, who was hailing her respectfully but urgently from the side of the
road
Dorothy stopped and got off her bicycle.
‘Beg pardon, Miss,’ said Proggett ‘I been wanting to speak to you,
A Clergyman’s Daughter
273
Miss-partic’lar ’
Dorothy sighed inwardly When Proggett wanted to speak to you partic’lar ,
you could be perfectly certain what was coming, it was some piece of alarming
news about the condition of the church Proggett was a pessimistic,
conscientious man, and very loyal churchman, after his fashion Too dim of
intellect to have any definite religious beliefs, he showed his piety by an intense
solicitude about the state of the church buildings He had decided long ago that
the Church of Christ meant the actual walls, roof, and tower of St Athelstan’s,
Knype Hill, and he would poke round the church at all hours of the day,
gloomily noting a cracked stone here, a worm-eaten beam there-and
afterwards, of course, coming to harass Dorothy with demands for repairs
which would cost impossible sums of money
‘What is it, Proggett ? 5 said Dorothy
‘Well, Miss, it’s they- 5 -here a peculiar, imperfect sound, not a word
exactly, but the ghost of a word, all but formed itself on Proggett’s lips It
seemed to begin with a B Proggett was one of those men who are for ever on
the verge of swearing, but who always recapture the oath as it is escaping
between their teeth Tt 5 s they bells, Miss,’ he said, getting rid of the B sound
with an effort ‘They bells up in the church tower They’re a-splmtermg
through that there belfry floor in a way as it makes you fair shudder to look at
’em We’ll have ’em down atop of us before we know where we are I was up
the belfry ’smormng, and I tell you I come down faster’n I went up, when I
saw how that there floor’s a-bustmg underneath ’em
Proggett came to complain about the condition of the bells not less than once
a fortnight It was now three years that they had been lying on the floor of the
belfry, because the cost of either reswmgmg or removing them was estimated
at twenty-five pounds, which might as well have been twenty-five thousand for
all the chance there was of paying for it They were really almost as dangerous
as Proggett made out It was quite certain that, if not this year or next year, at
any rate at some time m the near future, they would fall through the belfry
floor into the church porch And, as Proggett was fond of pointing out, it
would probably happen on a Sunday morning just as the congregation were
coming into church
Dorothy sighed again Those wretched bells were never out of mind for
long, there were times when the thought of their falling even got into her
dreams There was always some trouble or other at the church Ifitwasnotthe
belfry, then it was the roof or the walls, or it was a broken pew which the
carpenter wanted ten shillings to mend, or it was seven hymn-books needed at
one and sixpence each, or the flue of the stove choked up-and the sweep’s fee
was half a crown-or a smashed window-pane or the choir-boys’ cassocks m
rags There was never enough money for anything The new organ which the
Rector had insisted on buying five years earlier- the old one, he said, reminded
him of a cow with the asthma-was a burden under which the Church Expenses
fund had been staggering ever since
T don’t know what we can do,’ said Dorothy finally; ‘I really don’t. We’ve
simply no money at all And even if we do make anything out of the school-
2j4 A Clergyman' s Daughter
children’s play, it’s all got to go to the organ fund The organ people are really
getting quite nasty about their bill Have you spoken to my father^’
‘Yes, Miss He don’t make nothing of it “Belfry’s held up five hundred
years,” he says, “we can trust it to hold up a few years longer ’”
This was quite according to precedent The fact that the church was visibly
collapsing over his head made no impression on the Rector, he simply ignored
it, as he ignored anything else that he did not wish to be worried about
‘Well, I don’t know what we can do,’ Dorothy repeated ‘Of course there’s
the jumble sale coming off the week after next I’m counting on Miss Mayfill to
give us something really nice for the jumble sale I know she could afford to
She’s got such lots of furniture and things that she never uses I was in her
house the other day, and I saw a most beautiful Lowestoft chma tea service
which was put away in a cupboard, and she told me it hadn’t been used for over
twenty years Just suppose she gave us that tea service 1 It would fetch pounds
and pounds We must just pray that the jumble sale will be a success, Proggett
Pray that it’ll bring us five pounds at least I’m sure we shall get the money
somehow if we really and truly pray for it ’
‘Yes, Miss,’ said Proggett respectfully, and shifted his gaze to the far
distance
At this moment a horn hooted and a vast, gleaming blue car came very
slowly down the road, making for the High Street Out of one window Mr
Blifil-Gordon, the Proprietor of the sugar-beet refinery, was thrusting a sleek
black head which went remarkably ill with his suit of sandy-coloured Harris
tweed As he passed, instead of ignoring Dorothy as usual, he flashed upon her
a smile so warm that it was almost amorous With him were his eldest son
Ralph-or, as he and the rest of the family pronounced it, Walph-an epicene
youth of twenty, given to the writing of sub-Eliot vers libre poems, and Lord
Pockthorne’s two daughters They were all smiling, even Lord Pockthorne’s
daughters Dorothy was astomshed, for it was several years since any of these
people had deigned to recognize her in the street
‘Mr Blifil-Gordon is very friendly this morning,’ she said
‘Aye, Miss I’ll be bound he is It’s the election coming on next week, that’s
what ’tis All honey and butter they are till they’ve made sure as you’ll vote for
them, and then they’ve forgot your very face the day afterwards ’
‘Oh, the election'’ said Dorothy vaguely So remote were such things as
parliamentary elections from the daily round of parish work that she was
virtually unaware of them-hardly, indeed, even knowing the difference
between Liberal and Conservative or Socialist and Communist ‘Well,
Proggett,’ she said, immediately forgetting the election in favour of something
more important, Til speak to Father and tell him how serious it is about the
bells, I think perhaps the best thing we can do will be to get up a special
subscription, just for the bells alone There’s no knowing, we might make five
pounds We might even make ten pounds' Don’t you think if I went to Miss
Mayfill and asked her to start the subscription with five pounds, she might give
it to us? ’
‘You take my word, Miss, and don’t you let Miss Mayfill hear nothing about
A Clergyman’s Daughter 27 s
it It’d scare the life out of her If she thought as that tower wasn’t safe, we’d
never get her inside that church again ’
‘Oh dear 1 1 suppose not ’
‘No, Miss We shan’t get nothing out of her, the old-’
A ghostly B floated once more across Proggett’s lips His mind a little more
at rest now that he had delivered his fortnightly report upon the bells, he
touched his cap and departed, while Dorothy rode on into the High Street,
with the twin problems of the shop-debts and the Church Expenses pursuing
one another through her mind like the twin refrains of a villanelle
The still watery sun, now playing hide-and-seek. April-wise, among woolly
islets of cloud, sent an oblique beam down the High Street, gilding the house-
fronts of the northern side It was one of those sleepy, old-fashioned streets
that look so ideally peaceful on a casual visit and so very different when you live
in them and have an enemy or a creditor behind every window The only
definitely offensive buildings were Ye Olde Tea Shoppe (plaster front with
sham beams nailed on to it, bottle-glass windows and revolting curly roof like
that of a Chinese joss-house), and the new. Doric-pillared post office After
about two hundred yards the High Street forked, forming a tiny market-place,
adorned with a pump, now defunct, and a worm-eaten pair of stocks On either
side of the pump stood the Dog and Bottle, the principal inn of the town, and
the Knype Hill Conservative Club At the end, commanding the street, stood
Cargill’s dreaded shop
Dorothy came round the corner to a terrific dm of cheering, mingled with
the strains of ‘Rule Britannia’ played on the trombone The normally sleepy
street was black with people, and more people were hurrying from all the side-
streets Evidently a sort of triumphal procession was taking place Right across
the street, from the roof of the Dog and Bottle to the roof of the Conservative
Club, hung a line with innumerable blue streamers, and m the middle a vast
banner inscribed ‘Blifil-Gordon and the Empire 1 ’ Towards this, between the
lanes of people, the Blifil-Gordon car was moving at a foot-pace, with Mr
Blifil-Gordon smiling richly, first to one side, then to the other In front of the
car marched a detachment of the Buffaloes, headed by an earnest-looking little
man playing the trombone, and carrying among them another banner
inscribed
Who’ll save Britain from the Reds’
BLIFIL-GORDON
Who’ll put the Beer back into your Pot’
BLIFIL-GORDON
Blifil-Gordon for ever 1
From the window of the Conservative Club floated an enormous Union
Jack, above which six scarlet faces were beaming enthusiastically
Dorothy wheeled her bicycle slowly down the street, too much agitated by
the prospect of passing Cargill’s shop (she had got to pass it, to get to
Solepipe’s) to take much notice of the procession The Blifil-Gordon car had
2j6 A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
halted for a moment outside Ye Olde Tea Shoppe Forward, the coffee
brigade 1 Half the ladies of the town seemed to be hurrying forth, with lapdogs
or shopping baskets on their arms, to cluster about the car like Bacchantes
about the car of the vme-god After all, an election is practically the only time
when you get a chance of exchanging smiles with the County There were
eager feminine cries of ‘Good luck, Mr Blifil- Gordon' Dear Mr Blifil-Gordon'
We do hope you’ll get in, Mr Blifil-Gordon 1 ’ Mr Blifil-Gordon’s largesse of
smiles was unceasing, but carefully graded To the populace he gave a
diffused, general smile, not resting on individuals, to the coffee ladies and the
six scarlet patriots of the Conservative Club he gave one smile each, to the most
favoured of all, young Walph gave an occasional wave of the hand and a
squeaky ‘Cheewio 1 ’
Dorothy’s heart tightened She had seen that Mr Cargill, like the rest of the
shopkeepers, was standing on his doorstep He was a tall, evil-looking man, in
blue-striped apron, with a lean, scraped face as purple as one of his own joints
of meat that had lain a little too long in the window So fascinated were
Dorothy’s eyes by that ominous figure that she did not look where she was
going, and bumped into a very large, stout man who was stepping off the
pavement backwards
The stout man turned round ‘Good Heavens 1 It’s Dorothy 1 ’ he exclaimed
‘Why, Mr Warburton' How extraordinary' Do you know, I had a feeling I
was going to meet you today ’
‘By the pricking of your thumbs, I presume ? 3 said Mr Warburton, beaming
all over a large, pink, Micawberish face ‘And how are you? But by Jove 1 ’ he
added, ‘What need is there to ask? You look more bewitching than ever ’
He pinched Dorothy’s bare elbow-she had changed, after breakfast, into a
sleeveless gingham frock Dorothy stepped hurriedly backwards to get out of
his reach-she hated being pinched or otherwise ‘mauled about’-and said
rather severely
‘ Please don’t pinch my elbow I don’t like it 3
‘My dear Dorothy, who could resist an elbow like yours? It’s the sort of
elbow one pinches automatically A reflex action, if you understand me ’
‘When did you get back to Knype Hill ? 3 said Dorothy, who had put her
bicycle between Mr Warburton and herself ‘It’s over two months since I’ve
seen you 3
‘I got back the day before yesterday But this is only a flying visit I’m off
again tomorrow I’m taking the kids to Brittany The bastards, you know 3
Mr Warburton pronounced the word bastards, at which Dorothy looked
away in discomfort, with a touch of naive pride He and his ‘bastards’ (he had
three of them) were one of the chief scandals of Knype Hill He was a man of
independent income, calling himself a painter-he produced about half a dozen
mediocre landscapes every year-and he had come to Knype Hill two years
earlier and bought one of the new villas behind the Rectory There he lived, or
rather stayed periodically, m open concubinage with a woman whom he called
his housekeeper Four months ago this woman-she was a foreigner, a
Spaniard it was said-had created a fresh and worse scandal by abruptly
A Clergyman 3 s Daughter 277
deserting him, and his three children were now parked with some long-
suffering relative m London In appearance he was a fine, imposing-looking
man, though entirely bald (he was at great pains to conceal this), and he carried
himself with such a rakish air as to give the impression that his fairly sizeable
belly was merely a kind of annexe to his chest His age was forty-eight, and he
owned to forty-four People in the town said that he was a ‘proper old rascal’,
young girls were afraid of him, not without reason
Mr Warburton had laid his hand pseudo-paternally on Dorothy’s shoulder
and was shepherding her through the crowd, talking all the while almost
without a pause The Blifil- Gordon car, having rounded the pump, was now
wending its way back, still accompanied by its troupe of middle-aged
Bacchantes Mr Warburton, his attention caught, paused to scrutinize it
‘What is the meaning of these disgusting antics’’ he asked
‘Oh, they’re- what is it they call lt’-electioneering Trying to get us to vote
for them, I suppose ’
‘Trying to get us to vote for them' Good God 1 ’ murmured Mr Warburton,
as he eyed the triumphal cortege He raised the large, silver-headed cane that
he always carried, and pointed, rather expressively, first at one figure in the
procession and then at another ‘Look at it 1 Just look at it 1 Look at those
fawning hags, and that half-witted oaf grinning at us like a monkey that sees a
bag of nuts Did you ever see such a disgusting spectacle’’
‘Do be careful 1 ’ Dorothy murmured ‘Somebody’s sure to hear you ’
‘Good 1 ’ said Mr Warburton, immediately raising his voice ‘And to think
that low-born hound actually has the impertinence to think that he’s pleasing
us with the sight of his false teeth 1 And that suit he’s wearing is an offence m
itself Is there a Socialist candidate’ If so, I shall certainly vote for him ’
Several people on the pavement turned and stared Dorothy saw little Mr
Twiss, the ironmonger, a weazened, leather-coloured old man, peering with
veiled malevolence round the corner of the rush baskets that hung m his
doorway He had caught the word Socialist, and was mentally registering Mr
Warburton as a Socialist and Dorothy as the friend of Socialists
‘I really must be getting on,’ said Dorothy hastily, feeling that she had better
escape before Mr Warburton said something even more tactless ‘I’ve got ever
such a lot of shopping to do I’ll say good-bye for the present, then ’
‘Oh, no, you won’t 1 ’ said Mr Warburton cheerfully ‘Not a bit of it* I’ll come
with you ’
As she wheeled her bicycle down the street he marched at her side, still
talking, with his large chest well forward and his stick tucked under his arm.
He was a difficult man to shake off, and though Dorothy counted him as a
friend, she did sometimes wish, he being the town scandal and she the Rector’s
daughter, that he would not always choose the most public places to talk to her
in At this moment, however, she was rather grateful for his company, which
made it appreciably easier to pass Cargill’s shop-for Cargill was still on his
doorstep and was regarding her with a sidelong, meaning gaze
‘It was a bit of luck my meeting you this morning,’ Mr Warburton went on.
‘In fact, I was looking for yoti , Who do you think I’ve got coming to dinner
27 8 A Clergyman's Daughter
with me tonight? Bewley- Ronald Bewley You’ve heard of him, of course? ’
‘Ronald Bewley? No, I don’t think so Who is he? ’
‘Why, dash it' Ronald Bewley, the novelist Author of Fishpools and
Concubines Surely you’ve read Fishpools and Concubines ? ’
‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t In fact, I’d never even heard of it ’
‘My dear Dorothy 1 You have been neglecting yourself You certainly ought
to read Fishpools and Concubines It’s hot stuff, I assure you-real high-class
pornography Just the kind of thing you need to take the taste of the Girl
Guides out of your mouth ’
‘I do wish you wouldn’t say such things 1 ’ said Dorothy, looking away
uncomfortably, and then immediately looking back again because she had all
but caught Cargill’s eye ‘Where does this Mr Bewley live? ’ she added ‘Not
here, surely, does he? ’
‘No He’s coming over from Ipswich for dinner, and perhaps to stay the
night That’s why I was looking for you I thought you might like to meet him
How about your coming to dinner tonight? ’
‘I can’t possibly come to dinner,’ said Dorothy ‘I’ve got Father’s supper to
see to, and thousands of other things I shan’t be free till eight o’clock or after ’
‘Well, come along after dinner, then I’d like you to know Bewley He’s an
interesting fellow- very au fait with all the Bloomsbury scandal, and all that
You’ll enjoy meeting him. It’ll do you good to escape from the church hen-
coop for a few hours ’
Dorothy hesitated She was tempted To tell the truth, she enjoyed her
occasional visits to Mr Warburton’s house extremely But of course they were
very occasional-once m three or four months at the oftenest, it so obviously
didn't do to associate too freely with such a man And even when she did go to
his house she was careful to make sure beforehand that there was going to be at
least one other visitor
Two years earlier, when Mr Warburton had first come to Knype Hill (at that
time he was posing as a widower with two children, a little later, however, the
housekeeper suddenly gave birth to a third child in the middle of the night),
Dorothy had met him at a tea-party and afterwards called on him Mr
Warburton had given her a delightful tea, talked amusingly about books, and
then, immediately after tea, sat down beside her on the sofa and begun making
love to her, violently, outrageously, even brutally It was practically an assault
Dorothy was horrified almost out of her wits, though not too horrified to resist
She escaped from him and took refuge on the other side of the sofa, white,
shaking, and almost m tears Mr Warburton, on the other hand, was quite
unashamed and even seemed rather amused
‘Oh, how could you, how could you? ’ she sobbed
‘But it appears that I couldn’t,’ said Mr Warburton
‘Oh, but how could you be such a brute? ’
‘Oh, that> Easily, my child, easily You will understand that when you get to
my age,’
In spite of this bad beginning, a sort of friendship had grown up between the
two, oven to the extent of Dorothy being ‘talked about’ in connexion with Mr
A Clergyman 1 s Daughter 279
Warburton It did not take much to get you ‘talked about’ m Knype Hill She
only saw him at long intervals and took the greatest care never to be alone with
him, but even so he found opportunities of making casual love to her But it
was done m a gentlemanly fashion, the previous disagreeable incident was not
repeated Afterwards, when he was forgiven, Mr Warburton had explained
that he ‘always tried it on’ with every presentable woman he met
‘Don’t you get rather a lot of snubs? ’ Dorothy could not help asking him
‘Oh, certainly But I get quite a number of successes as well, you know ’
People wondered sometimes how such a girl as Dorothy could consort, even
occasionally, with such a man as Mr Warburton, but the hold that he had over
her was the hold that the blasphemer and evil-liver always has over the pious
It is a fact-you have only to look about you to verify it-that the pious and the
immoral drift naturally together The best brothel-scenes in literature have
been written, without exception, by pious believers or pious unbelievers And
of course Dorothy, born into the twentieth century, made a point of listening
to Mr Warburton’s blasphemies as calmly as possible, it is fatal to flatter the
wicked by letting them see that you are shocked by them Besides, she was
genuinely fond of him He teased her and distressed her, and yet she got from
him, without being fully aware of it, a species of sympathy and understanding
which she could not get elsewhere For all his vices he was distinctly likeable,
and the shoddy brilliance of his conversation-Oscar Wilde seven times
watered-which she was too inexperienced to see through, fascinated while it
shocked her Perhaps, too, m this instance, the prospect of meeting the
celebrated Mr Bewley had its effect upon her, though certamly Fishponds and
Concubines sounded like the kind of book that she either didn’t read or else set
herself heavy penances for reading In London, no doubt, one would hardly
cross the road to see fifty novelists, but these things appeared differently in
places like Knype Hill
‘Are you sure Mr Bewley is coming? ’ she said
‘Quite sure And his wife’s coming as well, I believe Full chaperonage No
Tarqum and Lucrece business this evening ?
‘All right,’ said Dorothy finally, ‘thanks very much I’ll come round-
about half past eight, I expect ’
‘Good If you can manage to come while it is still daylight, so much the
better Remember that Mrs Sempnll is my next-door neighbour We can
count on her to be on the qm vive any time after sundown ’
Mrs Semprill was the town scandalmonger-the most eminent, that is, of the
town’s many scandalmongers Having got what he wanted (he was constantly
pestering Dorothy to come to his house more often), Mr Warburton said au
revoir and left Dorothy to do the remainder of her shopping
In the semi-gloom of Solepipe’s shop, she was just moving away from the
counter with her two and a half yards of casement cloth, when she was aware of
a low, mournful voice at her ear It was Mrs Semprill She was a slender
woman of forty, with a lank, sallow, distinguished face, which, with her glossy
dark hair and air of settled melancholy, gave her something the appearance of a
Van Dyck portrait Entrenched behind a pile of cretonnes near the window.
280 A Clergyman's Daughter
she had been watching Dorothy’s conversation with Mr Warburton
Whenever you were doing something that you did not particularly want Mrs
Semprill to see you doing, you could trust her to be somewhere in the
neighbourhood She seemed to have the power of materializing like an Arabian
jmneeyeh at any place where she was not wanted No indiscretion, however
small, escaped her vigilance Mr Warburton used to say that she was like the
four beasts of the Apocalypse- ‘They are full of eyes, you remember, and they
rest not night nor day ’
‘Dorothy dearest ,’ murmured Mrs Semprill in the sorrowful, affectionate
voice of someone breaking a piece of bad news as gently as possible ‘I’ve been
so wanting to speak io you I’ve something simply dreadful to tell you-some-
thing that will really horrify you 1 ’
‘What is it? ’ said Dorothy resignedly, well knowing what was coming-for
Mrs Semprill had only one subject of conversation
They moved out of the shop and began to walk down the street, Dorothy
wheeling her bicycle, Mrs Semprill mmcing at her side with a delicate birdlike
step and bringing her mouth closer and closer to Dorothy’s ear as her remarks
grew more and more intimate
‘Do you happen to have noticed,’ she began, ‘that girl who sits at the end of
the pew nearest the organ in church? A rather pretty girl, with red hair I’ve no
idea what her name is,’ added Mrs Semprill, who knew the surname and all the
Christian names of every man, woman, and child in Knype Hill
‘Molly Freeman,’ said Dorothy ‘She’s the niece of Freeman the
greengrocer ’
‘Oh, Molly Freeman? Is that her name? I’d often wondered Well-’
The delicate red mouth came closer, the mournful voice sank to a shocked
whisper Mrs Semprill began to pour forth a stream of purulent libel involving
Molly Freeman and six young men who worked at the sugar-beet refinery
After a few moments the story became so outrageous that Dorothy, who had
turned very pink, hurriedly withdrew her ear from Mrs SemprilFs whispering
lips. She stopped her bicycle
‘I won’t listen to such things! ’ she said abruptly ‘I know that isn’t true about
Molly Freeman It can't be true 1 She’s such a nice quiet girl-she was one of my
very best Girl Guides, and she’s always been so good about helping with the
church bazaars and everything I’m perfectly certain she wouldn’t do such
things as you’re saying ’
‘But, Dorothy dearest' When, as I told you, I actually saw with my own
eyes ’
‘I don’t care ! It’s not fair to say such things about people Even if they were
true it wouldn’t be right to repeat them There’s quite enough evil in the world
without going about looking for it ’
* Looking for it! ’ sighed Mrs Semprill ‘But, my dear Dorothy, as though one
ever wanted or needed to look 1 The trouble is that one can’t help seeing all the
dreadful wickedness that goes on m this town ’
Mrs Semprill was always genuinely astonished if you accused her of looking
for subjects for scandal Nothing, she would protest, pained her more than the
A Clergyman's Daughter 281
spectacle of human wickedness, but it was constantly forced upon her
unwilling eyes, and only a stern sense of duty impelled her to make it public
Dorothy’s remarks, so far from silencing her, merely set her talking about the
general corruption of Knype Hill, of which Molly Freeman’s misbehaviour
was only one example And so from Molly Freeman and her six young men she
proceeded to Dr Gaythorne, the town medical officer, who had got two of the
nurses at the Cottage Hospital with child, and then to Mrs Corn, the Town
Clerk’s wife, found lymg m a field dead drunk on eau-de-Cologne, and then to
the curate at St Wedekind’s m Millborough, who had involved himself m a
grave scandal with a choirboy, and so it went on, one thing leading to another
For there was hardly a soul m the town or the surrounding country about
whom Mrs Sempnll could not disclose some festering secret if you listened to
her long enough
It was noticeable that her stories were not only dirty and libellous, but they
had nearly always some monstrous tinge of perversion about them Compared
with the ordinary scandalmongers of a country town, she was Freud to
Boccaccio From hearing her talk you would have gathered the impression that
Knype Hill with its thousand inhabitants held more of the refinements of evil
than Sodom, Gomorrah, and Buenos Aires put together Indeed, when you
reflected upon the lives led by the inhabitants of this latter-day City of the
Plam-from the manager of the local bank squandering his clients’ money on
the children of his second and bigamous marriage, to the barmaid of the Dog
and Bottle serving drinks in the taproom dressed only in high-heeled satin
slippers, and from old Miss Channon, the music-teacher, with her secret gm
bottle and her anonymous letters, to Maggie White, the baker’s daughter, who
had borne three children to her own brother-when you considered these
people, all, young and old, rich and poor, sunken in monstrous and Babylonian
vices, you wondered that fire did not come down from Heaven and consume
the town forthwith But if you listened just a little longer, the catalogue of
obscenities became first monstrous and then unbearably dull For in a town m
which everyone is either a bigamist, a pederast, or a drug-taker, the worst
scandal loses its sting In fact, Mrs Sempnll was something worse than a
slanderer, she was a bore
As to the extent to which her stories were believed, it varied At times the
word would go round that she was a foul-mouthed old cat and everything she
said was a pack of lies, at other times one of her accusations would take effect
on some unfortunate person, who would need months or even years to live it
down She had certainly been instrumental m breaking off not less than half a
dozen engagements and starting innumerable quarrels between husbands and
wives
All this while Dorothy had been making abortive efforts to shake Mrs
Semprill off. She had edged her way gradually across the street until she was
wheeling her bicycle along the right-hand kerb> but Mrs Semprill had
followed, whispering without cease It was not until they reached the end of
the High Street that Dorothy summoned up enough firmness to escape She
halted and put her right foot on the pedal of her bicycle
282 A Clergyman’s Daughter
‘I really can’t stop a moment longer , 9 she said ‘I’ve got a thousand things to
do, and I’m late already ’
‘Oh, but, Dorothy dear 1 I’ve something else I simply must tell you-
something most important
‘I’m sorry-I’m in such a terrible hurry Another time, perhaps ’
‘It’s about that dreadful Mr Warburton,’ said Mrs Sempnll hastily, lest
Dorothy should escape without hearing it ‘He’s just come back From London,
and do you know— I most particularly wanted to tell you this-do you know, he
actually-’
But here Dorothy saw that she must make off instantly, at no matter what
cost She could imagine nothing more uncomfortable than to have to discuss
Mr Warburton with Mrs Semprill She mounted her bicycle, and with only a
very brief ‘Sorry - 1 really can’t stop 1 ’ began to ride hurriedly away
‘I wanted to tell you-he’s taken up with a new woman 1 ’ Mrs Semprill cried
after her, even forgetting to whisper in her eagerness to pass on this juicy titbit
But Dorothy rode swiftly round the corner, not looking back, and
pretending not to have heard An unwise thing to do, for it did not pay to cut
Mrs Semprill too short Any unwillingness to listen to her scandals was taken
as a sign of depravity, and led to fresh and worse scandals being published
about yourself the moment you had left her
As Dorothy rode homewards she had uncharitable thoughts about Mrs
Semprill, for which she duly pinched herself Also, there was another, rather
disturbing idea which had not occurred to her till this moment-that Mrs
Semprill would certainly learn of her visit to Mr Warburton’s house this
evening, and would probably have magnified it into something scandalous by
tomorrow The thought sent a vague premonition of evil through Dorothy’s
mind as she jumped off her bicycle at the Rectory gate, where Silly Jack, the
town idiot, a third-grade moron with a triangular scarlet face like a strawberry,
was loitering, vacantly flogging the gatepost with a hazel switch.
4
It was a little after eleven The day, which, like some overripe but hopeful
widow playing at seventeen, had been putting on unseasonable April airs, had
now remembered that it was August and settled down to be boiling hot
Dorothy rode into the hamlet of Fennelwick, a mile out of Knype Hill She
had delivered Mrs Lewm’s corn-plaster, and was dropping in to give old Mrs
Ptther that cutting from the Daily Mail about angelica tea for rheumatism
The sun, burning in the cloudless sky, scorched her back through her
gingham frock, and the dusty road quivered m the heat, and the hot, flat
meadows, over which even at this time of year numberless larks chirruped
A Clergyman 1 s Daughter 283
tiresomely, were so green that it hurt your eyes to look at them It was the kind
of day that is called ‘glorious’ by people who don’t have to work
Dorothy leaned her bicycle against the gate of the Pithers’cottage, and took
her handkerchief out of her bag and wiped her hands, which were sweating
from the handle-bars In the harsh sunlight her face looked pinched and
colourless She looked her age, and something over, at that hour of the
morning Throughout her day-and in general it was a seventeen-hour
day- she had regular, alternating periods of tiredness and energy, the middle of
the morning, when she was doing the first instalment of the day’s ‘visiting’,
was one of the tired periods
‘Visiting’, because of the distances she had to bicycle from house to house,
took up nearly half of Dorothy’s day Every day of her life, except on Sundays,
she made from half a dozen to a dozen visits at parishioners’ cottages She
penetrated into cramped interiors and sat on lumpy, dust-diffusmg chairs
gossiping with overworked, blowsy housewives, she spent hurried half-hours
giving a hand with the mending and the ironing, and read chapters from the
Gospels, and readjusted bandages on ‘bad legs’, and condoled with sufferers
from mornmg-sickness, she played nde-a-cock-horse with sour-smellmg
children who grimed the bosom of her dress with their sticky little fingers, she
gave advice about ailing aspidistras, and suggested names for babies, and
drank ‘nice cups of tea’ mnumerable-for the working women always wanted
her to have a ‘nice cup of tea’, out of the teapot endlessly stewing
Much of it was profoundly discouraging work Few, very few, of the women
seemed to have even a conception of the Christian life that she was trying to
help them to lead Some of them were shy and suspicious, stood on the
defensive, and made excuses when urged to come to Holy Communion, some
shammed piety for the sake of the tiny sums they could wheedle out of the
church alms box, those who welcomed her coming were for the most part the
talkative ones, who wanted an audience for complaints about the ‘goings on’ of
their husbands, or for endless mortuary tales (‘And he had to have glass chubes
let into his veins,’ etc , etc ) about the revolting diseases their relatives had died
of Quite half the women on her list, Dorothy knew, were at heart atheistical in
a vague unreasoning way She came up against it all day long-that vague,
blank disbelief so common in illiterate people, against which all argument is
powerless Do what she would, she could never raise the number of regular
communicants to more than a dozen or thereabouts Women would promise to
communicate, keep their promise for a month or two, and then fall away With
the younger women it was especially hopeless They would not even join the
local branches of the church leagues that were run for their benefit-Dorothy
was honorary secretary of three such leagues, besides being captain of the Girl
Guides, The Band of Hope and the Companionship of Marriage languished
almost memberless, and the Mothers’ Union only kept going because gossip
and unlimited strong tea made the weekly sewing-parties acceptable. Yes> it
was discouraging work, so discouraging that at times it would have seemed
altogether futile if she had not known the sense of futility for what it ls-the
subtlest weapon of the Devil*
284 A Clergyman’s Daughter
Dorothy knocked at the Pither s’ badly fitting door, from beneath which a
melancholy smell of boiled cabbage and dish-water was oozing From long
experience she knew and could taste in advance the individual smell of every
cottage on her rounds Some of their smells were peculiar in the extreme For
instance, there was the salty, feral smell that haunted the cottage of old Mr
Tombs, an aged retired bookseller who lay in bed all day m a darkened room,
with his long, dusty nose and pebble spectacles protruding from what
appeared to be a fur rug of vast size and richness
But if you put your hand on the fur rug it disintegrated, burst and fled in all
directions It was composed entirely of cats -twenty-four cats, to be exact Mr
Tombs ‘found they kept him warm 5 , he used to explain In nearly all the
cottages there was a basic smell of old overcoats and dish-water upon which
the other, individual smells were superimposed, the cesspool smell, the
cabbage smell, the smell of children, the strong, bacon-like reek of corduroys
impregnated with the sweat of a decade
Mrs Pither opened the door, which invariably stuck to the jamb, and then,
when you wrenched it open, shook the whole cottage She was a large,
stooping, grey woman with wispy grey hair, a sacking apron, and shuffling
carpet slippers
‘Why, if it isn’t Miss Dorothy' 5 she exclaimed in a dreary, lifeless but not
unaffectionate voice
She took Dorothy between her large, gnarled hands, whose knuckles were as
shmy as skinned onions from age and ceaseless washing up, and gave her a wet
kiss Then she drew her into the unclean interior of the cottage
‘Pither’s away at work. Miss,’ she announced as they got inside ‘Up to Dr
Gaythorne’s he is, a-diggmg over the doctor’s flower-beds for him ’
Mr Pither was a jobbing gardener He and his wife, both of them over
seventy, were one of the few genuinely pious couples on Dorothy’s visiting
list Mrs Pither led a dreary, wormlike life of shuffling to and fro, with a per-
petual crick m her neck because the door lintels were too low for her, between
the well, the sink, the fireplace, and the tiny plot of kitchen garden The
kitchen was decently tidy, but oppressively hot, evil-smellmg and saturated
with ancient dust At the end opposite the fireplace Mrs Pither had made a
kind of prie-dieu out of a greasy rag mat laid m front of a tiny, defunct
harmonium, on top of which were an oleographed crucifixion, ‘Watch and
Pray’ done m beadwork, and a photograph of Mr and Mrs Pither on their
wedding day in 1882
‘Poor Pither 1 ’ went on Mrs Pither in her depressing voice, ‘him a-diggmg at
his age, with his rheumatism that bad 1 Ain’t it cruel hard, Miss? And he’s had a
kind of a pam between his legs, Miss, as he can’t seem to account for -terrible
bad he’s been with it, these last few mornings Ain’t it bitter hard. Miss, the
lives us poor working folks has to lead? ’
‘It’s a shame,’ said Dorothy ‘But I hope you’ve been keeping a little better
yourself, Mrs Pither? ’
‘Ah, Miss, there’s nothmg don’t make me better I ain’t a case for curing,
not m this world, I ain’t I shan’t never get no better, not m this wicked
A Clergyman's Daughter
285
world down here ’
‘Oh, you mustn’t say that, Mrs Pither 1 1 hope we shall have you with us for a
long time yet ’
‘Ah, Miss, you don’t know how poorly I’ve been this last week 1 I’ve had the
rheumatism a-commg and a-going all down the backs of my poor old legs, till
there’s some mornings when I don’t feel as I can’t walk so far as to pull a
handful of onions m the garden Ah, Miss, it’s a weary world we lives in, ain’t
it, Miss? A weary, sinful world ’
‘But of course we must never forget, Mrs Pither, that there’s a better world
coming This life is only a time of trial-just to strengthen us and teach us to be
patient, so that we’ll be ready for Heaven when the time comes ’
At this a sudden and remarkable change came over Mrs Pither It was
produced by the word ‘Heaven’ Mrs Pither had only two subjects of
conversation, one of them was the joys of Heaven, and the other the miseries of
her present state Dorothy’s remark seemed to act upon her like a charm Her
dull grey eye was not capable of brightening, but her voice quickened with an
almost joyful enthusiasm
‘Ah, Miss, there you said it 1 That’s a true word. Miss' That’s what Pither
and me keeps a-saying to ourselves And that’s just the one thing as keeps us a-
gomg-just the thought of Heaven and the long, long rest we’ll have there
Whatever we’ve suffered, we gets it all back in Heaven, don’t we. Miss? Every
little bit of suffering, you gets it back a hundredfold and a thousandfold That
is true, ain’t it. Miss? There’s rest for us all m Heaven-rest and peace and no
more rheumatism nor digging nor cooking nor laundering nor nothing You do
believe that, don’t you. Miss Dorothy? ’
‘Of course,’ said Dorothy
‘Ah, Miss, if you knew how it comforts us-just the thoughts of Heaven'
Pither he says to me, when he comes home tired of a night and our
rheumatism’s bad, “Never you mind, my dear,” he says, “we ain’t far off
Heaven now,” he says “Heaven was made for the likes of us,” he says, “just
for poor working folks like us, that have been sober and godly and kept our
Communions regular ” That’s the best way, ain’t it, Miss Dorothy-poor m
this life and rich m the next? Not like some of them rich folks as all their motor-
cars and their beautiful houses won’t save from the worm that dieth not and
the fire that’s not quenched Such a beautiful text, that is Do you think you
could say a little prayer with me, Miss Dorothy? I been looking forward all the
morning to a little prayer ’
Mrs Pither was always ready for a ‘little prayer’ at any hour of the night or
day. It was her equivalent to a ‘nice cup of tea’ They knelt down on the rag
mat and said the Lord’s Prayer and the Collect for the week, and then
Dorothy, at Mrs Pither’s request, read the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Mrs
Pither coming m from time to time with ‘Amen' That’s a true word, ain’t it.
Miss Dorothy? “And he was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom. ”
Beautiful' Dh, I do call that just too beautiful' Amen, Miss Dorothy- Amen! ’
Dorothy gave Mrs Pither the cutting from the Daily Mail about angelica tea
for rheumatism, and then, finding that Mrs Pither had been too ‘poorly’ to
286 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
draw the day’s supply of water, she drew three bucketfuls for her from the
well It was a very deep well, with such a low parapet that Mrs Pither’s final
doom would almost certainly be to fall into it and get drowned, and it had not
even a winch- you had to haul the bucket up hand over hand And then they
sat down for a few minutes, and Mrs Pither talked some more about Heaven It
was extraordinary how constantly Heaven reigned m her thoughts, and more
extraordinary yet was the actuality, the vividness with which she could see it
The golden streets and the gates of orient pearl were as real to her as though
they had been actually before her eyes And her vision extended to the most
concrete, the most earthly details The softness of the beds up there! The
deliciousness of the food' The lovely silk clothes that you would put on clean
every morning! The surcease from everlasting to everlasting from work of any
description' In almost every moment of her life the vision of Heaven supported
and consoled her, and her abject complaints about the lives of ‘poor working
folks’ were curiously tempered by a satisfaction m the thought that, after all, it
is ‘poor working folks’ who are the principal inhabitants of Heaven It was a
sort of bargain that she had struck, setting her lifetime of dreary labour against
an eternity of bliss Her faith was almost too great, if that is possible For it was
a curious fact, but the certitude with which Mrs Pither looked forward to
Heaven-as to some kind of glorified home for mcurables-affected Dorothy
with strange uneasiness
Dorothy prepared to depart, while Mrs Pither thanked her, rather too
effusively, for her visit, winding up, as usual, with fresh complaints about her
rheumatism
‘I’ll be sure and take the angelica tea,’ she concluded, ‘and thank you kindly
for telling me of it. Miss Not as I don’t expect as it’ll do me much good Ah,
Miss, if you knew how cruel bad my rheumatism’s been this last week' All
down the backs of my legs, it is, like a regular shooting red-hot poker, and I
don’t seem to be able to get at them to rub them properly Would it be asking
too much of you. Miss, to give me a bit of a rub-down before you go? I got a
bottle of Elliman’s under the sink ’
Unseen by Mrs Pither, Dorothy gave herself a severe pinch She had been
expecting this, and-she had done it so many times before-she really did not
enjoy rubbing Mrs Pither down She exhorted herself angrily Come on,
Dorothy' No smffishness, please' John xrn, 14 ‘Of course I will, Mrs Pither 1 ’
she said instantly
They went up the narrow, rickety staircase, in which you had to bend almost
double at one place to avoid the overhanging ceiling The bedroom was lighted
by a tiny square of window that was jammed in its socket by the creeper
outside, and had not been opened in twenty years There was an enormous
double bed that almost filled the room, with sheets perennially damp and a
flock mattress as full of hills and valleys as a contour map of Switzerland With
many groans the old woman crept on to the bed and laid herself face down
The room reeked of urine and paregoric Dorothy took the bottle of Elliman’s
embrocation and carefully anointed Mrs Pither’s large, grey-vemed, flaccid
legs.
A Clergyman’s Daughter 287
Outside, m the swimming heat, she mounted her bicycle and began to ride
swiftly homewards The sun burned m her face, but the air now seemed sweet
and fresh She was happy, happy 1 She was always extravagantly happy when
her morning’s ‘visiting’ was over, and, curiously enough, she was not aware of
the reason for this In Borlase the dairy-farmer’s meadow the red cows were
grazing, knee-deep in shining seas of grass The scent of cows, like a
distillation of vanilla and fresh hay, floated into Dorothy’s nostrils Though
she had still a morning’s work m front of her she could not resist the
temptation to loiter for a moment, steadying her bicycle with one hand against
the gate of Borlase’s meadow, while a cow, with moist shell-pink nose,
scratched its chin upon the gatepost and dreamily regarded her
Dorothy caught sight of a wild rose, flowerless of course, growing beyond
the hedge, and climbed over the gate with the intention of discovering whether
it were not sweetbriar She knelt down among the tall weeds beneath the
hedge It was very hot down there, close to the ground The humming of many
unseen insects sounded m her ears, and the hot summery fume from the
tangled swathes of vegetation flowed up and enveloped her Near by, tall stalks
of fennel were growing, with trailing fronds of foliage like the tails of sea-green
horses Dorothy pulled a frond of the fennel against her face and breathed m
the strong sweet scent Its richness overwhelmed her, almost dizzied her for a
moment She drank it in, filling her lungs with it Lovely, lovely scent-scent of
summer days, scent of childhood joys, scent of spice-drenched islands m the
warm foam of Oriental seas'
Her heart swelled with sudden joy It was that mystical joy m the beauty of
the earth and the very nature of things that she recognized, perhaps
mistakenly, as the love of God As she knelt there in the heat, the sweet odour
and the drowsy hum of insects, it seemed to her that she could momentarily
hear the mighty anthem of praise that the earth and all created things send up
everlastingly to their maker All vegetation, leaves, flowers, grass, shining,
vibrating, crying out in their joy Larks also chanting, choirs of larks invisible,
dripping music from the sky All the riches of summer, the warmth of the
earth, the song of birds, the fume of cows, the droning of countless bees,
mingling and ascending like the smoke of ever-burning altars Therefore with
Angels and Archangels' She began to pray, and for a moment she prayed
ardently, blissfully, forgetting herself m the joy of her worship Then, less
than a minute later, she discovered that she was kissing the frond of the fennel
that was still against her face
She checked herself instantly, and drew back What was she doing 5 Was it
God that she was worshipping, or was it only the earth 5 The joy ebbed out of
her heart, to be succeeded by the cold, uncomfortable feeling that she had been
betrayed into a half-pagan ecstasy. She admonished herself None of that ,
Dorothy! No Nature-worship, please 1 Her father had warned her against
Nature-worship She had heard him preach more than one sermon against it; it
was, he said, mere pantheism, and, what seemed to offend him even more, a
disgusting modem fad Dorothy took a thorn of the wild rose, and pricked her
arm three times, to remind herself of the Three Persons of the Trinity, before
288 A Clergyman's Daughter
climbing over the gate and remounting her bicycle
A black, very dusty shovel hat was approaching round the corner of the
hedge It was Father McGuire, the Roman Catholic priest, also bicycling his
rounds He was a very large, rotund man, so large that he dwarfed the bicycle
beneath him and seemed to be balanced on top of it like a golf-ball on a tee His
face was rosy, humorous, and a little sly
Dorothy looked suddenly unhappy She turned pink, and her hand moved
instinctively to the neighbourhood of the gold cross beneath her dress Father
McGuire was riding towards her with an untroubled, faintly amused air She
made an endeavour to smile, and murmured unhappily, ‘Good morning 1 But
he rode on without a sign, his eyes swept easily over her face and then beyond
her into vacancy, with an admirable pretence of not having noticed her
existence It was the Cut Direct Dorothy-by nature, alas' unequal to
delivering the Cut Direct- got on to her bicycle and rode away, struggling with
the uncharitable thoughts which a meeting with Father McGuire never failed
to arouse m her
Five or six years earlier, when Father McGuire was holding a funeral in St
Athelstan’s churchyard (there was no Roman Catholic cemetery at Knype
Hill), there had been some dispute with the Rector about the propriety of
Father McGuire robing in the church, or not robing in the church, and the two
priests had wrangled disgracefully over the open grave Since then they had
not been on speaking terms It was better so, the Rector said
As to the other ministers of religion m Knype Hill-Mr Ward the
Congregationalist minister, Mr Foley the Wesleyan pastor, and the braying
bald-headed elder who conducted the orgies at Ebenezer Chapel-the Rector
called them a pack of vulgar Dissenters and had forbidden Dorothy on pain of
his displeasure to have anything to do with them
5
It was twelve o’clock In the large, dilapidated conservatory, whose roof-
panes, from the action of time and dirt, were dim, green, and iridescent like old
Roman glass, they were having a hurried and noisy rehearsal of Charles I
Dorothy was not actually taking part in the rehearsal, but was busy making
costumes She made the costumes, or most of them, for all the plays the
schoolchildren acted- The production and stage management were m the
hands of Victor Stone-Victor, Dorothy called him-the Church school-
master He was a small-boned, excitable, black-haired youth of twenty-seven,
dressed in dark sub-clerical clothes, and at this moment he was gesturing
fiercely with a roll of manuscript at six dense-lookmg children On a long
bench against the wall four more children were alternately practising ‘noises
A Clergyman’s Daughter 289
off’ by clashing fire-irons together, and squabbling over a grimy little bag of
Spearmint Bouncers, forty a penny
It was horribly hot in the conservatory, and there was a powerful smell of
glue and the sour sweat of children Dorothy was kneeling on the floor, with
her mouth full of pms and a pair of shears in her hand, rapidly slicing sheets of
brown paper into long narrow strips The glue-pot was bubbling on an oil-
stove beside her, behind her, on the rickety, ink-stained work-table, were a
tangle of half-finished costumes, more sheets of brown paper, her sewing-
machine, bundles of tow, shards of dry glue, wooden swords, and open pots of
paint With half her mmd Dorothy was meditating upon the two pairs of
seventeenth-century jackboots that had got to be made for Charles I and
Oliver Cromwell, and with the other half listening to the angry shouts of
Victor, who was working himself up into a rage, as he invariably did at
rehearsals He was a natural actor, and withal thoroughly bored by the
drudgery of rehearsing half-witted children He strode up and down,
haranguing the children m a vehement slangy style, and every now and then
breaking off to lunge at one or other of them with a wooden sword that he had
grabbed from the table
Tut a bit of life into it, can’t you 5 ’ he cried, plodding an ox-faced boy of
eleven in the belly ‘Don’t drone 1 Say it as if it meant something' You look like
a corpse that’s been buried and dug up again What’s the good of gurgling it
down m your inside like that 5 Stand up and shout at him Take off that second
murderer expression' 5
‘Come here, Percy' 5 cried Dorothy through her pins ‘Quick 1 ’
She was making the armour-the worst job of the lot, except those wretched
jackboots-out of glue and brown paper From long practice Dorothy could
make very nearly anything out of glue and brown paper, she could even make a
passably good periwig, with a brown paper skull-cap and dyed tow for the hair
Taking the year through, the amount of time she spent m struggling with glue,
brown paper, butter muslin, and all the other paraphernalia of amateur
theatricals was enormous So chronic was the need of money for all the church
funds that hardly a month ever passed when there was not a school play or a
pageant or an exhibition of tableaux vivants on hand-not to mention the
bazaars and jumble sales
As Percy-Percy Jowett, the blacksmith’s son, a small curly-headed boy-got
down from the bench and stood wriggling unhappily before her, Dorothy
seized a sheet of brown paper, measured it against him, snipped out the
neckhole and armholes, draped it round his middle and rapidly pinned it into
the shape of a rough breastplate There was a confused dm of voices.
victor Come on, now, come on! Enter Oliver Cromwell-that’s you! No, not
like that' Do you think Oliver Cromwell would come slinking on like a dog
that’s just had a hiding? Stand up. Stick your chest out. Scowl. That’s
better Now go on, Cromwell : ‘Halt! I hold a pistol m my hand! ’ Go on
a girl’ Please, Miss, Mother said as I was to tell you, Miss-
dorothy Keep still, Percy' For goodness’ sake keep still'
290 A Clergyman's Daughter
cromwell ’Alt' I ’old a pistol in my ’and 1
a small girl on the bench Mister' I’ve dropped my sweetie' [Snivelling] I’ve
dropped by swee-e-e-etie'
victor No, no, no, Tommie' No, no, no'
the girl Please, Miss, Mother said as I was to tell you as she couldn’t make
my knickers like she promised, Miss, because-
dorothy You’ll make me swallow a pin if you do that again
cromwell i/alt' I hold a pistol -
the small girl [in tears] My swee-e-e-e-eetie'
Dorothy seized the glue-brush, and with feverish speed pasted strips of
brown paper all over Percy’s thorax, up and down, backwards and forwards,
one on top of another, pausing only when the paper stuck to her fingers In five
minutes she had made a cuirass of glue and brown paper stout enough, when it
was dry, to have defied a real sword-blade Percy, ‘locked up in complete steel’
and with the sharp paper edge cutting his chin, looked down at himself with
the miserable resigned expression of a dog having its bath Dorothy took the
shears, slit the breastplate up one side, set it on end to dry and started
immediately on another child A fearful clatter broke out as the ‘noises off
began practising the sound of pistol-shots and horses galloping Dorothy’s
fingers were getting stickier and stickier, but from time to time she washed
some of the glue off them in a bucket of hot water that was kept- in readiness In
twenty minutes she had partially completed three breastplates Later on they
would have to be finished off, painted over with aluminium paint and laced up
the sides, and after that there was the job of making the thigh-pieces, and,
worst of all, the helmets to go with them Victor, gesticulating with his sword
and shouting to overcome the dm of galloping horses, was personating m turn
Oliver Cromwell, Charles I, Roundheads, Cavaliers, peasants, and Court
ladies The children were now growing restive and beginning to yawn, whine,
and exchange furtive kicks and pinches The breastplates finished for the
moment, Dorothy swept some of the litter off the table, pulled her sewing-
machine into position and set to work on a Cavalier’s green velvet doublet-it
was butter muslin Twmked green, but it looked all right at a distance
There was another ten minutes of feverish work Dorothy broke her thread,
all but said ‘Damn 1 ’ checked herself and hurriedly re-threaded the needle She
was working against time The play was now a fortnight distant, and there was
such a multitude of things yet to be made-helmets, doublets, swords,
jackboots (those miserable jackboots had been haunting her like a nightmare
for days past), scabbards, ruffles, wigs, spurs, scenery-that her heart sank
when she thought of them The children’s parents never helped with the
costumes for the school plays, more exactly, they always promised to help and
then backed out afterwards, Dorothy’s head was aching diabolically, partly
from the heat of the conservatory, partly from the strain of simultaneously
sewing and trying to visualize patterns for brown paper jackboots For the
moment she had even forgotten the bill for twenty-one pounds seven and
nmepence at Cargill’s She could think of nothing save that fearful mountain
A Clergyman’s Daughter 291
of unmade clothes that lay ahead of her It was so throughout the day One
thing loomed up after another- whether it was the costumes for the school play
or the collapsing floor of the belfry, or the shop -debts or the bindweed in the
peas-and each in its turn so urgent and so harassing that it blotted all the
others out of existence
Victor threw down his wooden sword, took out his watch and looked at it
‘That’ll do 1 ’ he said m the abrupt, ruthless tone from which he never
departed when he was dealing with children ‘We’ll go on on Friday Clear out,
the lot of you 1 I’m sick of the sight of you ’
He watched the children out, and then, having forgotten their existence as
soon as they were out of his sight, produced a page of music from his pocket
and began to fidget up and down, cocking his eye at two forlorn plants m the
corner which trailed their dead brown tendrils over the edges of their pots
Dorothy was still bending over her machine, stitching up the seams of the
green velvet doublet
Victor was a restless, intelligent little creature, and only happy when he was
quarrelling with somebody or something His pale, fine-featured face wore an
expression that appeared to be discontent and was really boyish eagerness
People meeting him for the first time usually said that he was wasting his
talents in his obscure job as a village schoolmaster, but the truth was that
Victor had no very marketable talents except a slight gift for music and a much
more pronounced gift for dealing with children Ineffectual m other ways, he
was excellent with children, he had the proper, ruthless attitude towards them
But of course, like everyone else, he despised his own especial talent His
interests were almost purely ecclesiastical He was what people call a churchy
young man It had always been his ambition to enter the Church, and he would
actually have done so if he had possessed the kind of brain that is capable of
learning Greek and Hebrew Debarred from the priesthood, he had drifted
quite naturally into his position as a Church schoolmaster and organist It kept
him, so to speak, within the Church precincts Needless to say, he was an
Anglo-Catholic of the most truculent Church Times breed-more clerical than
the clerics, knowledgeable about Church history, expert on vestments, and
ready at any moment with a furious tirade against Modernists, Protestants,
scientists, Bolshevists, and atheists
‘I was thinking,’ said Dorothy as she stopped her machine and snipped off
the thread, ‘we might make those helmets out of old bowler hats, if we can get
hold of enough of them Cut the brims off, put on paper brims of the right
shape and silver them over ’
‘Oh Lord, why worry your head about such things? ’ said Victor, who had
lost interest m the play the moment the rehearsal was over
‘It’s those wretched jackboots that are worrying me the most,’ said Dorothy,
taking the doublet on to her knee and looking at it
‘Oh, bother the jackboots 1 Let’s stop thinking about the play for a moment.
Look here,’ said Victor, unrolling his page of music, ‘I want you to speak to
your father for me I wish you’d ask him whether we can’t have a procession
some time next month ’
292 A Clergyman ’s Daughter
‘Another procession? What for? ’
‘Oh, I don’t know You can always find an excuse for a procession There’s
the Nativity of the B V M coming off on the eighth-that’s good enough for a
procession, I should think We’ll do it in style I’ve got hold of a splendid
rousing hymn that they can all bellow, and perhaps we could borrow their blue
banner with the Virgin Mary on it from St Wedekind’s in Millborough If he’ll
say the word I’ll start practising the choir at once ’
‘You know he’ll only say no,’ said Dorothy, threading a needle to sew
buttons on the doublet ‘He doesn’t really approve of processions It’s much
better not to ask him and make him angry ’
‘Oh, but dash it all'’ protested Victor ‘It’s simply months since we’ve had a
procession I never saw such dead-alive services as we have here You’d think
we were a Baptist chapel or something, from the way we go on ’
Victor chafed ceaselessly against the dull correctness of the Rector’s
services His ideal was what he called ‘the real Catholic worship ’-meaning
unlimited incense, gilded images, and more Roman vestments In his capacity
of organist he was for ever pressing for more processions, more voluptuous
music, more elaborate chanting in the liturgy, so that it was a continuous pull
devil, pull baker between him and the Rector And on this point Dorothy sided
with her father Having been brought up in the peculiar, frigid via media of
Anglicanism, she was by nature averse to and half-afraid of anything
‘ritualistic’
‘But dash it all*’ went on Victor, ‘a procession is such fun' Down the aisle,
out through the west door and back through the south door, with the choir
carrying candles behind and the Boy Scouts in front with the banner It would
look fine ’ He sang a stave in a thin but tuneful tenor
‘Hail thee. Festival Day, blest day that art hallowed for ever 1 ’
‘If I had my way,’ he added, ‘I’d have a couple of boys swinging jolly good
censers of incense at the same time ’
‘Yes, but you know how much Father dislikes that kind of thing Especially
when it’s anything to do with the Virgin Mary He says it’s all Roman Fever
and leads to people crossing themselves and genuflecting at the wrong times
and goodness knows what You remember what happened at Advent ’
The previous year, on his own responsibility, Victor had chosen as one of
the hymns for Advent, Number 642, with the refrain ‘Hail Mary, hail Mary,
hail Mary full of grace*’ This piece of popishness had annoyed the Rector
extremely At the close of the first verse he had pointedly laid down his hymn
book, turned round in his stall and stood regarding the congregation with an
air so stony that some of the choirboys faltered and almost broke down
Afterwards he had said that to hear the rustics bawling ‘’Ail Mary' ’Ail Mary*’
made him think he was m the four-ale bar of the Dog and Bottle
‘But dash it'’ said Victor m his aggrieved way, ‘your father always puts his
foot down when I try and get a bit of life into the service He won’t allow us
mcense, or decent music, or proper vestments, or anything And what’s the
result? We can’t get enough people to fill the church a quarter full, even on
Easter Sunday You look round the church on Sunday morning, and it’s
A Clei gyman’ s Daughter 293
nothing but the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides and a few old women ’
‘I know It’s dreadful,’ admitted Dorothy, sewing on her button ‘It doesn’t
seem to make any difference what we do- we simply can’t get the people to
come to church Still,’ she added, ‘they do come to us to be married and
buried And I don’t think the congregation’s actually gone down this year
There were nearly two hundred people at Easter Communion ’
‘Two hundred* It ought to be two thousand That’s the population of this
town The fact is that three quarters of the people in this place never go near a
church in their lives The Church has absolutely lost its hold over them They
don’t know that it exists And why’ That’s what I’m getting at Why’’
‘I suppose it’s all this Science and Free Thought and all that,’ said Dorothy
rather sententiously, quoting her father
This remark deflected Victor from what he had been about to say He had
been on the very point of saying that St Athelstan’s congregation had dwindled
because of the dullness of the services, but the hated words of Science and Free
Thought set him off in another and even more familiar channel
‘Of course it’s this so-called Free Thought*’ he exclaimed, immediately
beginning to fidget up and down again ‘It’s these swine of atheists like
Bertrand Russell and Julian Huxley and all that crowd And what’s ruined the
Church is that instead of jolly well answering them and showing them up for
the fools and liars they are, we just sit tight and let them spread their beastly
atheist propaganda wherever they choose It’s all the fault of the bishops, of
course ’ (Like every Anglo-Catholic, Victor had an abysmal contempt for
bishops ) ‘They’re all Modernists and time-servers By Jove*’ he added more
cheerfully, halting, ‘did you see my letter m the Church Times last week’’
‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t,’ said Dorothy, holding another button m position
with her thumb ‘What was it about’’
‘Oh, Modernist bishops and all that I got m a good swipe at old Barnes ’
It was very rarely that a week passed when Victor did not write a letter to the
Church Times He was m the thick of every controversy and in the forefront of
every assault qpon Modernists and atheists He had twice been in combat with
Dr Major, had written letters of withering irony about Dean Inge and the
Bishop of Birmingham, and had not hesitated to attack even the fiendish
Russell himself-but Russell, of course, had not dared to reply Dorothy, to tell
the truth, very seldom read the Church Times, and the Rector grew angry if he
so much as saw a copy of it m the house The weekly paper they took in the
Rectory was the High Churchman’s Gazette -a fine old High Tory anachronism
with a small and select circulation
‘That swine Russell*’ said Victor reminiscently, with his hands deep m his
pockets ‘How he does make my blood boil*’
‘Isn’t that the man who’s such a clever mathematician, or something’’ said
Dorothy, biting off her thread
‘Oh, I dare say he’s clever enough in his own line, of course,’ admitted
Victor grudgingly ‘But what’s that got to do with it’ Just because a man’s
clever at figures it doesn’t mean to say that- well, anyway* Let’s come back to
what I was saying. Why is it that we can’t get people to come to church in this
294 A Clergyman’s Daughter
placed It’s because our services are so dreary and godless, that’s what it is
People want worship that is worship-they want the real Catholic worship of
the real Catholic Church we belong to And they don’t get if from us All they
get is the old Protestant mumbo-jumbo, and Protestantism’s as dead as a
doornail, and everyone knows it ’
‘That’s not true 1 ’ said Dorothy rather sharply as she pressed the third
button into place ‘You know we’re not Protestants Father’s always saying
that the Church of England is the Catholic Church-he’s preached I don’t
know how many sermons about the Apostolic Succession That’s why Lord
Pockthorne and the others won’t come to church here Only he won’t join m
the Anglo-Catholic movement because he thinks they’re too fond of ritualism
for its own sake And so do I ’
‘Oh, I don’t say your father isn’t absolutely sound on doctrme-absolutely
sound But if he thinks we’re the Catholic Church, why doesn’t he hold the
service in a proper Catholic way? It’s a shame we can’t have incense
occasionally And his ideas about vestments-if you don’t mmd my saying
lt-are simply awful On Easter Sunday he was wearing a Gothic cope with a
modern Italian lace alb Dash it, it’s like wearing a top hat with brown boots ’
‘Well, I don’t think vestments are so important as you do,’ said Dorothy ‘I
think it’s the spirit of the priest that matters, not the clothes he wears ’
‘That’s the kind of thing a Primitive Methodist would say 1 ’ exclaimed
Victor disgustedly ‘Of course vestments are important 1 Where’s the sense of
worshipping at all if we can’t make a proper job of it? Now, if you want to see
what real Catholic worship can be like, look at St Wedekind’s m Millborough'
By Jove, they do things in style there 1 Images of the Virgin, reservation of the
Sacrament-everythmg They’ve had the Kensitites on to them three times,
and they simply defy the Bishop ’
‘Oh, I hate the way they go on at St Wedekind’s 1 ’ said Dorothy ‘They’re
absolutely spiky You can hardly see what’s happening at the altar, there are
such clouds of incense I think people like that ought to turn Roman Catholic
and have done with it ’
‘My dear Dorothy, you ought to have been a Nonconformist You really
ought A Plymouth Brother-or a Plymouth Sister or whatever it’s called I
think your favourite hymn must be Number 567, “O my God I fear Thee,
Thou art very High 1 ” ’
‘Yours is Number 231, “I nightly pitch my moving tent a day’s march
nearer Rome*’” retorted Dorothy, winding the thread round the last button
The argument continued for several minutes while Dorothy adorned a
Cavalier’s beaver hat (it was an old black felt school hat of her own) with plume
and ribbons She and Victor were never long together without being involved
in an argument upon the question of ‘ritualism’ In Dorothy’s opinion Victor
was a kind to ‘go over to Rome’ if not prevented, and she was very likely right
But Victor was not yet aware of his probable destiny At present the fevers of
the Anglo-Catholic movement, with its ceaseless exciting warfare on three
fronts at once-Protestants to right of you, Modernists to the left of you, and,
unfortunately, Roman Catholics to rear of you and always ready for a sly kick
A Clergyman’s Daughter 293
in the pants-filled his mental horizon Scoring off Dr Major m the Church
Times meant more to him than any of the serious business of life But for all his
churchmess he had not an atom of real piety m his constitution It was
essentially as a game that religious controversy appealed to him-the most
absorbing game ever invented, because it goes on for ever and because just a
little cheating is allowed
‘Thank goodness, that’s done 1 ’ said Dorothy, twiddling the Cavalier’s
beaver hat round on her hand and then putting it down ‘Oh dear, what piles of
things there are still to do, though' I wish I could get those wretched jackboots
off my mind What’s the time, Victor’’
‘It’s nearly five to one ’
‘Oh, good gracious 1 I must run I’ve got three omelettes to make I daren’t
trust them to Ellen And, oh, Victor' Have you got anything you can give us for
the jumble sale’ If you had an old pair of trousers you could give us, that would
be best of all, because we can always sell trousers ’
‘Trousers’ No But I tell you what I have got, though I’ve got a copy of The
Pilgrim’s Progress and another of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs that I’ve been
wanting to get rid of for years Beastly Protestant trash' An old Dissenting aunt
of mine gave them to me -Doesn’t it make you sick, all this cadging for
pennies’ Now, if we only held our services m a proper Catholic way, so that we
could get up a proper congregation, don’t you see, we shouldn’t need-’
‘That’ll be splendid,’ said Dorothy ‘We always have a stall for books-we
charge a penny for each book, and nearly all of them get sold We simply must
make that jumble sale a success, Victor' I’m countmg on Miss Mayfill to give
us something really nice What I’m specially hoping is that she might give us
that beautiful old Lowestoft china tea service of hers, and we could sell it for
five pounds at least I’ve been making special prayers all the morning that
she’ll give it to us ’
‘Oh’’ said Victor, less enthusiastically than usual Like Proggett earlier m
the morning, he was embarrassed by the word ‘prayer’ He was ready to talk all
day long about a point of ritual, but the mention of private devotions struck
him as slightly indecent ‘Don’t forget to ask your father about the procession,’
he said, getting back to a more congenial topic
‘All right. I’ll ask him But you know how it’ll be He’ll only get annoyed and
say it’s Roman Fever ’
‘Oh, damn Roman Fever' 5 said Victor, who, unlike Dorothy, did not set
himself penances for swearing
Dorothy hurried to the kitchen, discovered that there were only five eggs to
make the omelettes for three people, and decided to make one large omelette and
swell it out a bit with the cold boiled potatoes left over from yesterday. With a
short prayer for the success of the omelette (for omelettes are so dreadfully apt
to get broken when you take them out of the pan), she whipped up the eggs,
while Victor made off down the drive, half wistfully and half sulkily humming
‘Hail thee, Festival Day’, and passing on his way a disgusted-lookmg
manservant carrying the two handleless chamber-pots which were Miss
May fill’s contribution to the jumble sale
6
It was a little after ten o’clock Various things had happened-nothmg,
however, of any particular importance, only the usual round of parish jobs that
filled up Dorothy’s afternoon and evening Now, as she had arranged earlier in
the day, she was at Mr Warburton’s house, and was trying to hold her own in
one of those meandering arguments in which he delighted to entangle her
They were talking-but indeed, Mr Warburton never failed to manoeuvre
the conversation towards this subject-about the question of religious belief
‘My dear Dorothy,’ he was saying argumentatively, as he walked up and
down with one hand in his coat pocket and the other manipulating a Brazilian
cigar ‘My dear Dorothy, you don’t seriously mean to tell me that at your
age-twenty-seven, I believe-and with your intelligence, you will retain your
religious beliefs more or less in toto > ’
‘Of course I do You know I do ’
‘Oh, come, now 1 The whole bag of tricks? All that nonsense that you learned
at your mother’s knee-surely you’re not going to pretend to me that you still
believe m it? But of course you don’t 1 You can’t 1 You’re afraid to own up,
that’s all it is No need to worry about that here, you know The Rural Dean’s
wife isn’t listening, and / won’t give the show away ’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “all that nonsense”/ began Dorothy, sitting
up straighter m her chair, a little offended
‘Well, let’s take an instance Something particularly hard to swallow-Hell,
for instance Do you believe in Hell? When I say believe , mind you. I’m not
asking whether you believe it m some milk and water metaphorical way like
these Modernist bishops young Victor Stone gets so excited about I mean do
you believe in it literally? Do you believe m Hell as you believe m Australia? ’
‘Yes, of course I do,’ said Dorothy, and she endeavoured to explain to him
that the existence of Hell is much more real and permanent than the existence
of Australia
‘Hm,’ said Mr Warburton, unimpressed ‘Very sound in its way, of course
But what always makes me so suspicious of you religious people is that you’re
so deucedly cold-blooded about your beliefs It shows a very poor imagination,
to say the least of it Here am I an mfidel and blasphemer and neck deep m at
least six out of the Seven Deadly, and obviously doomed to eternal torment
There’s no knowing that in an hour’s time I mayn’t be roasting in the hottest
part of Hell And yet you can sit there talking to me as calmly as though I’d
nothing the matter with me Now, if I’d merely got cancer or leprosy or some
A Clergyman's Daughter 297
other bodily ailment, you’d be quite distressed about lt-at least, I like to flatter
myself that you would Whereas, when I’m going to sizzle on the grid
throughout eternity, you seem positively unconcerned about it ’
‘I never said you were going to Hell,’ said Dorothy somewhat
uncomfortably, and wishing that the conversation would take a different turn
For the truth was, though she was not gomg to tell him so, that the point Mr
Warburton had raised was one with which she herself had had certain
difficulties She did indeed believe in Hell, but she had never been able to
persuade herself that anyone actually went there She believed that Hell
existed, but that it was empty Uncertain of the orthodoxy of this belief, she
preferred to keep it to herself ‘It’s never certain that anyone is gomg to Hell,’
she said more firmly, feeling that here at least she was on sure ground
‘What 1 ’ said Mr Warburton, halting m mock surprise ‘Surely you don’t
mean to say that there’s hope for me yet’’
‘Of course there is It’s only those horrid Predestination people who pretend
that you go to Hell whether you repent or not You don’t think the Church of
England are Calvinists, do you’’
‘I suppose there’s always the chance of getting off on a plea of Invincible
Ignorance,’ said Mr Warburton reflectively, and then, more confidently ‘Do
you know, Dorothy, I’ve a sort of feeling that even now, after knowing me two
years, you’ve still half an idea you can make a convert of me A lost
sheep-brand plucked from the burning, and all that I believe you still hope
against hope that one of these days my eyes will be opened and you’ll meet me
at Holy Communion at seven o’clock on some damned cold winter morning
Don’t you’’
‘Well-’ said Dorothy, again uncomfortably She did, m fact, entertain some
such hope about Mr Warburton, though he was not exactly a promising case
for conversion It was not in her nature to see a fellow being m a state of
unbelief without making some effort to reclaim him What hours she had
spent, at different times, earnestly debating with vague village atheists who
could not produce a single intelligible reason for their unbelief 1 ‘Yes,’ she
admitted finally, not particularly wanting to make the admission, but not
wanting to prevaricate
Mr Warburton laughed delightedly.
‘You’ve a hopeful nature,’ he said ‘But you aren’t afraid, by any chance, that
I might convert you? “The dog it was that died”, you may remember ’
At this Dorothy merely smiled ‘Don’t let him see he’s shocking you’-that
was always her maxim when she was talking to Mr Warburton. They had been
arguing m this manner, without coming to any kmd of conclusion, for the past
hour, and might have gone on for the rest of the night if Dorothy had been
willing to stay, for Mr Warburton delighted in teasing her about her religious
beliefs He had that fatal cleverness that so often goes with unbelief, and in
their arguments, though Dorothy was always right, she was not Sways
victorious They were sitting, or rather Dorothy was sitting and Mr
Warburton was standing, m a large agreeable room, giving on a moonlit lawn,
that Mr Warburton called his ‘studio’ -not that there was any sign of work ever
2^8 A Clergyman's Daughter
having been done in it To Dorothy’s great disappointment, the celebrated Mr
Bewley had not turned up (As a matter of fact, neither Mr Bewley, nor his
wife, nor his novel entitled Fishpools and Concubines , actually existed Mr
Warburton had invented all three of them on the spur of the moment, as a
pretext for inviting Dorothy to his house, well knowing that she would never
come unchaperoned ) Dorothy had felt rather uneasy on finding that Mr
Warburton was alone It had occurred to her, indeed she had felt perfectly
certain, that it would be wiser to go home at once, but she had stayed, chiefly
because she was horribly tired and the leather armchair into which Mr
Warburton had thrust her the moment she entered the house was too
comfortable to leave Now, however, her conscience was pricking her It didn't
do to stay too late at his house-people would talk if they heard of it Besides,
there was a multitude of jobs that she ought to be doing and that she had
neglected in order to come here She was so little used to idleness that even an
hour spent m mere talking seemed to her vaguely sinful
She made an effort, and straightened herself in the too-comfortable chair C I
think, if you don’t mind, it’s really time I was getting home,’ she said
‘Talking of Invincible Ignorance,’ went on Mr Warburton, taking no notice
of Dorothy’s remark, ‘I forget whether I ever told you that once when I was
standing outside the World’s End pub m Chelsea, waiting for a taxi, a damned
ugly little Salvation Army lassie came up to me and said-without any kind of
introduction, you know-“What will you say at the Judgement Seat? ” I said,
“I am reserving my defence ” Rather neat, I think, don’t you? ’
Dorothy did not answer Her conscience had given her another and harder
jab-she had remembered those wretched, unmade jackboots, and the fact that
at least one of them had got to be made tonight She was, however, unbearably
tired She had had an exhausting afternoon, starting off with ten miles or so
bicycling to and fro in the sun, delivering the parish magazine, and continuing
with the Mothers’ Union tea in the hot little wooden-walled room behind the
parish hall The Mothers met every Wednesday afternoon to have tea and do
some charitable sewing while Dorothy read aloud to them (At present she was
reading Gene Stratton Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlosl ) It was nearly always
upon Dorothy that jobs of that kind devolved, because the phalanx of devoted
women (the church fowls, they are called) who do the dirty work of most
parishes had dwindled at Knype Hill to four or five at most The only helper on
whom Dorothy ^ould count at all regularly was Miss Foote, a tall, rabbit-
faced, dithering virgin of thirty-five, who meant well but made a mess of
everything and was in a perpetual state of flurry Mr Warburton used to say
that she reminded him of a comet- ‘a ridiculous blunt-nosed creature rushing
round on an eccentric orbit and always a little behind time’ You could trust
Miss Foote with the church decorations, but not with the Mothers or the
Sunday School, because, though a regular churchgoer, her orthodoxy was
suspect She had confided to Dorothy that she could worship God best under
the blue dome of the sky After tea Dorothy had dashed up to the church to put
fresh flowers on the altar, and then she had typed out her father’s sermon-her
typewriter was a rickety pre-Boer War ‘invisible’, on which you couldn’t
A Clergyman’s Daughter 299
average eight hundred words an hour-and after supper she had weeded the
pea rows until the light failed and her back seemed to be breaking With one
thing and another, she was even more tired than usual
‘I really must be getting home,’ she repeated more firmly ‘I’m sure it’s
getting fearfully late ’
‘Home? ’ said Mr Warburton ‘Nonsense' The evening’s hardly begun ’
He was walking up and down the room again, with his hands in his coat
pockets, having thrown away his cigar The spectre of the unmade jackboots
stalked back into Dorothy’s mind She would, she suddenly decided, make two
jackboots tonight instead of only one, as a penance for the hour she had wasted
She was just beginning to make a mental sketch of the way she would cut out
the pieces of brown paper for the msteps, when she noticed that Mr
Warburton had halted behind her chair
‘What time is it, do you know? ’ she said
‘I dare say it might be half past ten But people like you and me don’t talk of
such vulgar subjects as the time ’
‘If it’s half past ten, then I really must be going,’ said Dorothy I’ve got a
whole lot of work to do before I go to bed ’
‘Work' At this time of night? Impossible'’
‘Yes, I have I’ve got to make a pair of jackboots ’
‘You’ve got to make a pair of what? said Mr Warburton
‘Of jackboots For the play the schoolchildren are acting We make them out
of glue and brown paper ’
‘Glue and brown paper' Good God 1 ’ murmured Mr Warburton He went
on, chiefly to cover the fact that he was drawing nearer to Dorothy’s chair
‘What a life you lead' Messing about with glue and brown paper m the middle
of the night' I must say, there are times when I feel just a little glad that I’m not
a clergyman’s daughter ’
‘I think-’ began Dorothy
But at the same moment Mr Warburton, invisible behind her chair, had
lowered his hands and taken her gently by the shoulders Dorothy immediately
wriggled herself m an effort to get free of him, but Mr Warburton pressed her
back into her place
‘Keep still,’ he said peaceably
‘Let me go'’ exclaimed Dorothy
Mr Warburton ran his right hand caressingly down her upper arm There
was something very revealing, very characteristic in the way he did it, it was
the lingering, appraising touch of a man to whom a woman’s body is valuable
precisely m the same way as though it were something to eat
‘You really have extraordinary nice arms,’ he said ‘How on earth have you
managed to remain unmarried all these years? ’
‘Let me go at once'’ repeated Dorothy, beginning to struggle again
‘But I don’t particularly want to let you go,’ objected Mr Warburton
* Please don’t stroke my arm like that' I don’t like it' 5
‘What a curious child you are' Why don’t you like it? 5
‘I tell you I don’t like it' 5
yoo A Clergyman ’ ? Daughtei
‘Now don’t go and turn round,’ said Mr Warburton mildly ‘ Y ou don’t seem
to realize how tactful it was on my part to approach you from behind your
back If you turn round you’ll see that I’m old enough to be your father, and
hideously bald into the bargain But if you’ll only keep still and not look at me
you can imagine I’m Ivor Novello ’
Dorothy caught sight of the hand that was caressing her- a large, pink, ver>
masculine hand, with thick fingers and a fleece of gold hairs upon the back She
turned very pale, the expression of her face altered from mere annoyance to
aversion and dread She made a violent effort, wrenched herself free, and stood
up, facing him
‘I do wish you wouldn’t do that 1 ’ she said, half in anger and half in distress
‘What is the matter with you’’ said Mr Warburton
He had stood upright, in his normal pose, entirely unconcerned, and he
looked at her with a touch of curiosity Her face had changed It was not only
that she had turned pale, there was a withdrawn, half-frightened look in her
eyes-almost as though, for the moment, she were looking at him with the eyes
of a stranger He perceived that he had wounded her m some way which he did
not understand, and which perhaps she did not want him to understand
‘What is the matter with you’’ he repeated
'Why must you do that every time you meet me’’
“‘Every time I meet you” is an exaggeration,’ said Mr Warburton ‘It’s
really very seldom that I get the opportunity But if you really and truly don’t
like it-’
‘Of course I don’t like it' You know I don’t like it 1 ’
‘Well, well 1 Then let’s say no more about it,’ said Mr Warburton
generously ‘Sit down, and we’ll change the subject ’
He was totally devoid of shame It was perhaps his most outstanding
characteristic Having attempted to seduce her, and failed, he was quite willing
to go on with the conversation as though nothing whatever had happened
‘I’m going home at once,’ said Dorothy ‘I can’t stay here any longer ’
‘Oh nonsense 1 Sit down and forget about it We’ll talk of moral theology, or
cathedral architecture, or the Girl Guides’ cooking classes, or anything you
choose Think how bored I shall be all alone if you go home at this hour ’
But Dorothy persisted, and there was an argument Even if it had not been
his intention to make love to her-and whatever he might promise he would
certainly begin again m a few minutes if she did not go-Mr Warburton would
have pressed her to stay, for, like all thoroughly idle people, he had a horror of
going to bed and no conception of the value of time He would, if you let him,
keep you talking till three or four m the morning Even when Dorothy finally
escaped, he walked beside her down the moonlit drive, still talking
voluminously and with such perfect good humour that she found it impossible
to be angry with him any longer
‘I’m leaving first thing tomorrow,’ he told her as they reached the gate ‘I’m
going to take the car to town and pick up the kids- the bastards, , you know- and
we’re leaving for France the next day I’m not certain where we shall go after
that, eastern Europe, perhaps Prague, Vienna, Bucharest ’
A Clergyman" s Daughter 301
‘How nice,’ said Dorothy
Mr Warburton, with an adroitness surprising m so large and stout a man,
had manoeuvred himself between Dorothy and the gate
‘I shall be away six months or more,’ he said ‘And of course I needn’t ask,
before so long a parting, whether you want to kiss me good-bye ? ’
Before she knew what he was doing he had put his arm about her and drawn
her against him She drew back-too late, he kissed her on the cheek-would
have kissed her on the mouth if she had not turned her head away in time She
struggled in his arms, violently and for a moment helplessly
‘Oh, let me go'’ she cried ‘ Do let me go! ’
‘I believe I pointed out before,’ said Mr Warburton, holding her easily
against him, ‘that I don’t want to let you go ’
‘But we’re standing right m front of Mrs SemprilPs window' She’ll see us
absolutely for certain'’
‘Oh, good God' So she will 1 ’ said Mr Warburton ‘I was forgetting ’
Impressed by this argument, as he would not have been by any other, he let
Dorothy go She promptly put the gate between Mr Warburton and herself
He, meanwhile, was scrutinizing Mrs Sempnll’s windows
‘I can’t see a light anywhere,’ he said finally ‘With any luck the blasted hag
hasn’t seen us ’
‘Good-bye,’ said Dorothy briefly ‘This time I really must go Remember me
to the children ’
With this she made off as fast as she could go without actually running, to get
out of his reach before he should attempt to kiss her again
Even as she did so a sound checked her for an mstant-the unmistakable
bang of a window shutting, somewhere in Mrs Semprill’s house Could Mrs
Semprill have been watching them after alP But (reflected Dorothy) of course
she had been watching them' What else could you expect^ You could hardly
imagine Mrs Semprill missing such a scene as that And if she had been
watching them, undoubtedly the story would be all over the town tomorrow
morning, and it would lose nothing in the telling But this thought, sinister
though it was, did no more than flight momentarily through Dorothy’s mind as
she hurried down the road
When she was well out of sight of Mr Warburton’s house she stopped, took
out her handkerchief and scrubbed the place on her cheek where he had kissed
her She scrubbed it vigorously enough to bring the blood into her cheek It
was not until she had quite rubbed out the imaginary stam which his bps had
left there that she walked on again
What he had done had upset her Even now her heart was knocking and
fluttering uncomfortably I can’t hear that kind of thing' she repeated to herself
several times over And unfortunately this was no more than the literal truth,
she really could not bear it To be kissed or fondled by a man- to feel heavy
male arms about her and thick male lips bearing down upon her own-was
terrifying and repulsive to her Even m memory or imagination it made her
wmce It was her especial secret, the especial, incurable disability that she
carried through life
go 2 A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
If only they would leave you alone ] she thought as she walked onwards a
little more slowly That was how she put it to herself habitually- ‘If only they
would leave you alone '’ For it was not that m other ways she disliked men On
the contrary, she liked them better than women Part of Mr Warburton’s hold
over her was m the fact that he was a man and had the careless good humour
and the intellectual largeness that women so seldom have But why couldn’t
they leave you alone > Why did they always have to kiss you and maul you
about’ They were dreadful when they kissed you-dreadful and a little
disgusting, like some large, furry beast that rubs itself against you, all too
friendly and yet liable to turn dangerous at any moment And beyond their
kissing and mauling there lay always the suggestion of those other, monstrous
things (‘all that 3 was her name for them) of which she could hardly even bear to
think
Of course, she had had her share, and rather more than her share, of casual
attention from men She was just pretty enough, and just plain enough, to be
the kind of girl that men habitually pester For when a man wants a little casual
amusement, he usually picks out a girl who is not too pretty Pretty girls (so he
reasons) are spoilt and therefore capricious, but plain girls are easy game And
even if you are a clergyman’s daughter, even if you live m a town like Knype
Hill and spend almost your entire life in parish work, you don’t altogether
escape pursuit Dorothy was all too used to it— all too used to the fattish
middle-aged men, with their fishily hopeful eyes, who slowed down their cars
when you passed them on the road, or who manoeuvred an introduction and
then began pinching your elbow about ten minutes afterwards Men of all
descriptions Even a clergyman, on one occasion-a bishop’s chaplain, he
was
But the trouble was that it was not better, but oh* infinitely worse when they
were the right kind of man and the advances they made you were honourable
Her mind slipped backwards five years, to Francis Moon, curate m those days
at St Wedekind’s in Millborough Dear Francis 1 How gladly would she have
married him if only it had not been for all that ' Over and over again he had
asked her to marry him, and of course she had had to say No, and, equally of
course, he had never known why Impossible to tell him why And then he had
gone away, and only a year later had died so irrelevantly of pneumonia She
whispered a prayer for his soul, momentarily forgetting that her father did not
really approve of prayers for the dead, and then, with an effort, pushed the
memory aside Ah, better not to think of it again' It hurt her in her breast to
think of it.
She could never marry, she had decided long ago upon that Even when she
was a child she had known it Nothing would ever overcome her horror of all
that-st the very thought of it something within her seemed to shrink and
freeze. And of course, in a sense she did not want to overcome it For, like all
abnormal people, she was not fully aware that she was abnormal
And yet, though her sexual coldness seemed to her natural and inevitable,
she knew well enough how it was that it had begun She could remember, as
clearly as though it were yesterday, certain dreadful scenes between her father
A Clergyman's Daughter 303
and her mother- scenes that she had witnessed when she was no more than
nine years old They had left a deep, secret wound m her mind And then a
little later she had been frightened by some old steel engravings of nymphs
pursued by satyrs To her childish mind there was something inexplicably,
horribly sinister in those horned, semi-human creatures that lurked m thickets
and behind large trees, ready to come bounding forth in sudden swift pursuit
For a whole year of her childhood she had actually been afraid to walk through
woods alone, for fear of satyrs She had grown out of the fear, of course, but not
out of the feeling that was associated with it The satyr had remained with her
as a symbol Perhaps she would never grow out of it, that special feeling of
dread, of hopeless flight from something more than rationally dreadful-the
stamp of hooves in the lonely wood, the lean, furry thighs of the satyr It was a
thing not to be altered, not to be argued away It is, moreover, a thing too
common nowadays, among educated women, to occasion any kind of surprise
Most of Dorothy’s agitation had disappeared by the time she reached the
Rectory The thoughts of satyrs and Mr Warburton, of Francis Moon and her
foredoomed sterility, which had been going to and fro in her mind, faded out of
it and were replaced by the accusing image of a jackboot She remembered that
she had the best part of two hours’ work to do before going to bed tonight The
house was m darkness She went round to the back and slipped m on tiptoe by
the scullery door, for fear of waking her father, who was probably asleep
already
As she felt her way through the dark passage to the conservatory, she
suddenly decided that she had gone wrong m going to Mr Warburton’s house
tonight She would, she resolved, never go there again, even when she was
certain that somebody else would be there as well Moreover, she would do
penance tomorrow for having gone there tonight Having lighted the lamp,
before doing anything else she found her ‘memo list’, which was already
written out for tomorrow, and pencilled a capital P against ‘breakfast’, P stood
for penance-no bacon again for breakfast tomorrow Then she lighted the
oilstove under the glue-pot
The light of the lamp fell yellow upon her sewing-machine and upon the pile
of half-finished clothes on the table, reminding her of the yet greater pile of
clothes that were not even begun, reminding her, also, that she was dreadfully,
overwhelmingly tired She had forgotten her tiredness at the moment when
Mr Warburton laid his hands on her shoulders, but now it had come back upon
her with double force Moreover, there was a somehow exceptional quality
about her tiredness tonight She felt, m an almost literal sense of the words,
washed out As she stood beside the table she had a sudden, very strange
feeling as though her mind had been entirely emptied, so that for several
seconds she actually forgot what it was that she had come into the conservatory
to do
Then she remembered-the jackboots, of course 1 Some contemptible little
demon whispered m her ear, ‘Why not go straight to bed and leave the
jackboots till tomorrow? ’ She uttered a prayer for strength, and pinched
herself Come on, Dorothy 1 No slacking please 1 Luke ix, 62 Then, clearing
204 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
some of the litter off the table, she got out her scissors, a pencil, and four sheets
of brown paper, and sat down to cut out those troublesome insteps for the
jackboots while the glue was boiling
When the grandfather clock in her father’s study struck midnight she was
still at work She had shaped both jackboots by this time, and was reinforcing
them by pasting narrow strips of paper all over them-a long, messy job Every
bone in her body was aching, and her eyes were sticky with sleep Indeed, it
was only rather dimly that she remembered what she was doing But she
worked on, mechanically pasting strip after strip of paper into place, and
pinching herself every two minutes to counteract the hypnotic sound of the
oilstove singing beneath the glue-pot
CHAPTER 2
I
Out of a black, dreamless sleep, with the sense of being drawn upwards
through enormous and gradually lightening abysses, Dorothy awoke to a
species of consciousness
Her eyes were still closed By degrees, however, their lids became less
opaque to the light, and then flickered open of their own accord She was
looking out upon a street-a shabby, lively street of small shops and narrow-
faced houses, with streams of men, trams, and cars passing in either direction
But as yet it could not properly be said that she was looking For the things
she saw were not apprehended as men, trams, and cars, nor as anything m
particular, they were not even apprehended as things moving, not even as
things „ She merely sazo } as an animal sees, without speculation and almost
without consciousness. The noises of the street- the confused din of voices, the
hooting of horns and the scream of the trams grinding on their gritty
rails-flowed through her head provoking purely physical responses She had
no words, nor any conception of the purpose of such things as words, nor any
consciousness of time or place, or of her own body or even of her own
existence
Nevertheless, by degrees her perceptions became sharper The stream of
moving things began to penetrate beyond her eyes and sort themselves out into
separate images in her brain She began, still wordlessly, to observe the shapes
of things A long-shaped thing swam past, supported on four other, narrower
long-shaped things, and drawing after it a square-shaped thmg balanced on
two circles, Dorothy watched it pass, and suddenly, as though spontaneously,
a word flashed into her mind The word was ‘horse’ It faded, but returned
presently in the more complex form ‘ That is a horse*’ Other words
followed- ‘house’, ‘street’, ‘tram’, ‘car’, ‘bicycle’-until m a few minutes she
had found a name for almost everything within sight She discovered the
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 305
words ‘man’ and ‘woman’, and, speculating upon these words, discovered that
she knew the difference between living and inanimate things, and between
human beings and horses, and between men and women
It was only now, after becoming aware of most of the things about her, that
she became aware of herself Hitherto she had been as it were a pair of eyes with
a receptive but purely impersonal brain behind them But now, with a curious
little shock, she discovered her separate and umque existence, she could feel
herself existing, it was as though something within her were exclaiming ‘I am
I 1 ’ Also, in some way she knew that this ‘I’ had existed and been the same from
remote periods in the past, though it was a past of which she had no
remembrance
But it was only for a moment that this discovery occupied her From the first
there was a sense of incompleteness m it, of something vaguely unsatisfactory
And it was this the ‘I am I’ which had seemed an answer had itself become a
question It was no longer ‘I am I’, but ‘who ami’ 5
Who was she ? She turned the question over m her mmd, and found that she
had not the dimmest notion of who she was, except that, watching the people
and horses passing, she grasped that she was a human being and not a horse
And that the question altered itself and took this form ‘Am I a man or a
woman 55 ’ Again neither feeling nor memory gave any clue to the answer But at
that moment, by accident possibly, her finger-tips brushed against her body
She realized more clearly than before that her body existed, and that it was her
own-that it was, m fact, herself She began to explore it with her hands, and
her hands encountered breasts She was a woman, therefore Only women had
breasts In some way she knew, without knowing how she knew, that all those
women who passed had breasts beneath their clothes, though she could not see
them
She now grasped that in order to identify herself she must examine her own
body, beginning with her face, and for some moments she actually attempted
to look at her own face, before realizing that this was impossible She looked
down, and saw a shabby black satin dress, rather long, a pair of flesh-coloured
artificial silk stockings, laddered and dirty, and a pair of very shabby black
satin shoes with high heels None of them was in the least familiar to her She
examined her hands, and they were both strange and unstrange. They were
smallish hands, with hard palms, and very dirty. After a moment she realized
that it was their dirtiness that made them strange to her The hands themselves
seemed natural and appropriate, though she did not recognize them
After hesitating a few moments longer, she turned to her left and began to
walk slowly along the pavement A fragment of knowledge had come to her,
mysteriously, out of the blank past the existence of mirrors, their purpose, and
the fact that there are often mirrors m shop windows After a moment she came
to a cheap little jeweller’s shop in which a strip of mirror, set at an angle,
reflected the faces of people passing Dorothy picked her reflection out from
among a dozen others, immediately realizing it to be her own Yet it could not
be said that she had recognized it, she had no memory of ever havmg seen it till
this moment It showed her a woman’s youngish face, thin, very blonde, with
306 A Clergyman's Daughter
crow’s-feet round the eyes, and faintly smudged with dirt A vulgar black
cloche hat was stuck carelessly on the head, concealing most of the hair The
face was quite unfamiliar to her, and yet not strange She had not known till
this moment what face to expect, but now that she had seen it she realized that
it was the face she might have expected It was appropriate It corresponded to
something within her
As she turned away from the jeweller’s mirror, she caught sight of the words
‘Fry’s Chocolate’ on a shop window opposite, and discovered that she
understood the purpose of writing, and also, after a momentary effort, that she
was able to read Her eyes flitted across the street, taking m and deciphering
odd scraps of print, the names of shops, advertisements, newspaper posters
She spelled out the letters of two red and white posters outside a tobacconist’s
shop One of them read, ‘Fresh Rumours about Rector’s Daughter’, and the
other, ‘Rector’s Daughter Now believed in Paris’ Then she looked upwards,
and saw in white lettering on the corner of a house ‘New Kent Road’ The
words arrested her She grasped that she was standing in the New Kent Road,
and-another fragment of her mysterious knowledge-the New Kent Road was
somewhere in London So she was m London
As she made this discovery a peculiar tremor ran through her Her mind was
now fully awakened, she grasped, as she had not grasped before, the
strangeness of her situation, and it bewildered and frightened her What could
it all mean> What was she doing here? How had she got here? What had
happened to her?
The answer was not long in coming She thought-and it seemed to her that
she understood perfectly well what the words meant ‘Of course 1 I’ve lost my
memory 1 ’
At this moment two youths and a girl who were trudging past, the youths
with clumsy sacking bundles on their backs, stopped and looked curiously at
Dorothy They hesitated for a moment, then walked on, but halted again by a
lamp-post five yards away Dorothy saw them looking back at her and talking
among themselves One of the youths was about twenty, narrow-chested,
black-haired, ruddy-cheeked, good-looking m a nosy cockney way, and
dressed in the wreck of a raffishly smart blue suit and a check cap The other
was about twenty-six, squat, nimble, and powerful, with a snub nose, a clear
pink skin and huge lips as coarse as sausages, exposing strong yellow teeth He
was frankly ragged, and he had a mat of orange-coloured hair cropped short
and growing low on his head, which gave him a startling resemblance to an
orang-outang. The girl was a silly-looking, plump creature, dressed in clothes
very like Dorothy’s own Dorothy could hear some of what they were saying
‘That tart looks ill,’ said the girl
The orange-headed one, who was singing ‘Sonny Boy’ m a good baritone
voice, stopped singing to answer ‘She ain’t ill,’ he said ‘She’s on the beach all
right, though Same as us ’
‘She’d do jest nicely for Nobby, wouldn’t she? ’ said the dark-haired one
‘Oh, you v exclaimed the girl with a shocked-amorous air, pretending to
smack the dark one over the head
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 307
The youths had lowered their bundles and leaned them against the lamp-
post All three of them now came rather hesitantly towards Dorothy, the
orange-headed one, whose name seemed to be Nobby, leading the way as their
ambassador He moved with a gambolling, apelike gait, and his grm was so
frank and wide that it was impossible not to smile back at him He addressed
Dorothy m a friendly way
‘Hullo, kid 1 ’
‘Hullo 1 ’
‘You on the beach, kid? ’
‘On the beach? ’
‘Well, on the bum? ’
‘On the bum? ’
‘Christ! she’s batty,’ murmured the girl, twitching at the black-haired one’s
arm as though to pull him away
‘Well, what I mean to say, kid-have you got any money? ’
‘I don’t know ’
At this all three looked at one another in stupefaction For a moment they
probably thought that Dorothy really was batty But simultaneously Dorothy,
who had earlier discovered a small pocket in the side of her dress, put her hand
into it and felt the outline of a large com
‘I believe I’ve got a penny,’ she said
‘A penny' 5 said the dark youth disgustedly, ‘-lot of good that is to us 1 ’
Dorothy drew it out It was a half-crown An astonishing change came over
the faces of the three others Nobby’s mouth split open with delight, he
gambolled several steps to and fro like some great jubilant ape, and then,
halting, took Dorothy confidentially by the arm
‘That’s the mulligatawny'’ he said ‘We’ve struck it lucky-and so’ve you,
kid, believe me You’re going to bless the day you set eyes on us lot We’re
going to make your fortune for you, we are Now, see here, kid-are you on to
go into cahoots with us three? ’
‘What? ’ said Dorothy
‘What I mean to say-how about you chumming in with Flo and Charlie and
me? Partners, see? Comrades all, shoulder to shoulder United we stand,
divided we fall. We put up the brains, you put up the money How about it,
kid? Are you on, or are you off? ’
‘Shut up, Nobby 1 ’ interrupted the girl ‘She don’t understand a word of
what you’re saying Talk to her proper, can’t you? ’
‘That’ll do, Flo,’ said Nobby equably ‘You keep it shut and leave the
talking to me I got a way with the tarts, I have Now, you listen to me,
kid-what might your name happen to be, kid? ’
Dorothy was within an ace of saying ‘I don’t know,’ but she was sufficiently
on the alert to stop herself in time Choosing a feminine name from the half-
dozen that sprang immediately into her mind, she answered, ‘Ellen ’
‘Ellen That’s the mulligatawny No surnames when you’re on the bum
Well now, Ellen dear, you listen to me. Us three are going down hopping,
see-*
A Clergyman’ s Daughter
308
‘Hopping? ’
‘’Oppmg’’ put m the dark youth impatiently, as though disgusted by
Dorothy’s ignorance His voice and manner were rather sullen, and his accent
much baser than Nobby’s ‘Pickin’ ’ops-dahn in Kent 1 C’n understand that,
can’t yer? ’
‘Oh, hops' For beer? ’
‘That’s the mulligatawny’ Coming on fine, she is Well, kid, ’z I was saying,
here’s us three going down hopping, and got a job promised us and
all-Blessington’s farm, Lower Molesworth Only we’re just a bit m the
mulligatawny, see? Because we ain’t got a brown between us, and we got to do
it on the toby- thirty-five miles it is -and got to tap for our tommy and skipper
at night as well And that’s a bit of a mulligatawny, with ladies m the party But
now s’pose f rmstance you was to come along with us, see? We c’d take the
twopenny tram far as Bromley, and that’s fifteen miles done, and we won’t
need skipper more’n one night on the way And you can chum in at our
bm-four to a bin’s the best pickmg-and if Blessington’s paying twopence a
bushel you’ll turn your ten bob a week easy What do you say to it, kid? Your
two and a tanner won’t do you much good here in Smoke But you go into
partnership with us, and you’ll get your kip for a month and something
over-and we’ll get a lift to Bromley and a bit of scran as well ’
About a quarter of his speech was intelligible to Dorothy She asked rather at
random
‘What is scran * ’
‘Scran? Tommy-food I can see you ain’t been long on the beach, kid ’
‘Oh Well, you want me to come down hop-picking with you, is that it? ’
‘That’s it, Ellen my dear Are you on, or are you off? ’
‘AH right,’ said Dorothy promptly ‘I’ll come ’
She made this decision without any misgiving whatever It is true that if she
had had time to think over her position, she would probably have acted
differently, in all probability she would have gone to a police station and asked
for assistance That would have been the sensible course to take But Nobby
and the others had appeared just at the critical moment, and, helpless as she
was, it seemed quite natural to throw m her lot with the first human being who
presented himself. Moreover, for some reason which she did not understand, it
reassured her to hear that they were making for Kent Kent, it seemed to her,
was the very place to which she wanted to go The others showed no further
curiosity, and asked no uncomfortable questions Nobby simply said, ‘O K
That’s the mulligatawny’’ and then gently took Dorothy’s half-crown out of
her hand and slid it into his pocket-in case she should lose it, he explained
The dark youth-apparently his name was Charlie- said m his surly,
disagreeable way
‘Come on, less get movin’’ It’s ’ar-parse two already We don’t want to miss
that there — tram.
’ sighed Mrs Semprill ‘But, my dear Dorothy, as though one
ever wanted or needed to look 1 The trouble is that one can’t help seeing all the
dreadful wickedness that goes on m this town ’
Mrs Semprill was always genuinely astonished if you accused her of looking
for subjects for scandal Nothing, she would protest, pained her more than the
A Clergyman's Daughter 281
spectacle of human wickedness, but it was constantly forced upon her
unwilling eyes, and only a stern sense of duty impelled her to make it public
Dorothy’s remarks, so far from silencing her, merely set her talking about the
general corruption of Knype Hill, of which Molly Freeman’s misbehaviour
was only one example And so from Molly Freeman and her six young men she
proceeded to Dr Gaythorne, the town medical officer, who had got two of the
nurses at the Cottage Hospital with child, and then to Mrs Corn, the Town
Clerk’s wife, found lymg m a field dead drunk on eau-de-Cologne, and then to
the curate at St Wedekind’s m Millborough, who had involved himself m a
grave scandal with a choirboy, and so it went on, one thing leading to another
For there was hardly a soul m the town or the surrounding country about
whom Mrs Sempnll could not disclose some festering secret if you listened to
her long enough
It was noticeable that her stories were not only dirty and libellous, but they
had nearly always some monstrous tinge of perversion about them Compared
with the ordinary scandalmongers of a country town, she was Freud to
Boccaccio From hearing her talk you would have gathered the impression that
Knype Hill with its thousand inhabitants held more of the refinements of evil
than Sodom, Gomorrah, and Buenos Aires put together Indeed, when you
reflected upon the lives led by the inhabitants of this latter-day City of the
Plam-from the manager of the local bank squandering his clients’ money on
the children of his second and bigamous marriage, to the barmaid of the Dog
and Bottle serving drinks in the taproom dressed only in high-heeled satin
slippers, and from old Miss Channon, the music-teacher, with her secret gm
bottle and her anonymous letters, to Maggie White, the baker’s daughter, who
had borne three children to her own brother-when you considered these
people, all, young and old, rich and poor, sunken in monstrous and Babylonian
vices, you wondered that fire did not come down from Heaven and consume
the town forthwith But if you listened just a little longer, the catalogue of
obscenities became first monstrous and then unbearably dull For in a town m
which everyone is either a bigamist, a pederast, or a drug-taker, the worst
scandal loses its sting In fact, Mrs Sempnll was something worse than a
slanderer, she was a bore
As to the extent to which her stories were believed, it varied At times the
word would go round that she was a foul-mouthed old cat and everything she
said was a pack of lies, at other times one of her accusations would take effect
on some unfortunate person, who would need months or even years to live it
down She had certainly been instrumental m breaking off not less than half a
dozen engagements and starting innumerable quarrels between husbands and
wives
All this while Dorothy had been making abortive efforts to shake Mrs
Semprill off. She had edged her way gradually across the street until she was
wheeling her bicycle along the right-hand kerb> but Mrs Semprill had
followed, whispering without cease It was not until they reached the end of
the High Street that Dorothy summoned up enough firmness to escape She
halted and put her right foot on the pedal of her bicycle
282 A Clergyman’s Daughter
‘I really can’t stop a moment longer , 9 she said ‘I’ve got a thousand things to
do, and I’m late already ’
‘Oh, but, Dorothy dear 1 I’ve something else I simply must tell you-
something most important
‘I’m sorry-I’m in such a terrible hurry Another time, perhaps ’
‘It’s about that dreadful Mr Warburton,’ said Mrs Sempnll hastily, lest
Dorothy should escape without hearing it ‘He’s just come back From London,
and do you know— I most particularly wanted to tell you this-do you know, he
actually-’
But here Dorothy saw that she must make off instantly, at no matter what
cost She could imagine nothing more uncomfortable than to have to discuss
Mr Warburton with Mrs Semprill She mounted her bicycle, and with only a
very brief ‘Sorry - 1 really can’t stop 1 ’ began to ride hurriedly away
‘I wanted to tell you-he’s taken up with a new woman 1 ’ Mrs Semprill cried
after her, even forgetting to whisper in her eagerness to pass on this juicy titbit
But Dorothy rode swiftly round the corner, not looking back, and
pretending not to have heard An unwise thing to do, for it did not pay to cut
Mrs Semprill too short Any unwillingness to listen to her scandals was taken
as a sign of depravity, and led to fresh and worse scandals being published
about yourself the moment you had left her
As Dorothy rode homewards she had uncharitable thoughts about Mrs
Semprill, for which she duly pinched herself Also, there was another, rather
disturbing idea which had not occurred to her till this moment-that Mrs
Semprill would certainly learn of her visit to Mr Warburton’s house this
evening, and would probably have magnified it into something scandalous by
tomorrow The thought sent a vague premonition of evil through Dorothy’s
mind as she jumped off her bicycle at the Rectory gate, where Silly Jack, the
town idiot, a third-grade moron with a triangular scarlet face like a strawberry,
was loitering, vacantly flogging the gatepost with a hazel switch.
4
It was a little after eleven The day, which, like some overripe but hopeful
widow playing at seventeen, had been putting on unseasonable April airs, had
now remembered that it was August and settled down to be boiling hot
Dorothy rode into the hamlet of Fennelwick, a mile out of Knype Hill She
had delivered Mrs Lewm’s corn-plaster, and was dropping in to give old Mrs
Ptther that cutting from the Daily Mail about angelica tea for rheumatism
The sun, burning in the cloudless sky, scorched her back through her
gingham frock, and the dusty road quivered m the heat, and the hot, flat
meadows, over which even at this time of year numberless larks chirruped
A Clergyman 1 s Daughter 283
tiresomely, were so green that it hurt your eyes to look at them It was the kind
of day that is called ‘glorious’ by people who don’t have to work
Dorothy leaned her bicycle against the gate of the Pithers’cottage, and took
her handkerchief out of her bag and wiped her hands, which were sweating
from the handle-bars In the harsh sunlight her face looked pinched and
colourless She looked her age, and something over, at that hour of the
morning Throughout her day-and in general it was a seventeen-hour
day- she had regular, alternating periods of tiredness and energy, the middle of
the morning, when she was doing the first instalment of the day’s ‘visiting’,
was one of the tired periods
‘Visiting’, because of the distances she had to bicycle from house to house,
took up nearly half of Dorothy’s day Every day of her life, except on Sundays,
she made from half a dozen to a dozen visits at parishioners’ cottages She
penetrated into cramped interiors and sat on lumpy, dust-diffusmg chairs
gossiping with overworked, blowsy housewives, she spent hurried half-hours
giving a hand with the mending and the ironing, and read chapters from the
Gospels, and readjusted bandages on ‘bad legs’, and condoled with sufferers
from mornmg-sickness, she played nde-a-cock-horse with sour-smellmg
children who grimed the bosom of her dress with their sticky little fingers, she
gave advice about ailing aspidistras, and suggested names for babies, and
drank ‘nice cups of tea’ mnumerable-for the working women always wanted
her to have a ‘nice cup of tea’, out of the teapot endlessly stewing
Much of it was profoundly discouraging work Few, very few, of the women
seemed to have even a conception of the Christian life that she was trying to
help them to lead Some of them were shy and suspicious, stood on the
defensive, and made excuses when urged to come to Holy Communion, some
shammed piety for the sake of the tiny sums they could wheedle out of the
church alms box, those who welcomed her coming were for the most part the
talkative ones, who wanted an audience for complaints about the ‘goings on’ of
their husbands, or for endless mortuary tales (‘And he had to have glass chubes
let into his veins,’ etc , etc ) about the revolting diseases their relatives had died
of Quite half the women on her list, Dorothy knew, were at heart atheistical in
a vague unreasoning way She came up against it all day long-that vague,
blank disbelief so common in illiterate people, against which all argument is
powerless Do what she would, she could never raise the number of regular
communicants to more than a dozen or thereabouts Women would promise to
communicate, keep their promise for a month or two, and then fall away With
the younger women it was especially hopeless They would not even join the
local branches of the church leagues that were run for their benefit-Dorothy
was honorary secretary of three such leagues, besides being captain of the Girl
Guides, The Band of Hope and the Companionship of Marriage languished
almost memberless, and the Mothers’ Union only kept going because gossip
and unlimited strong tea made the weekly sewing-parties acceptable. Yes> it
was discouraging work, so discouraging that at times it would have seemed
altogether futile if she had not known the sense of futility for what it ls-the
subtlest weapon of the Devil*
284 A Clergyman’s Daughter
Dorothy knocked at the Pither s’ badly fitting door, from beneath which a
melancholy smell of boiled cabbage and dish-water was oozing From long
experience she knew and could taste in advance the individual smell of every
cottage on her rounds Some of their smells were peculiar in the extreme For
instance, there was the salty, feral smell that haunted the cottage of old Mr
Tombs, an aged retired bookseller who lay in bed all day m a darkened room,
with his long, dusty nose and pebble spectacles protruding from what
appeared to be a fur rug of vast size and richness
But if you put your hand on the fur rug it disintegrated, burst and fled in all
directions It was composed entirely of cats -twenty-four cats, to be exact Mr
Tombs ‘found they kept him warm 5 , he used to explain In nearly all the
cottages there was a basic smell of old overcoats and dish-water upon which
the other, individual smells were superimposed, the cesspool smell, the
cabbage smell, the smell of children, the strong, bacon-like reek of corduroys
impregnated with the sweat of a decade
Mrs Pither opened the door, which invariably stuck to the jamb, and then,
when you wrenched it open, shook the whole cottage She was a large,
stooping, grey woman with wispy grey hair, a sacking apron, and shuffling
carpet slippers
‘Why, if it isn’t Miss Dorothy' 5 she exclaimed in a dreary, lifeless but not
unaffectionate voice
She took Dorothy between her large, gnarled hands, whose knuckles were as
shmy as skinned onions from age and ceaseless washing up, and gave her a wet
kiss Then she drew her into the unclean interior of the cottage
‘Pither’s away at work. Miss,’ she announced as they got inside ‘Up to Dr
Gaythorne’s he is, a-diggmg over the doctor’s flower-beds for him ’
Mr Pither was a jobbing gardener He and his wife, both of them over
seventy, were one of the few genuinely pious couples on Dorothy’s visiting
list Mrs Pither led a dreary, wormlike life of shuffling to and fro, with a per-
petual crick m her neck because the door lintels were too low for her, between
the well, the sink, the fireplace, and the tiny plot of kitchen garden The
kitchen was decently tidy, but oppressively hot, evil-smellmg and saturated
with ancient dust At the end opposite the fireplace Mrs Pither had made a
kind of prie-dieu out of a greasy rag mat laid m front of a tiny, defunct
harmonium, on top of which were an oleographed crucifixion, ‘Watch and
Pray’ done m beadwork, and a photograph of Mr and Mrs Pither on their
wedding day in 1882
‘Poor Pither 1 ’ went on Mrs Pither in her depressing voice, ‘him a-diggmg at
his age, with his rheumatism that bad 1 Ain’t it cruel hard, Miss? And he’s had a
kind of a pam between his legs, Miss, as he can’t seem to account for -terrible
bad he’s been with it, these last few mornings Ain’t it bitter hard. Miss, the
lives us poor working folks has to lead? ’
‘It’s a shame,’ said Dorothy ‘But I hope you’ve been keeping a little better
yourself, Mrs Pither? ’
‘Ah, Miss, there’s nothmg don’t make me better I ain’t a case for curing,
not m this world, I ain’t I shan’t never get no better, not m this wicked
A Clergyman's Daughter
285
world down here ’
‘Oh, you mustn’t say that, Mrs Pither 1 1 hope we shall have you with us for a
long time yet ’
‘Ah, Miss, you don’t know how poorly I’ve been this last week 1 I’ve had the
rheumatism a-commg and a-going all down the backs of my poor old legs, till
there’s some mornings when I don’t feel as I can’t walk so far as to pull a
handful of onions m the garden Ah, Miss, it’s a weary world we lives in, ain’t
it, Miss? A weary, sinful world ’
‘But of course we must never forget, Mrs Pither, that there’s a better world
coming This life is only a time of trial-just to strengthen us and teach us to be
patient, so that we’ll be ready for Heaven when the time comes ’
At this a sudden and remarkable change came over Mrs Pither It was
produced by the word ‘Heaven’ Mrs Pither had only two subjects of
conversation, one of them was the joys of Heaven, and the other the miseries of
her present state Dorothy’s remark seemed to act upon her like a charm Her
dull grey eye was not capable of brightening, but her voice quickened with an
almost joyful enthusiasm
‘Ah, Miss, there you said it 1 That’s a true word. Miss' That’s what Pither
and me keeps a-saying to ourselves And that’s just the one thing as keeps us a-
gomg-just the thought of Heaven and the long, long rest we’ll have there
Whatever we’ve suffered, we gets it all back in Heaven, don’t we. Miss? Every
little bit of suffering, you gets it back a hundredfold and a thousandfold That
is true, ain’t it. Miss? There’s rest for us all m Heaven-rest and peace and no
more rheumatism nor digging nor cooking nor laundering nor nothing You do
believe that, don’t you. Miss Dorothy? ’
‘Of course,’ said Dorothy
‘Ah, Miss, if you knew how it comforts us-just the thoughts of Heaven'
Pither he says to me, when he comes home tired of a night and our
rheumatism’s bad, “Never you mind, my dear,” he says, “we ain’t far off
Heaven now,” he says “Heaven was made for the likes of us,” he says, “just
for poor working folks like us, that have been sober and godly and kept our
Communions regular ” That’s the best way, ain’t it, Miss Dorothy-poor m
this life and rich m the next? Not like some of them rich folks as all their motor-
cars and their beautiful houses won’t save from the worm that dieth not and
the fire that’s not quenched Such a beautiful text, that is Do you think you
could say a little prayer with me, Miss Dorothy? I been looking forward all the
morning to a little prayer ’
Mrs Pither was always ready for a ‘little prayer’ at any hour of the night or
day. It was her equivalent to a ‘nice cup of tea’ They knelt down on the rag
mat and said the Lord’s Prayer and the Collect for the week, and then
Dorothy, at Mrs Pither’s request, read the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Mrs
Pither coming m from time to time with ‘Amen' That’s a true word, ain’t it.
Miss Dorothy? “And he was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom. ”
Beautiful' Dh, I do call that just too beautiful' Amen, Miss Dorothy- Amen! ’
Dorothy gave Mrs Pither the cutting from the Daily Mail about angelica tea
for rheumatism, and then, finding that Mrs Pither had been too ‘poorly’ to
286 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
draw the day’s supply of water, she drew three bucketfuls for her from the
well It was a very deep well, with such a low parapet that Mrs Pither’s final
doom would almost certainly be to fall into it and get drowned, and it had not
even a winch- you had to haul the bucket up hand over hand And then they
sat down for a few minutes, and Mrs Pither talked some more about Heaven It
was extraordinary how constantly Heaven reigned m her thoughts, and more
extraordinary yet was the actuality, the vividness with which she could see it
The golden streets and the gates of orient pearl were as real to her as though
they had been actually before her eyes And her vision extended to the most
concrete, the most earthly details The softness of the beds up there! The
deliciousness of the food' The lovely silk clothes that you would put on clean
every morning! The surcease from everlasting to everlasting from work of any
description' In almost every moment of her life the vision of Heaven supported
and consoled her, and her abject complaints about the lives of ‘poor working
folks’ were curiously tempered by a satisfaction m the thought that, after all, it
is ‘poor working folks’ who are the principal inhabitants of Heaven It was a
sort of bargain that she had struck, setting her lifetime of dreary labour against
an eternity of bliss Her faith was almost too great, if that is possible For it was
a curious fact, but the certitude with which Mrs Pither looked forward to
Heaven-as to some kind of glorified home for mcurables-affected Dorothy
with strange uneasiness
Dorothy prepared to depart, while Mrs Pither thanked her, rather too
effusively, for her visit, winding up, as usual, with fresh complaints about her
rheumatism
‘I’ll be sure and take the angelica tea,’ she concluded, ‘and thank you kindly
for telling me of it. Miss Not as I don’t expect as it’ll do me much good Ah,
Miss, if you knew how cruel bad my rheumatism’s been this last week' All
down the backs of my legs, it is, like a regular shooting red-hot poker, and I
don’t seem to be able to get at them to rub them properly Would it be asking
too much of you. Miss, to give me a bit of a rub-down before you go? I got a
bottle of Elliman’s under the sink ’
Unseen by Mrs Pither, Dorothy gave herself a severe pinch She had been
expecting this, and-she had done it so many times before-she really did not
enjoy rubbing Mrs Pither down She exhorted herself angrily Come on,
Dorothy' No smffishness, please' John xrn, 14 ‘Of course I will, Mrs Pither 1 ’
she said instantly
They went up the narrow, rickety staircase, in which you had to bend almost
double at one place to avoid the overhanging ceiling The bedroom was lighted
by a tiny square of window that was jammed in its socket by the creeper
outside, and had not been opened in twenty years There was an enormous
double bed that almost filled the room, with sheets perennially damp and a
flock mattress as full of hills and valleys as a contour map of Switzerland With
many groans the old woman crept on to the bed and laid herself face down
The room reeked of urine and paregoric Dorothy took the bottle of Elliman’s
embrocation and carefully anointed Mrs Pither’s large, grey-vemed, flaccid
legs.
A Clergyman’s Daughter 287
Outside, m the swimming heat, she mounted her bicycle and began to ride
swiftly homewards The sun burned m her face, but the air now seemed sweet
and fresh She was happy, happy 1 She was always extravagantly happy when
her morning’s ‘visiting’ was over, and, curiously enough, she was not aware of
the reason for this In Borlase the dairy-farmer’s meadow the red cows were
grazing, knee-deep in shining seas of grass The scent of cows, like a
distillation of vanilla and fresh hay, floated into Dorothy’s nostrils Though
she had still a morning’s work m front of her she could not resist the
temptation to loiter for a moment, steadying her bicycle with one hand against
the gate of Borlase’s meadow, while a cow, with moist shell-pink nose,
scratched its chin upon the gatepost and dreamily regarded her
Dorothy caught sight of a wild rose, flowerless of course, growing beyond
the hedge, and climbed over the gate with the intention of discovering whether
it were not sweetbriar She knelt down among the tall weeds beneath the
hedge It was very hot down there, close to the ground The humming of many
unseen insects sounded m her ears, and the hot summery fume from the
tangled swathes of vegetation flowed up and enveloped her Near by, tall stalks
of fennel were growing, with trailing fronds of foliage like the tails of sea-green
horses Dorothy pulled a frond of the fennel against her face and breathed m
the strong sweet scent Its richness overwhelmed her, almost dizzied her for a
moment She drank it in, filling her lungs with it Lovely, lovely scent-scent of
summer days, scent of childhood joys, scent of spice-drenched islands m the
warm foam of Oriental seas'
Her heart swelled with sudden joy It was that mystical joy m the beauty of
the earth and the very nature of things that she recognized, perhaps
mistakenly, as the love of God As she knelt there in the heat, the sweet odour
and the drowsy hum of insects, it seemed to her that she could momentarily
hear the mighty anthem of praise that the earth and all created things send up
everlastingly to their maker All vegetation, leaves, flowers, grass, shining,
vibrating, crying out in their joy Larks also chanting, choirs of larks invisible,
dripping music from the sky All the riches of summer, the warmth of the
earth, the song of birds, the fume of cows, the droning of countless bees,
mingling and ascending like the smoke of ever-burning altars Therefore with
Angels and Archangels' She began to pray, and for a moment she prayed
ardently, blissfully, forgetting herself m the joy of her worship Then, less
than a minute later, she discovered that she was kissing the frond of the fennel
that was still against her face
She checked herself instantly, and drew back What was she doing 5 Was it
God that she was worshipping, or was it only the earth 5 The joy ebbed out of
her heart, to be succeeded by the cold, uncomfortable feeling that she had been
betrayed into a half-pagan ecstasy. She admonished herself None of that ,
Dorothy! No Nature-worship, please 1 Her father had warned her against
Nature-worship She had heard him preach more than one sermon against it; it
was, he said, mere pantheism, and, what seemed to offend him even more, a
disgusting modem fad Dorothy took a thorn of the wild rose, and pricked her
arm three times, to remind herself of the Three Persons of the Trinity, before
288 A Clergyman's Daughter
climbing over the gate and remounting her bicycle
A black, very dusty shovel hat was approaching round the corner of the
hedge It was Father McGuire, the Roman Catholic priest, also bicycling his
rounds He was a very large, rotund man, so large that he dwarfed the bicycle
beneath him and seemed to be balanced on top of it like a golf-ball on a tee His
face was rosy, humorous, and a little sly
Dorothy looked suddenly unhappy She turned pink, and her hand moved
instinctively to the neighbourhood of the gold cross beneath her dress Father
McGuire was riding towards her with an untroubled, faintly amused air She
made an endeavour to smile, and murmured unhappily, ‘Good morning 1 But
he rode on without a sign, his eyes swept easily over her face and then beyond
her into vacancy, with an admirable pretence of not having noticed her
existence It was the Cut Direct Dorothy-by nature, alas' unequal to
delivering the Cut Direct- got on to her bicycle and rode away, struggling with
the uncharitable thoughts which a meeting with Father McGuire never failed
to arouse m her
Five or six years earlier, when Father McGuire was holding a funeral in St
Athelstan’s churchyard (there was no Roman Catholic cemetery at Knype
Hill), there had been some dispute with the Rector about the propriety of
Father McGuire robing in the church, or not robing in the church, and the two
priests had wrangled disgracefully over the open grave Since then they had
not been on speaking terms It was better so, the Rector said
As to the other ministers of religion m Knype Hill-Mr Ward the
Congregationalist minister, Mr Foley the Wesleyan pastor, and the braying
bald-headed elder who conducted the orgies at Ebenezer Chapel-the Rector
called them a pack of vulgar Dissenters and had forbidden Dorothy on pain of
his displeasure to have anything to do with them
5
It was twelve o’clock In the large, dilapidated conservatory, whose roof-
panes, from the action of time and dirt, were dim, green, and iridescent like old
Roman glass, they were having a hurried and noisy rehearsal of Charles I
Dorothy was not actually taking part in the rehearsal, but was busy making
costumes She made the costumes, or most of them, for all the plays the
schoolchildren acted- The production and stage management were m the
hands of Victor Stone-Victor, Dorothy called him-the Church school-
master He was a small-boned, excitable, black-haired youth of twenty-seven,
dressed in dark sub-clerical clothes, and at this moment he was gesturing
fiercely with a roll of manuscript at six dense-lookmg children On a long
bench against the wall four more children were alternately practising ‘noises
A Clergyman’s Daughter 289
off’ by clashing fire-irons together, and squabbling over a grimy little bag of
Spearmint Bouncers, forty a penny
It was horribly hot in the conservatory, and there was a powerful smell of
glue and the sour sweat of children Dorothy was kneeling on the floor, with
her mouth full of pms and a pair of shears in her hand, rapidly slicing sheets of
brown paper into long narrow strips The glue-pot was bubbling on an oil-
stove beside her, behind her, on the rickety, ink-stained work-table, were a
tangle of half-finished costumes, more sheets of brown paper, her sewing-
machine, bundles of tow, shards of dry glue, wooden swords, and open pots of
paint With half her mmd Dorothy was meditating upon the two pairs of
seventeenth-century jackboots that had got to be made for Charles I and
Oliver Cromwell, and with the other half listening to the angry shouts of
Victor, who was working himself up into a rage, as he invariably did at
rehearsals He was a natural actor, and withal thoroughly bored by the
drudgery of rehearsing half-witted children He strode up and down,
haranguing the children m a vehement slangy style, and every now and then
breaking off to lunge at one or other of them with a wooden sword that he had
grabbed from the table
Tut a bit of life into it, can’t you 5 ’ he cried, plodding an ox-faced boy of
eleven in the belly ‘Don’t drone 1 Say it as if it meant something' You look like
a corpse that’s been buried and dug up again What’s the good of gurgling it
down m your inside like that 5 Stand up and shout at him Take off that second
murderer expression' 5
‘Come here, Percy' 5 cried Dorothy through her pins ‘Quick 1 ’
She was making the armour-the worst job of the lot, except those wretched
jackboots-out of glue and brown paper From long practice Dorothy could
make very nearly anything out of glue and brown paper, she could even make a
passably good periwig, with a brown paper skull-cap and dyed tow for the hair
Taking the year through, the amount of time she spent m struggling with glue,
brown paper, butter muslin, and all the other paraphernalia of amateur
theatricals was enormous So chronic was the need of money for all the church
funds that hardly a month ever passed when there was not a school play or a
pageant or an exhibition of tableaux vivants on hand-not to mention the
bazaars and jumble sales
As Percy-Percy Jowett, the blacksmith’s son, a small curly-headed boy-got
down from the bench and stood wriggling unhappily before her, Dorothy
seized a sheet of brown paper, measured it against him, snipped out the
neckhole and armholes, draped it round his middle and rapidly pinned it into
the shape of a rough breastplate There was a confused dm of voices.
victor Come on, now, come on! Enter Oliver Cromwell-that’s you! No, not
like that' Do you think Oliver Cromwell would come slinking on like a dog
that’s just had a hiding? Stand up. Stick your chest out. Scowl. That’s
better Now go on, Cromwell : ‘Halt! I hold a pistol m my hand! ’ Go on
a girl’ Please, Miss, Mother said as I was to tell you, Miss-
dorothy Keep still, Percy' For goodness’ sake keep still'
290 A Clergyman's Daughter
cromwell ’Alt' I ’old a pistol in my ’and 1
a small girl on the bench Mister' I’ve dropped my sweetie' [Snivelling] I’ve
dropped by swee-e-e-etie'
victor No, no, no, Tommie' No, no, no'
the girl Please, Miss, Mother said as I was to tell you as she couldn’t make
my knickers like she promised, Miss, because-
dorothy You’ll make me swallow a pin if you do that again
cromwell i/alt' I hold a pistol -
the small girl [in tears] My swee-e-e-e-eetie'
Dorothy seized the glue-brush, and with feverish speed pasted strips of
brown paper all over Percy’s thorax, up and down, backwards and forwards,
one on top of another, pausing only when the paper stuck to her fingers In five
minutes she had made a cuirass of glue and brown paper stout enough, when it
was dry, to have defied a real sword-blade Percy, ‘locked up in complete steel’
and with the sharp paper edge cutting his chin, looked down at himself with
the miserable resigned expression of a dog having its bath Dorothy took the
shears, slit the breastplate up one side, set it on end to dry and started
immediately on another child A fearful clatter broke out as the ‘noises off
began practising the sound of pistol-shots and horses galloping Dorothy’s
fingers were getting stickier and stickier, but from time to time she washed
some of the glue off them in a bucket of hot water that was kept- in readiness In
twenty minutes she had partially completed three breastplates Later on they
would have to be finished off, painted over with aluminium paint and laced up
the sides, and after that there was the job of making the thigh-pieces, and,
worst of all, the helmets to go with them Victor, gesticulating with his sword
and shouting to overcome the dm of galloping horses, was personating m turn
Oliver Cromwell, Charles I, Roundheads, Cavaliers, peasants, and Court
ladies The children were now growing restive and beginning to yawn, whine,
and exchange furtive kicks and pinches The breastplates finished for the
moment, Dorothy swept some of the litter off the table, pulled her sewing-
machine into position and set to work on a Cavalier’s green velvet doublet-it
was butter muslin Twmked green, but it looked all right at a distance
There was another ten minutes of feverish work Dorothy broke her thread,
all but said ‘Damn 1 ’ checked herself and hurriedly re-threaded the needle She
was working against time The play was now a fortnight distant, and there was
such a multitude of things yet to be made-helmets, doublets, swords,
jackboots (those miserable jackboots had been haunting her like a nightmare
for days past), scabbards, ruffles, wigs, spurs, scenery-that her heart sank
when she thought of them The children’s parents never helped with the
costumes for the school plays, more exactly, they always promised to help and
then backed out afterwards, Dorothy’s head was aching diabolically, partly
from the heat of the conservatory, partly from the strain of simultaneously
sewing and trying to visualize patterns for brown paper jackboots For the
moment she had even forgotten the bill for twenty-one pounds seven and
nmepence at Cargill’s She could think of nothing save that fearful mountain
A Clergyman’s Daughter 291
of unmade clothes that lay ahead of her It was so throughout the day One
thing loomed up after another- whether it was the costumes for the school play
or the collapsing floor of the belfry, or the shop -debts or the bindweed in the
peas-and each in its turn so urgent and so harassing that it blotted all the
others out of existence
Victor threw down his wooden sword, took out his watch and looked at it
‘That’ll do 1 ’ he said m the abrupt, ruthless tone from which he never
departed when he was dealing with children ‘We’ll go on on Friday Clear out,
the lot of you 1 I’m sick of the sight of you ’
He watched the children out, and then, having forgotten their existence as
soon as they were out of his sight, produced a page of music from his pocket
and began to fidget up and down, cocking his eye at two forlorn plants m the
corner which trailed their dead brown tendrils over the edges of their pots
Dorothy was still bending over her machine, stitching up the seams of the
green velvet doublet
Victor was a restless, intelligent little creature, and only happy when he was
quarrelling with somebody or something His pale, fine-featured face wore an
expression that appeared to be discontent and was really boyish eagerness
People meeting him for the first time usually said that he was wasting his
talents in his obscure job as a village schoolmaster, but the truth was that
Victor had no very marketable talents except a slight gift for music and a much
more pronounced gift for dealing with children Ineffectual m other ways, he
was excellent with children, he had the proper, ruthless attitude towards them
But of course, like everyone else, he despised his own especial talent His
interests were almost purely ecclesiastical He was what people call a churchy
young man It had always been his ambition to enter the Church, and he would
actually have done so if he had possessed the kind of brain that is capable of
learning Greek and Hebrew Debarred from the priesthood, he had drifted
quite naturally into his position as a Church schoolmaster and organist It kept
him, so to speak, within the Church precincts Needless to say, he was an
Anglo-Catholic of the most truculent Church Times breed-more clerical than
the clerics, knowledgeable about Church history, expert on vestments, and
ready at any moment with a furious tirade against Modernists, Protestants,
scientists, Bolshevists, and atheists
‘I was thinking,’ said Dorothy as she stopped her machine and snipped off
the thread, ‘we might make those helmets out of old bowler hats, if we can get
hold of enough of them Cut the brims off, put on paper brims of the right
shape and silver them over ’
‘Oh Lord, why worry your head about such things? ’ said Victor, who had
lost interest m the play the moment the rehearsal was over
‘It’s those wretched jackboots that are worrying me the most,’ said Dorothy,
taking the doublet on to her knee and looking at it
‘Oh, bother the jackboots 1 Let’s stop thinking about the play for a moment.
Look here,’ said Victor, unrolling his page of music, ‘I want you to speak to
your father for me I wish you’d ask him whether we can’t have a procession
some time next month ’
292 A Clergyman ’s Daughter
‘Another procession? What for? ’
‘Oh, I don’t know You can always find an excuse for a procession There’s
the Nativity of the B V M coming off on the eighth-that’s good enough for a
procession, I should think We’ll do it in style I’ve got hold of a splendid
rousing hymn that they can all bellow, and perhaps we could borrow their blue
banner with the Virgin Mary on it from St Wedekind’s in Millborough If he’ll
say the word I’ll start practising the choir at once ’
‘You know he’ll only say no,’ said Dorothy, threading a needle to sew
buttons on the doublet ‘He doesn’t really approve of processions It’s much
better not to ask him and make him angry ’
‘Oh, but dash it all'’ protested Victor ‘It’s simply months since we’ve had a
procession I never saw such dead-alive services as we have here You’d think
we were a Baptist chapel or something, from the way we go on ’
Victor chafed ceaselessly against the dull correctness of the Rector’s
services His ideal was what he called ‘the real Catholic worship ’-meaning
unlimited incense, gilded images, and more Roman vestments In his capacity
of organist he was for ever pressing for more processions, more voluptuous
music, more elaborate chanting in the liturgy, so that it was a continuous pull
devil, pull baker between him and the Rector And on this point Dorothy sided
with her father Having been brought up in the peculiar, frigid via media of
Anglicanism, she was by nature averse to and half-afraid of anything
‘ritualistic’
‘But dash it all*’ went on Victor, ‘a procession is such fun' Down the aisle,
out through the west door and back through the south door, with the choir
carrying candles behind and the Boy Scouts in front with the banner It would
look fine ’ He sang a stave in a thin but tuneful tenor
‘Hail thee. Festival Day, blest day that art hallowed for ever 1 ’
‘If I had my way,’ he added, ‘I’d have a couple of boys swinging jolly good
censers of incense at the same time ’
‘Yes, but you know how much Father dislikes that kind of thing Especially
when it’s anything to do with the Virgin Mary He says it’s all Roman Fever
and leads to people crossing themselves and genuflecting at the wrong times
and goodness knows what You remember what happened at Advent ’
The previous year, on his own responsibility, Victor had chosen as one of
the hymns for Advent, Number 642, with the refrain ‘Hail Mary, hail Mary,
hail Mary full of grace*’ This piece of popishness had annoyed the Rector
extremely At the close of the first verse he had pointedly laid down his hymn
book, turned round in his stall and stood regarding the congregation with an
air so stony that some of the choirboys faltered and almost broke down
Afterwards he had said that to hear the rustics bawling ‘’Ail Mary' ’Ail Mary*’
made him think he was m the four-ale bar of the Dog and Bottle
‘But dash it'’ said Victor m his aggrieved way, ‘your father always puts his
foot down when I try and get a bit of life into the service He won’t allow us
mcense, or decent music, or proper vestments, or anything And what’s the
result? We can’t get enough people to fill the church a quarter full, even on
Easter Sunday You look round the church on Sunday morning, and it’s
A Clei gyman’ s Daughter 293
nothing but the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides and a few old women ’
‘I know It’s dreadful,’ admitted Dorothy, sewing on her button ‘It doesn’t
seem to make any difference what we do- we simply can’t get the people to
come to church Still,’ she added, ‘they do come to us to be married and
buried And I don’t think the congregation’s actually gone down this year
There were nearly two hundred people at Easter Communion ’
‘Two hundred* It ought to be two thousand That’s the population of this
town The fact is that three quarters of the people in this place never go near a
church in their lives The Church has absolutely lost its hold over them They
don’t know that it exists And why’ That’s what I’m getting at Why’’
‘I suppose it’s all this Science and Free Thought and all that,’ said Dorothy
rather sententiously, quoting her father
This remark deflected Victor from what he had been about to say He had
been on the very point of saying that St Athelstan’s congregation had dwindled
because of the dullness of the services, but the hated words of Science and Free
Thought set him off in another and even more familiar channel
‘Of course it’s this so-called Free Thought*’ he exclaimed, immediately
beginning to fidget up and down again ‘It’s these swine of atheists like
Bertrand Russell and Julian Huxley and all that crowd And what’s ruined the
Church is that instead of jolly well answering them and showing them up for
the fools and liars they are, we just sit tight and let them spread their beastly
atheist propaganda wherever they choose It’s all the fault of the bishops, of
course ’ (Like every Anglo-Catholic, Victor had an abysmal contempt for
bishops ) ‘They’re all Modernists and time-servers By Jove*’ he added more
cheerfully, halting, ‘did you see my letter m the Church Times last week’’
‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t,’ said Dorothy, holding another button m position
with her thumb ‘What was it about’’
‘Oh, Modernist bishops and all that I got m a good swipe at old Barnes ’
It was very rarely that a week passed when Victor did not write a letter to the
Church Times He was m the thick of every controversy and in the forefront of
every assault qpon Modernists and atheists He had twice been in combat with
Dr Major, had written letters of withering irony about Dean Inge and the
Bishop of Birmingham, and had not hesitated to attack even the fiendish
Russell himself-but Russell, of course, had not dared to reply Dorothy, to tell
the truth, very seldom read the Church Times, and the Rector grew angry if he
so much as saw a copy of it m the house The weekly paper they took in the
Rectory was the High Churchman’s Gazette -a fine old High Tory anachronism
with a small and select circulation
‘That swine Russell*’ said Victor reminiscently, with his hands deep m his
pockets ‘How he does make my blood boil*’
‘Isn’t that the man who’s such a clever mathematician, or something’’ said
Dorothy, biting off her thread
‘Oh, I dare say he’s clever enough in his own line, of course,’ admitted
Victor grudgingly ‘But what’s that got to do with it’ Just because a man’s
clever at figures it doesn’t mean to say that- well, anyway* Let’s come back to
what I was saying. Why is it that we can’t get people to come to church in this
294 A Clergyman’s Daughter
placed It’s because our services are so dreary and godless, that’s what it is
People want worship that is worship-they want the real Catholic worship of
the real Catholic Church we belong to And they don’t get if from us All they
get is the old Protestant mumbo-jumbo, and Protestantism’s as dead as a
doornail, and everyone knows it ’
‘That’s not true 1 ’ said Dorothy rather sharply as she pressed the third
button into place ‘You know we’re not Protestants Father’s always saying
that the Church of England is the Catholic Church-he’s preached I don’t
know how many sermons about the Apostolic Succession That’s why Lord
Pockthorne and the others won’t come to church here Only he won’t join m
the Anglo-Catholic movement because he thinks they’re too fond of ritualism
for its own sake And so do I ’
‘Oh, I don’t say your father isn’t absolutely sound on doctrme-absolutely
sound But if he thinks we’re the Catholic Church, why doesn’t he hold the
service in a proper Catholic way? It’s a shame we can’t have incense
occasionally And his ideas about vestments-if you don’t mmd my saying
lt-are simply awful On Easter Sunday he was wearing a Gothic cope with a
modern Italian lace alb Dash it, it’s like wearing a top hat with brown boots ’
‘Well, I don’t think vestments are so important as you do,’ said Dorothy ‘I
think it’s the spirit of the priest that matters, not the clothes he wears ’
‘That’s the kind of thing a Primitive Methodist would say 1 ’ exclaimed
Victor disgustedly ‘Of course vestments are important 1 Where’s the sense of
worshipping at all if we can’t make a proper job of it? Now, if you want to see
what real Catholic worship can be like, look at St Wedekind’s m Millborough'
By Jove, they do things in style there 1 Images of the Virgin, reservation of the
Sacrament-everythmg They’ve had the Kensitites on to them three times,
and they simply defy the Bishop ’
‘Oh, I hate the way they go on at St Wedekind’s 1 ’ said Dorothy ‘They’re
absolutely spiky You can hardly see what’s happening at the altar, there are
such clouds of incense I think people like that ought to turn Roman Catholic
and have done with it ’
‘My dear Dorothy, you ought to have been a Nonconformist You really
ought A Plymouth Brother-or a Plymouth Sister or whatever it’s called I
think your favourite hymn must be Number 567, “O my God I fear Thee,
Thou art very High 1 ” ’
‘Yours is Number 231, “I nightly pitch my moving tent a day’s march
nearer Rome*’” retorted Dorothy, winding the thread round the last button
The argument continued for several minutes while Dorothy adorned a
Cavalier’s beaver hat (it was an old black felt school hat of her own) with plume
and ribbons She and Victor were never long together without being involved
in an argument upon the question of ‘ritualism’ In Dorothy’s opinion Victor
was a kind to ‘go over to Rome’ if not prevented, and she was very likely right
But Victor was not yet aware of his probable destiny At present the fevers of
the Anglo-Catholic movement, with its ceaseless exciting warfare on three
fronts at once-Protestants to right of you, Modernists to the left of you, and,
unfortunately, Roman Catholics to rear of you and always ready for a sly kick
A Clergyman’s Daughter 293
in the pants-filled his mental horizon Scoring off Dr Major m the Church
Times meant more to him than any of the serious business of life But for all his
churchmess he had not an atom of real piety m his constitution It was
essentially as a game that religious controversy appealed to him-the most
absorbing game ever invented, because it goes on for ever and because just a
little cheating is allowed
‘Thank goodness, that’s done 1 ’ said Dorothy, twiddling the Cavalier’s
beaver hat round on her hand and then putting it down ‘Oh dear, what piles of
things there are still to do, though' I wish I could get those wretched jackboots
off my mind What’s the time, Victor’’
‘It’s nearly five to one ’
‘Oh, good gracious 1 I must run I’ve got three omelettes to make I daren’t
trust them to Ellen And, oh, Victor' Have you got anything you can give us for
the jumble sale’ If you had an old pair of trousers you could give us, that would
be best of all, because we can always sell trousers ’
‘Trousers’ No But I tell you what I have got, though I’ve got a copy of The
Pilgrim’s Progress and another of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs that I’ve been
wanting to get rid of for years Beastly Protestant trash' An old Dissenting aunt
of mine gave them to me -Doesn’t it make you sick, all this cadging for
pennies’ Now, if we only held our services m a proper Catholic way, so that we
could get up a proper congregation, don’t you see, we shouldn’t need-’
‘That’ll be splendid,’ said Dorothy ‘We always have a stall for books-we
charge a penny for each book, and nearly all of them get sold We simply must
make that jumble sale a success, Victor' I’m countmg on Miss Mayfill to give
us something really nice What I’m specially hoping is that she might give us
that beautiful old Lowestoft china tea service of hers, and we could sell it for
five pounds at least I’ve been making special prayers all the morning that
she’ll give it to us ’
‘Oh’’ said Victor, less enthusiastically than usual Like Proggett earlier m
the morning, he was embarrassed by the word ‘prayer’ He was ready to talk all
day long about a point of ritual, but the mention of private devotions struck
him as slightly indecent ‘Don’t forget to ask your father about the procession,’
he said, getting back to a more congenial topic
‘All right. I’ll ask him But you know how it’ll be He’ll only get annoyed and
say it’s Roman Fever ’
‘Oh, damn Roman Fever' 5 said Victor, who, unlike Dorothy, did not set
himself penances for swearing
Dorothy hurried to the kitchen, discovered that there were only five eggs to
make the omelettes for three people, and decided to make one large omelette and
swell it out a bit with the cold boiled potatoes left over from yesterday. With a
short prayer for the success of the omelette (for omelettes are so dreadfully apt
to get broken when you take them out of the pan), she whipped up the eggs,
while Victor made off down the drive, half wistfully and half sulkily humming
‘Hail thee, Festival Day’, and passing on his way a disgusted-lookmg
manservant carrying the two handleless chamber-pots which were Miss
May fill’s contribution to the jumble sale
6
It was a little after ten o’clock Various things had happened-nothmg,
however, of any particular importance, only the usual round of parish jobs that
filled up Dorothy’s afternoon and evening Now, as she had arranged earlier in
the day, she was at Mr Warburton’s house, and was trying to hold her own in
one of those meandering arguments in which he delighted to entangle her
They were talking-but indeed, Mr Warburton never failed to manoeuvre
the conversation towards this subject-about the question of religious belief
‘My dear Dorothy,’ he was saying argumentatively, as he walked up and
down with one hand in his coat pocket and the other manipulating a Brazilian
cigar ‘My dear Dorothy, you don’t seriously mean to tell me that at your
age-twenty-seven, I believe-and with your intelligence, you will retain your
religious beliefs more or less in toto > ’
‘Of course I do You know I do ’
‘Oh, come, now 1 The whole bag of tricks? All that nonsense that you learned
at your mother’s knee-surely you’re not going to pretend to me that you still
believe m it? But of course you don’t 1 You can’t 1 You’re afraid to own up,
that’s all it is No need to worry about that here, you know The Rural Dean’s
wife isn’t listening, and / won’t give the show away ’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “all that nonsense”/ began Dorothy, sitting
up straighter m her chair, a little offended
‘Well, let’s take an instance Something particularly hard to swallow-Hell,
for instance Do you believe in Hell? When I say believe , mind you. I’m not
asking whether you believe it m some milk and water metaphorical way like
these Modernist bishops young Victor Stone gets so excited about I mean do
you believe in it literally? Do you believe m Hell as you believe m Australia? ’
‘Yes, of course I do,’ said Dorothy, and she endeavoured to explain to him
that the existence of Hell is much more real and permanent than the existence
of Australia
‘Hm,’ said Mr Warburton, unimpressed ‘Very sound in its way, of course
But what always makes me so suspicious of you religious people is that you’re
so deucedly cold-blooded about your beliefs It shows a very poor imagination,
to say the least of it Here am I an mfidel and blasphemer and neck deep m at
least six out of the Seven Deadly, and obviously doomed to eternal torment
There’s no knowing that in an hour’s time I mayn’t be roasting in the hottest
part of Hell And yet you can sit there talking to me as calmly as though I’d
nothing the matter with me Now, if I’d merely got cancer or leprosy or some
A Clergyman's Daughter 297
other bodily ailment, you’d be quite distressed about lt-at least, I like to flatter
myself that you would Whereas, when I’m going to sizzle on the grid
throughout eternity, you seem positively unconcerned about it ’
‘I never said you were going to Hell,’ said Dorothy somewhat
uncomfortably, and wishing that the conversation would take a different turn
For the truth was, though she was not gomg to tell him so, that the point Mr
Warburton had raised was one with which she herself had had certain
difficulties She did indeed believe in Hell, but she had never been able to
persuade herself that anyone actually went there She believed that Hell
existed, but that it was empty Uncertain of the orthodoxy of this belief, she
preferred to keep it to herself ‘It’s never certain that anyone is gomg to Hell,’
she said more firmly, feeling that here at least she was on sure ground
‘What 1 ’ said Mr Warburton, halting m mock surprise ‘Surely you don’t
mean to say that there’s hope for me yet’’
‘Of course there is It’s only those horrid Predestination people who pretend
that you go to Hell whether you repent or not You don’t think the Church of
England are Calvinists, do you’’
‘I suppose there’s always the chance of getting off on a plea of Invincible
Ignorance,’ said Mr Warburton reflectively, and then, more confidently ‘Do
you know, Dorothy, I’ve a sort of feeling that even now, after knowing me two
years, you’ve still half an idea you can make a convert of me A lost
sheep-brand plucked from the burning, and all that I believe you still hope
against hope that one of these days my eyes will be opened and you’ll meet me
at Holy Communion at seven o’clock on some damned cold winter morning
Don’t you’’
‘Well-’ said Dorothy, again uncomfortably She did, m fact, entertain some
such hope about Mr Warburton, though he was not exactly a promising case
for conversion It was not in her nature to see a fellow being m a state of
unbelief without making some effort to reclaim him What hours she had
spent, at different times, earnestly debating with vague village atheists who
could not produce a single intelligible reason for their unbelief 1 ‘Yes,’ she
admitted finally, not particularly wanting to make the admission, but not
wanting to prevaricate
Mr Warburton laughed delightedly.
‘You’ve a hopeful nature,’ he said ‘But you aren’t afraid, by any chance, that
I might convert you? “The dog it was that died”, you may remember ’
At this Dorothy merely smiled ‘Don’t let him see he’s shocking you’-that
was always her maxim when she was talking to Mr Warburton. They had been
arguing m this manner, without coming to any kmd of conclusion, for the past
hour, and might have gone on for the rest of the night if Dorothy had been
willing to stay, for Mr Warburton delighted in teasing her about her religious
beliefs He had that fatal cleverness that so often goes with unbelief, and in
their arguments, though Dorothy was always right, she was not Sways
victorious They were sitting, or rather Dorothy was sitting and Mr
Warburton was standing, m a large agreeable room, giving on a moonlit lawn,
that Mr Warburton called his ‘studio’ -not that there was any sign of work ever
2^8 A Clergyman's Daughter
having been done in it To Dorothy’s great disappointment, the celebrated Mr
Bewley had not turned up (As a matter of fact, neither Mr Bewley, nor his
wife, nor his novel entitled Fishpools and Concubines , actually existed Mr
Warburton had invented all three of them on the spur of the moment, as a
pretext for inviting Dorothy to his house, well knowing that she would never
come unchaperoned ) Dorothy had felt rather uneasy on finding that Mr
Warburton was alone It had occurred to her, indeed she had felt perfectly
certain, that it would be wiser to go home at once, but she had stayed, chiefly
because she was horribly tired and the leather armchair into which Mr
Warburton had thrust her the moment she entered the house was too
comfortable to leave Now, however, her conscience was pricking her It didn't
do to stay too late at his house-people would talk if they heard of it Besides,
there was a multitude of jobs that she ought to be doing and that she had
neglected in order to come here She was so little used to idleness that even an
hour spent m mere talking seemed to her vaguely sinful
She made an effort, and straightened herself in the too-comfortable chair C I
think, if you don’t mind, it’s really time I was getting home,’ she said
‘Talking of Invincible Ignorance,’ went on Mr Warburton, taking no notice
of Dorothy’s remark, ‘I forget whether I ever told you that once when I was
standing outside the World’s End pub m Chelsea, waiting for a taxi, a damned
ugly little Salvation Army lassie came up to me and said-without any kind of
introduction, you know-“What will you say at the Judgement Seat? ” I said,
“I am reserving my defence ” Rather neat, I think, don’t you? ’
Dorothy did not answer Her conscience had given her another and harder
jab-she had remembered those wretched, unmade jackboots, and the fact that
at least one of them had got to be made tonight She was, however, unbearably
tired She had had an exhausting afternoon, starting off with ten miles or so
bicycling to and fro in the sun, delivering the parish magazine, and continuing
with the Mothers’ Union tea in the hot little wooden-walled room behind the
parish hall The Mothers met every Wednesday afternoon to have tea and do
some charitable sewing while Dorothy read aloud to them (At present she was
reading Gene Stratton Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlosl ) It was nearly always
upon Dorothy that jobs of that kind devolved, because the phalanx of devoted
women (the church fowls, they are called) who do the dirty work of most
parishes had dwindled at Knype Hill to four or five at most The only helper on
whom Dorothy ^ould count at all regularly was Miss Foote, a tall, rabbit-
faced, dithering virgin of thirty-five, who meant well but made a mess of
everything and was in a perpetual state of flurry Mr Warburton used to say
that she reminded him of a comet- ‘a ridiculous blunt-nosed creature rushing
round on an eccentric orbit and always a little behind time’ You could trust
Miss Foote with the church decorations, but not with the Mothers or the
Sunday School, because, though a regular churchgoer, her orthodoxy was
suspect She had confided to Dorothy that she could worship God best under
the blue dome of the sky After tea Dorothy had dashed up to the church to put
fresh flowers on the altar, and then she had typed out her father’s sermon-her
typewriter was a rickety pre-Boer War ‘invisible’, on which you couldn’t
A Clergyman’s Daughter 299
average eight hundred words an hour-and after supper she had weeded the
pea rows until the light failed and her back seemed to be breaking With one
thing and another, she was even more tired than usual
‘I really must be getting home,’ she repeated more firmly ‘I’m sure it’s
getting fearfully late ’
‘Home? ’ said Mr Warburton ‘Nonsense' The evening’s hardly begun ’
He was walking up and down the room again, with his hands in his coat
pockets, having thrown away his cigar The spectre of the unmade jackboots
stalked back into Dorothy’s mind She would, she suddenly decided, make two
jackboots tonight instead of only one, as a penance for the hour she had wasted
She was just beginning to make a mental sketch of the way she would cut out
the pieces of brown paper for the msteps, when she noticed that Mr
Warburton had halted behind her chair
‘What time is it, do you know? ’ she said
‘I dare say it might be half past ten But people like you and me don’t talk of
such vulgar subjects as the time ’
‘If it’s half past ten, then I really must be going,’ said Dorothy I’ve got a
whole lot of work to do before I go to bed ’
‘Work' At this time of night? Impossible'’
‘Yes, I have I’ve got to make a pair of jackboots ’
‘You’ve got to make a pair of what? said Mr Warburton
‘Of jackboots For the play the schoolchildren are acting We make them out
of glue and brown paper ’
‘Glue and brown paper' Good God 1 ’ murmured Mr Warburton He went
on, chiefly to cover the fact that he was drawing nearer to Dorothy’s chair
‘What a life you lead' Messing about with glue and brown paper m the middle
of the night' I must say, there are times when I feel just a little glad that I’m not
a clergyman’s daughter ’
‘I think-’ began Dorothy
But at the same moment Mr Warburton, invisible behind her chair, had
lowered his hands and taken her gently by the shoulders Dorothy immediately
wriggled herself m an effort to get free of him, but Mr Warburton pressed her
back into her place
‘Keep still,’ he said peaceably
‘Let me go'’ exclaimed Dorothy
Mr Warburton ran his right hand caressingly down her upper arm There
was something very revealing, very characteristic in the way he did it, it was
the lingering, appraising touch of a man to whom a woman’s body is valuable
precisely m the same way as though it were something to eat
‘You really have extraordinary nice arms,’ he said ‘How on earth have you
managed to remain unmarried all these years? ’
‘Let me go at once'’ repeated Dorothy, beginning to struggle again
‘But I don’t particularly want to let you go,’ objected Mr Warburton
* Please don’t stroke my arm like that' I don’t like it' 5
‘What a curious child you are' Why don’t you like it? 5
‘I tell you I don’t like it' 5
yoo A Clergyman ’ ? Daughtei
‘Now don’t go and turn round,’ said Mr Warburton mildly ‘ Y ou don’t seem
to realize how tactful it was on my part to approach you from behind your
back If you turn round you’ll see that I’m old enough to be your father, and
hideously bald into the bargain But if you’ll only keep still and not look at me
you can imagine I’m Ivor Novello ’
Dorothy caught sight of the hand that was caressing her- a large, pink, ver>
masculine hand, with thick fingers and a fleece of gold hairs upon the back She
turned very pale, the expression of her face altered from mere annoyance to
aversion and dread She made a violent effort, wrenched herself free, and stood
up, facing him
‘I do wish you wouldn’t do that 1 ’ she said, half in anger and half in distress
‘What is the matter with you’’ said Mr Warburton
He had stood upright, in his normal pose, entirely unconcerned, and he
looked at her with a touch of curiosity Her face had changed It was not only
that she had turned pale, there was a withdrawn, half-frightened look in her
eyes-almost as though, for the moment, she were looking at him with the eyes
of a stranger He perceived that he had wounded her m some way which he did
not understand, and which perhaps she did not want him to understand
‘What is the matter with you’’ he repeated
'Why must you do that every time you meet me’’
“‘Every time I meet you” is an exaggeration,’ said Mr Warburton ‘It’s
really very seldom that I get the opportunity But if you really and truly don’t
like it-’
‘Of course I don’t like it' You know I don’t like it 1 ’
‘Well, well 1 Then let’s say no more about it,’ said Mr Warburton
generously ‘Sit down, and we’ll change the subject ’
He was totally devoid of shame It was perhaps his most outstanding
characteristic Having attempted to seduce her, and failed, he was quite willing
to go on with the conversation as though nothing whatever had happened
‘I’m going home at once,’ said Dorothy ‘I can’t stay here any longer ’
‘Oh nonsense 1 Sit down and forget about it We’ll talk of moral theology, or
cathedral architecture, or the Girl Guides’ cooking classes, or anything you
choose Think how bored I shall be all alone if you go home at this hour ’
But Dorothy persisted, and there was an argument Even if it had not been
his intention to make love to her-and whatever he might promise he would
certainly begin again m a few minutes if she did not go-Mr Warburton would
have pressed her to stay, for, like all thoroughly idle people, he had a horror of
going to bed and no conception of the value of time He would, if you let him,
keep you talking till three or four m the morning Even when Dorothy finally
escaped, he walked beside her down the moonlit drive, still talking
voluminously and with such perfect good humour that she found it impossible
to be angry with him any longer
‘I’m leaving first thing tomorrow,’ he told her as they reached the gate ‘I’m
going to take the car to town and pick up the kids- the bastards, , you know- and
we’re leaving for France the next day I’m not certain where we shall go after
that, eastern Europe, perhaps Prague, Vienna, Bucharest ’
A Clergyman" s Daughter 301
‘How nice,’ said Dorothy
Mr Warburton, with an adroitness surprising m so large and stout a man,
had manoeuvred himself between Dorothy and the gate
‘I shall be away six months or more,’ he said ‘And of course I needn’t ask,
before so long a parting, whether you want to kiss me good-bye ? ’
Before she knew what he was doing he had put his arm about her and drawn
her against him She drew back-too late, he kissed her on the cheek-would
have kissed her on the mouth if she had not turned her head away in time She
struggled in his arms, violently and for a moment helplessly
‘Oh, let me go'’ she cried ‘ Do let me go! ’
‘I believe I pointed out before,’ said Mr Warburton, holding her easily
against him, ‘that I don’t want to let you go ’
‘But we’re standing right m front of Mrs SemprilPs window' She’ll see us
absolutely for certain'’
‘Oh, good God' So she will 1 ’ said Mr Warburton ‘I was forgetting ’
Impressed by this argument, as he would not have been by any other, he let
Dorothy go She promptly put the gate between Mr Warburton and herself
He, meanwhile, was scrutinizing Mrs Sempnll’s windows
‘I can’t see a light anywhere,’ he said finally ‘With any luck the blasted hag
hasn’t seen us ’
‘Good-bye,’ said Dorothy briefly ‘This time I really must go Remember me
to the children ’
With this she made off as fast as she could go without actually running, to get
out of his reach before he should attempt to kiss her again
Even as she did so a sound checked her for an mstant-the unmistakable
bang of a window shutting, somewhere in Mrs Semprill’s house Could Mrs
Semprill have been watching them after alP But (reflected Dorothy) of course
she had been watching them' What else could you expect^ You could hardly
imagine Mrs Semprill missing such a scene as that And if she had been
watching them, undoubtedly the story would be all over the town tomorrow
morning, and it would lose nothing in the telling But this thought, sinister
though it was, did no more than flight momentarily through Dorothy’s mind as
she hurried down the road
When she was well out of sight of Mr Warburton’s house she stopped, took
out her handkerchief and scrubbed the place on her cheek where he had kissed
her She scrubbed it vigorously enough to bring the blood into her cheek It
was not until she had quite rubbed out the imaginary stam which his bps had
left there that she walked on again
What he had done had upset her Even now her heart was knocking and
fluttering uncomfortably I can’t hear that kind of thing' she repeated to herself
several times over And unfortunately this was no more than the literal truth,
she really could not bear it To be kissed or fondled by a man- to feel heavy
male arms about her and thick male lips bearing down upon her own-was
terrifying and repulsive to her Even m memory or imagination it made her
wmce It was her especial secret, the especial, incurable disability that she
carried through life
go 2 A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
If only they would leave you alone ] she thought as she walked onwards a
little more slowly That was how she put it to herself habitually- ‘If only they
would leave you alone '’ For it was not that m other ways she disliked men On
the contrary, she liked them better than women Part of Mr Warburton’s hold
over her was m the fact that he was a man and had the careless good humour
and the intellectual largeness that women so seldom have But why couldn’t
they leave you alone > Why did they always have to kiss you and maul you
about’ They were dreadful when they kissed you-dreadful and a little
disgusting, like some large, furry beast that rubs itself against you, all too
friendly and yet liable to turn dangerous at any moment And beyond their
kissing and mauling there lay always the suggestion of those other, monstrous
things (‘all that 3 was her name for them) of which she could hardly even bear to
think
Of course, she had had her share, and rather more than her share, of casual
attention from men She was just pretty enough, and just plain enough, to be
the kind of girl that men habitually pester For when a man wants a little casual
amusement, he usually picks out a girl who is not too pretty Pretty girls (so he
reasons) are spoilt and therefore capricious, but plain girls are easy game And
even if you are a clergyman’s daughter, even if you live m a town like Knype
Hill and spend almost your entire life in parish work, you don’t altogether
escape pursuit Dorothy was all too used to it— all too used to the fattish
middle-aged men, with their fishily hopeful eyes, who slowed down their cars
when you passed them on the road, or who manoeuvred an introduction and
then began pinching your elbow about ten minutes afterwards Men of all
descriptions Even a clergyman, on one occasion-a bishop’s chaplain, he
was
But the trouble was that it was not better, but oh* infinitely worse when they
were the right kind of man and the advances they made you were honourable
Her mind slipped backwards five years, to Francis Moon, curate m those days
at St Wedekind’s in Millborough Dear Francis 1 How gladly would she have
married him if only it had not been for all that ' Over and over again he had
asked her to marry him, and of course she had had to say No, and, equally of
course, he had never known why Impossible to tell him why And then he had
gone away, and only a year later had died so irrelevantly of pneumonia She
whispered a prayer for his soul, momentarily forgetting that her father did not
really approve of prayers for the dead, and then, with an effort, pushed the
memory aside Ah, better not to think of it again' It hurt her in her breast to
think of it.
She could never marry, she had decided long ago upon that Even when she
was a child she had known it Nothing would ever overcome her horror of all
that-st the very thought of it something within her seemed to shrink and
freeze. And of course, in a sense she did not want to overcome it For, like all
abnormal people, she was not fully aware that she was abnormal
And yet, though her sexual coldness seemed to her natural and inevitable,
she knew well enough how it was that it had begun She could remember, as
clearly as though it were yesterday, certain dreadful scenes between her father
A Clergyman's Daughter 303
and her mother- scenes that she had witnessed when she was no more than
nine years old They had left a deep, secret wound m her mind And then a
little later she had been frightened by some old steel engravings of nymphs
pursued by satyrs To her childish mind there was something inexplicably,
horribly sinister in those horned, semi-human creatures that lurked m thickets
and behind large trees, ready to come bounding forth in sudden swift pursuit
For a whole year of her childhood she had actually been afraid to walk through
woods alone, for fear of satyrs She had grown out of the fear, of course, but not
out of the feeling that was associated with it The satyr had remained with her
as a symbol Perhaps she would never grow out of it, that special feeling of
dread, of hopeless flight from something more than rationally dreadful-the
stamp of hooves in the lonely wood, the lean, furry thighs of the satyr It was a
thing not to be altered, not to be argued away It is, moreover, a thing too
common nowadays, among educated women, to occasion any kind of surprise
Most of Dorothy’s agitation had disappeared by the time she reached the
Rectory The thoughts of satyrs and Mr Warburton, of Francis Moon and her
foredoomed sterility, which had been going to and fro in her mind, faded out of
it and were replaced by the accusing image of a jackboot She remembered that
she had the best part of two hours’ work to do before going to bed tonight The
house was m darkness She went round to the back and slipped m on tiptoe by
the scullery door, for fear of waking her father, who was probably asleep
already
As she felt her way through the dark passage to the conservatory, she
suddenly decided that she had gone wrong m going to Mr Warburton’s house
tonight She would, she resolved, never go there again, even when she was
certain that somebody else would be there as well Moreover, she would do
penance tomorrow for having gone there tonight Having lighted the lamp,
before doing anything else she found her ‘memo list’, which was already
written out for tomorrow, and pencilled a capital P against ‘breakfast’, P stood
for penance-no bacon again for breakfast tomorrow Then she lighted the
oilstove under the glue-pot
The light of the lamp fell yellow upon her sewing-machine and upon the pile
of half-finished clothes on the table, reminding her of the yet greater pile of
clothes that were not even begun, reminding her, also, that she was dreadfully,
overwhelmingly tired She had forgotten her tiredness at the moment when
Mr Warburton laid his hands on her shoulders, but now it had come back upon
her with double force Moreover, there was a somehow exceptional quality
about her tiredness tonight She felt, m an almost literal sense of the words,
washed out As she stood beside the table she had a sudden, very strange
feeling as though her mind had been entirely emptied, so that for several
seconds she actually forgot what it was that she had come into the conservatory
to do
Then she remembered-the jackboots, of course 1 Some contemptible little
demon whispered m her ear, ‘Why not go straight to bed and leave the
jackboots till tomorrow? ’ She uttered a prayer for strength, and pinched
herself Come on, Dorothy 1 No slacking please 1 Luke ix, 62 Then, clearing
204 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
some of the litter off the table, she got out her scissors, a pencil, and four sheets
of brown paper, and sat down to cut out those troublesome insteps for the
jackboots while the glue was boiling
When the grandfather clock in her father’s study struck midnight she was
still at work She had shaped both jackboots by this time, and was reinforcing
them by pasting narrow strips of paper all over them-a long, messy job Every
bone in her body was aching, and her eyes were sticky with sleep Indeed, it
was only rather dimly that she remembered what she was doing But she
worked on, mechanically pasting strip after strip of paper into place, and
pinching herself every two minutes to counteract the hypnotic sound of the
oilstove singing beneath the glue-pot
CHAPTER 2
I
Out of a black, dreamless sleep, with the sense of being drawn upwards
through enormous and gradually lightening abysses, Dorothy awoke to a
species of consciousness
Her eyes were still closed By degrees, however, their lids became less
opaque to the light, and then flickered open of their own accord She was
looking out upon a street-a shabby, lively street of small shops and narrow-
faced houses, with streams of men, trams, and cars passing in either direction
But as yet it could not properly be said that she was looking For the things
she saw were not apprehended as men, trams, and cars, nor as anything m
particular, they were not even apprehended as things moving, not even as
things „ She merely sazo } as an animal sees, without speculation and almost
without consciousness. The noises of the street- the confused din of voices, the
hooting of horns and the scream of the trams grinding on their gritty
rails-flowed through her head provoking purely physical responses She had
no words, nor any conception of the purpose of such things as words, nor any
consciousness of time or place, or of her own body or even of her own
existence
Nevertheless, by degrees her perceptions became sharper The stream of
moving things began to penetrate beyond her eyes and sort themselves out into
separate images in her brain She began, still wordlessly, to observe the shapes
of things A long-shaped thing swam past, supported on four other, narrower
long-shaped things, and drawing after it a square-shaped thmg balanced on
two circles, Dorothy watched it pass, and suddenly, as though spontaneously,
a word flashed into her mind The word was ‘horse’ It faded, but returned
presently in the more complex form ‘ That is a horse*’ Other words
followed- ‘house’, ‘street’, ‘tram’, ‘car’, ‘bicycle’-until m a few minutes she
had found a name for almost everything within sight She discovered the
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 305
words ‘man’ and ‘woman’, and, speculating upon these words, discovered that
she knew the difference between living and inanimate things, and between
human beings and horses, and between men and women
It was only now, after becoming aware of most of the things about her, that
she became aware of herself Hitherto she had been as it were a pair of eyes with
a receptive but purely impersonal brain behind them But now, with a curious
little shock, she discovered her separate and umque existence, she could feel
herself existing, it was as though something within her were exclaiming ‘I am
I 1 ’ Also, in some way she knew that this ‘I’ had existed and been the same from
remote periods in the past, though it was a past of which she had no
remembrance
But it was only for a moment that this discovery occupied her From the first
there was a sense of incompleteness m it, of something vaguely unsatisfactory
And it was this the ‘I am I’ which had seemed an answer had itself become a
question It was no longer ‘I am I’, but ‘who ami’ 5
Who was she ? She turned the question over m her mmd, and found that she
had not the dimmest notion of who she was, except that, watching the people
and horses passing, she grasped that she was a human being and not a horse
And that the question altered itself and took this form ‘Am I a man or a
woman 55 ’ Again neither feeling nor memory gave any clue to the answer But at
that moment, by accident possibly, her finger-tips brushed against her body
She realized more clearly than before that her body existed, and that it was her
own-that it was, m fact, herself She began to explore it with her hands, and
her hands encountered breasts She was a woman, therefore Only women had
breasts In some way she knew, without knowing how she knew, that all those
women who passed had breasts beneath their clothes, though she could not see
them
She now grasped that in order to identify herself she must examine her own
body, beginning with her face, and for some moments she actually attempted
to look at her own face, before realizing that this was impossible She looked
down, and saw a shabby black satin dress, rather long, a pair of flesh-coloured
artificial silk stockings, laddered and dirty, and a pair of very shabby black
satin shoes with high heels None of them was in the least familiar to her She
examined her hands, and they were both strange and unstrange. They were
smallish hands, with hard palms, and very dirty. After a moment she realized
that it was their dirtiness that made them strange to her The hands themselves
seemed natural and appropriate, though she did not recognize them
After hesitating a few moments longer, she turned to her left and began to
walk slowly along the pavement A fragment of knowledge had come to her,
mysteriously, out of the blank past the existence of mirrors, their purpose, and
the fact that there are often mirrors m shop windows After a moment she came
to a cheap little jeweller’s shop in which a strip of mirror, set at an angle,
reflected the faces of people passing Dorothy picked her reflection out from
among a dozen others, immediately realizing it to be her own Yet it could not
be said that she had recognized it, she had no memory of ever havmg seen it till
this moment It showed her a woman’s youngish face, thin, very blonde, with
306 A Clergyman's Daughter
crow’s-feet round the eyes, and faintly smudged with dirt A vulgar black
cloche hat was stuck carelessly on the head, concealing most of the hair The
face was quite unfamiliar to her, and yet not strange She had not known till
this moment what face to expect, but now that she had seen it she realized that
it was the face she might have expected It was appropriate It corresponded to
something within her
As she turned away from the jeweller’s mirror, she caught sight of the words
‘Fry’s Chocolate’ on a shop window opposite, and discovered that she
understood the purpose of writing, and also, after a momentary effort, that she
was able to read Her eyes flitted across the street, taking m and deciphering
odd scraps of print, the names of shops, advertisements, newspaper posters
She spelled out the letters of two red and white posters outside a tobacconist’s
shop One of them read, ‘Fresh Rumours about Rector’s Daughter’, and the
other, ‘Rector’s Daughter Now believed in Paris’ Then she looked upwards,
and saw in white lettering on the corner of a house ‘New Kent Road’ The
words arrested her She grasped that she was standing in the New Kent Road,
and-another fragment of her mysterious knowledge-the New Kent Road was
somewhere in London So she was m London
As she made this discovery a peculiar tremor ran through her Her mind was
now fully awakened, she grasped, as she had not grasped before, the
strangeness of her situation, and it bewildered and frightened her What could
it all mean> What was she doing here? How had she got here? What had
happened to her?
The answer was not long in coming She thought-and it seemed to her that
she understood perfectly well what the words meant ‘Of course 1 I’ve lost my
memory 1 ’
At this moment two youths and a girl who were trudging past, the youths
with clumsy sacking bundles on their backs, stopped and looked curiously at
Dorothy They hesitated for a moment, then walked on, but halted again by a
lamp-post five yards away Dorothy saw them looking back at her and talking
among themselves One of the youths was about twenty, narrow-chested,
black-haired, ruddy-cheeked, good-looking m a nosy cockney way, and
dressed in the wreck of a raffishly smart blue suit and a check cap The other
was about twenty-six, squat, nimble, and powerful, with a snub nose, a clear
pink skin and huge lips as coarse as sausages, exposing strong yellow teeth He
was frankly ragged, and he had a mat of orange-coloured hair cropped short
and growing low on his head, which gave him a startling resemblance to an
orang-outang. The girl was a silly-looking, plump creature, dressed in clothes
very like Dorothy’s own Dorothy could hear some of what they were saying
‘That tart looks ill,’ said the girl
The orange-headed one, who was singing ‘Sonny Boy’ m a good baritone
voice, stopped singing to answer ‘She ain’t ill,’ he said ‘She’s on the beach all
right, though Same as us ’
‘She’d do jest nicely for Nobby, wouldn’t she? ’ said the dark-haired one
‘Oh, you v exclaimed the girl with a shocked-amorous air, pretending to
smack the dark one over the head
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 307
The youths had lowered their bundles and leaned them against the lamp-
post All three of them now came rather hesitantly towards Dorothy, the
orange-headed one, whose name seemed to be Nobby, leading the way as their
ambassador He moved with a gambolling, apelike gait, and his grm was so
frank and wide that it was impossible not to smile back at him He addressed
Dorothy m a friendly way
‘Hullo, kid 1 ’
‘Hullo 1 ’
‘You on the beach, kid? ’
‘On the beach? ’
‘Well, on the bum? ’
‘On the bum? ’
‘Christ! she’s batty,’ murmured the girl, twitching at the black-haired one’s
arm as though to pull him away
‘Well, what I mean to say, kid-have you got any money? ’
‘I don’t know ’
At this all three looked at one another in stupefaction For a moment they
probably thought that Dorothy really was batty But simultaneously Dorothy,
who had earlier discovered a small pocket in the side of her dress, put her hand
into it and felt the outline of a large com
‘I believe I’ve got a penny,’ she said
‘A penny' 5 said the dark youth disgustedly, ‘-lot of good that is to us 1 ’
Dorothy drew it out It was a half-crown An astonishing change came over
the faces of the three others Nobby’s mouth split open with delight, he
gambolled several steps to and fro like some great jubilant ape, and then,
halting, took Dorothy confidentially by the arm
‘That’s the mulligatawny'’ he said ‘We’ve struck it lucky-and so’ve you,
kid, believe me You’re going to bless the day you set eyes on us lot We’re
going to make your fortune for you, we are Now, see here, kid-are you on to
go into cahoots with us three? ’
‘What? ’ said Dorothy
‘What I mean to say-how about you chumming in with Flo and Charlie and
me? Partners, see? Comrades all, shoulder to shoulder United we stand,
divided we fall. We put up the brains, you put up the money How about it,
kid? Are you on, or are you off? ’
‘Shut up, Nobby 1 ’ interrupted the girl ‘She don’t understand a word of
what you’re saying Talk to her proper, can’t you? ’
‘That’ll do, Flo,’ said Nobby equably ‘You keep it shut and leave the
talking to me I got a way with the tarts, I have Now, you listen to me,
kid-what might your name happen to be, kid? ’
Dorothy was within an ace of saying ‘I don’t know,’ but she was sufficiently
on the alert to stop herself in time Choosing a feminine name from the half-
dozen that sprang immediately into her mind, she answered, ‘Ellen ’
‘Ellen That’s the mulligatawny No surnames when you’re on the bum
Well now, Ellen dear, you listen to me. Us three are going down hopping,
see-*
A Clergyman’ s Daughter
308
‘Hopping? ’
‘’Oppmg’’ put m the dark youth impatiently, as though disgusted by
Dorothy’s ignorance His voice and manner were rather sullen, and his accent
much baser than Nobby’s ‘Pickin’ ’ops-dahn in Kent 1 C’n understand that,
can’t yer? ’
‘Oh, hops' For beer? ’
‘That’s the mulligatawny’ Coming on fine, she is Well, kid, ’z I was saying,
here’s us three going down hopping, and got a job promised us and
all-Blessington’s farm, Lower Molesworth Only we’re just a bit m the
mulligatawny, see? Because we ain’t got a brown between us, and we got to do
it on the toby- thirty-five miles it is -and got to tap for our tommy and skipper
at night as well And that’s a bit of a mulligatawny, with ladies m the party But
now s’pose f rmstance you was to come along with us, see? We c’d take the
twopenny tram far as Bromley, and that’s fifteen miles done, and we won’t
need skipper more’n one night on the way And you can chum in at our
bm-four to a bin’s the best pickmg-and if Blessington’s paying twopence a
bushel you’ll turn your ten bob a week easy What do you say to it, kid? Your
two and a tanner won’t do you much good here in Smoke But you go into
partnership with us, and you’ll get your kip for a month and something
over-and we’ll get a lift to Bromley and a bit of scran as well ’
About a quarter of his speech was intelligible to Dorothy She asked rather at
random
‘What is scran * ’
‘Scran? Tommy-food I can see you ain’t been long on the beach, kid ’
‘Oh Well, you want me to come down hop-picking with you, is that it? ’
‘That’s it, Ellen my dear Are you on, or are you off? ’
‘AH right,’ said Dorothy promptly ‘I’ll come ’
She made this decision without any misgiving whatever It is true that if she
had had time to think over her position, she would probably have acted
differently, in all probability she would have gone to a police station and asked
for assistance That would have been the sensible course to take But Nobby
and the others had appeared just at the critical moment, and, helpless as she
was, it seemed quite natural to throw m her lot with the first human being who
presented himself. Moreover, for some reason which she did not understand, it
reassured her to hear that they were making for Kent Kent, it seemed to her,
was the very place to which she wanted to go The others showed no further
curiosity, and asked no uncomfortable questions Nobby simply said, ‘O K
That’s the mulligatawny’’ and then gently took Dorothy’s half-crown out of
her hand and slid it into his pocket-in case she should lose it, he explained
The dark youth-apparently his name was Charlie- said m his surly,
disagreeable way
‘Come on, less get movin’’ It’s ’ar-parse two already We don’t want to miss
that there — tram. Where d’they start from. Nobby? ’
‘The Elephant,’ said Nobby ‘and we got to catch it before four o’clock,
because they don’t give no free rides after four ’
‘Come on, then, don’t less waste no more time Nice job we’ll ’ave of it if we
A Clergyman 's Daughter 309
got to ’ike it down to Bromley and look for a place to skipper in the — dark
C’m on, Flo ’
‘Quick march 1 ’ said Nobby, swinging his bundle on to his shoulder
They set out, without more words said, Dorothy, still bewildered but feeling
much better than she had felt half an hour ago, walked beside Flo and Charlie,
who talked to one another and took no further notice of her From the very first
they seemed to hold themselves a little aloof from Dorothy- willing enough to
share her half-crown, but with no friendly feelings towards her Nobby
marched m front, stepping out briskly m spite of his burden, and singing, with
spirited imitations of military music, the well-known military song of which
the only recorded words seem to be
was all the band could play,
“ — 1 — And the same to you 1 ’
2
This was the twenty-ninth of August It was on the mght of the twenty-first
that Dorothy had fallen asleep in the conservatory, so that there had been an
interregnum in her life of not quite eight days
The thing that had happened to her was commonplace enough-almost
every week one reads m the newspapers of a similar case A man disappears
from home, is lost sight of for days or weeks, and presently fetches up at a
police station or m a hospital, with no notion of who he is or where he has come
from As a rule it is impossible to tell how he has spent the intervening time, he
has been wandering, presumably, m some hypnotic or somnambulistic state m
which he has nevertheless been able to pass for normal In Dorothy’s case only
one thing is certain, and that is that she had been robbed at some time durmg
her travels, for the clothes she was wearing were not her own, and her gold
cross was missing
At the moment when Nobby accosted her, she was already on the road to
recovery; and if she had been properly cared for, her memory might have come
back to her within a few days or even hours, A very small thing would have
been enough to accomplish it, a chance meeting with a friend, a photograph of
her home, a few questions skilfully put But as it was, the slight mental
stimulus that she needed was never given. She was left in the peculiar state m
which she had first found herself-a state m which her mind was potentially
normal, but not quite strung up to the effort of puzzling out her own identity.
For of course, once she had thrown in her lot with Nobby and the others, all
chance of reflection was gone There was no time to sit down and think the
matter over-no time to come to grips with her difficulty and reason her way to
its solution In the strange, dirty sub-world into which she was instantly
gio A Clergyman’ s Daughter
plunged, even five minutes of consecutive thought would have been
impossible The days passed m ceaseless nightmarish activity Indeed, it was
very like a nightmare, a nightmare not of urgent terrors, but of hunger,
squalor, and fatigue, and of alternating heat and cold Afterwards, when she
looked back upon that time, days and nights merged themselves together so
that she could never remember with perfect certainty how many of them there
had been She only knew that for some indefinite period she had been
perpetually footsore and almost perpetually hungry Hunger and the soreness
of her feet were her clearest memories of that time, and also the cold of the
nights, and a peculiar, blowsy, witless feeling that came of sleeplessness and
constant exposure to the air
After getting to Bromley they had ‘drummed up’ on a horrible, paper-
littered rubbish dump, reeking with the refuse of several slaughter-houses,
and then passed a shuddering night, with only sacks for cover, in long wet
grass on the edge of a recreation ground In the morning they had started out,
on foot, for the hopfields Even at this early date Dorothy had discovered that
the tale Nobby had told her, about the promise of a job, was totally untrue He
had invented it~he confessed this quite light-heartedly-to induce her to come
with them Their only chance of getting a job was to march down into the hop
country and apply at every farm till they found one where pickers were still
needed
They had perhaps thirty-five miles to go, as the crow flies, and yet at the end
of three days they had barely reached the fringe of the hopfields The need of
getting food, of course, was what slowed their progress They could have
marched the whole distance in two days or even in a day if they had not been
obliged to feed themselves As it was, they had hardly even time to think of
whether they were going m the direction of the hopfields or not, it was food
that dictated all their movements Dorothy’s half-crown had melted within a
few hours, and after that there was nothing for it except to beg But there came
the difficulty One person can beg his food easily enough on the road, and even
two can manage it, but it is a very different matter when there are four people
together In such circumstances one can only keep alive if one hunts for food as
persistently and single-mmdedly as a wild beast Food-that was their sole
preoccupation during those three days-just food, and the endless difficulty of
getting it
From morning to night they were begging They wandered enormous
distances, zigzagging right across the country, trailing from village to village
and from house to house, ‘tapping’ at every butcher’s and every baker’s and
every likely looking cottage, and hanging hopefully round picnic parties, and
wavmg-always vamly-at passing cars, and accosting old gentlemen with the
right kind of face and pitching hard-up stones Often they went five miles out
of their way to get a crust of bread or a handful of scraps of bacon. All of them
begged, Dorothy with the others, she had no remembered past, no standards of
comparison to make her ashamed of it And yet with all their efforts they would
have gone empty-bellied half the time if they had not stolen as well as begged
At dusk and in the early mornings they pillaged the orchards and the fields.
A Clergyman's Daughter 31 1
stealing apples, damsons, pears, cobnuts, autumn raspberries, and, above all,
potatoes, Nobby counted it a sm to pass a potato field without getting at least a
pocketful It was Nobby who did most of the stealing, while the others kept
guard He was a bold thief, it was his peculiar boast that he would steal
anything that was not tied down, and he would have landed them all m prison
if they had not restrained him sometimes Once he even laid hands on a goose,
but the goose set up a fearful clamour, and Charlie and Dorothy dragged
Nobby off just as the owner came out of doors to see what was the matter
Each of those first days they walked between twenty and twenty-five miles
They trailed across commons and through buried villages with incredible
names, and lost themselves in lanes that led nowhere, and sprawled exhausted
in dry ditches smelling of fennel and tansies, and sneaked into private woods
and ‘drummed up’ m thickets were firewood and water were handy, and
cooked strange, squalid meals m the two two-pound snuff-tins that were their
only cooking pots Sometimes, when their luck was in, they had excellent stews
of cadged bacon and stolen cauliflowers, sometimes great insipid gorges of
potatoes roasted m the ashes, sometimes jam made of stolen autumn
raspberries which they boiled in one of the snuff-tins and devoured while it
was still scalding hot Tea was the one thing they never ran short of Even
when there was no food at all there was always tea, stewed, dark brown and
reviving It is a thing that can be begged more easily than most ‘Please,
ma’am, could you spare me a pinch of tea^’ is a plea that seldom fails, even with
the case-hardened Kentish housewives
The days were burning hot, the white roads glared and the passing cars sent
stinging dust into their faces Often families of hop-pickers drove past,
cheering, in lorries piled sky-high with furniture, children, dogs, and
birdcages The nights were always cold There is hardly such a thing as a night
in England when it is really warm after midnight Two large sacks were all the
bedding they had between them Flo and Charlie had one sack, Dorothy had
the other, and Nobby slept on the bare ground The discomfort was almost as
bad as the cold If you lay on your back, your head, with no pillow, lolled
backwards so that your neck seemed to be breaking, if you lay on your side,
your hip-bone pressing against the earth caused you torments Even when,
towards the small hours, you managed to fall asleep by fits and starts, the cold
penetrated into your deepest dreams Nobby was the only one who could really
stand it He could sleep as peacefully in a nest of sodden grass as in a bed, and
his coarse, simian face, with barely a dozen red-gold hairs glittering on the chm
like snippmgs of copper wire, never lost its warm, pink colour He was one of
those red-haired people who seem to glow with an inner radiance that warms
not only themselves but the surrounding air
All this strange, comfortless life Dorothy took utterly for granted-only
dimly aware, if at all, that the other, unremembered life that lay behind her had
been m some way different from this After only a couple of days she had
ceased to wonder any longer about her queer predicament She accepted
everythmg-accepted the dirt and hunger and fatigue, the endless trailing to
and fro, the hot, dusty days and the sleepless, shivering nights. She was, m any
312 A Clergyman’s Daughter
case, far too tired to think By the afternoon of the second day they were all
desperately, overwhelmingly tired, except Nobby, whom nothing could tire
Even the fact that soon after they set out a nail began to work its way through
the sole of his boot hardly seemed to trouble him There were periods of an
hour at a time when Dorothy seemed almost to be sleeping as she walked She
had a burden to carry now, for as the two men were already loaded and Flo
steadfastly refused to carry anything, Dorothy had volunteered to carry the
sack that held the stolen potatoes They generally had ten pounds or so of
potatoes in reserve Dorothy slung the sack over her shoulder as Nobby and
Charlie did with their bundles, but the string cut into her like a saw and the
sack bumped against her hip and chafed it so that finally it began to bleed Her
wretched, flimsy shoes had begun to go to pieces from the very beginning On
the second day the heel of her right shoe came off and left her hobbling, but
Nobby, expert m such matters, advised her to tear the heel off the other shoe
and walk flatfooted The result was a fiery pain down her shins when she
walked uphill, and a feeling as though the soles of her feet had been hammered
with an iron bar
But Flo and Charlie were in a much worse case than she They were not so
much exhausted as amazed and scandalized by the distances they were
expected to walk Walking twenty miles m a day was a thing they had never
heard of till now They were cockneys born and bred, and though they had had
several months of destitution in London, neither of them had ever been on the
road before Charlie, till fairly recently, had been m good employment, and
Flo, too, had had a good home until she had been seduced and turned out of
doors to live on the streets They had fallen in with Nobby in Trafalgar Square
and agreed to come hop-picking with him, imagining that it would be a bit of a
lark Of course, having been ‘on the beach’ a comparatively short time, they
looked down on Nobby and Dorothy They valued Nobby’s knowledge of the
road and his boldness in thieving, but he was their social mferior-that was
their attitude And as for Dorothy, they scarcely even deigned to look at her
after her half-crown came to an end
Even on the second day their courage was failing They lagged behind,
grumbled incessantly, and demanded more than their fair share of food By
the third day it was almost impossible to keep them on the road at all They
were pining to be back in London, and had long ceased to care whether they
ever got to the hopfields or not, all they wanted to do was to sprawl in any
comfortable halting place they could find, and, when there was any food left,
devour endless snacks, After every halt there was a tedious argument before
they could be got to their feet again
‘Come on, blokes 1 ’ Nobby would say ‘Pack your peter up, Charlie Time we
was getting off ” 5
‘Oh, — getting off 1 ’ Charlie would answer morosely
‘Well, we can’t skipper here, can we^ We said we was going to hike as far as
Sevenoaks tonight, didn’t we>’
‘Oh, — Sevenoaks 1 Sevenoaks or any other bleeding place-it don’t make
any bleeding difference to me ’
A Clergyman’s Daughter 31 3
‘But — it' We want to get a job tomorrow, don’t we ? And we got to get down
among the farms ’fore we can start looking for one ’
‘Oh, — the farms' I wish I’d never ’eard of a — ’op' I wasn’t brought up to
this-’ikmg and skippering like you was I’m fed up, that’s what I am — fed
up ’
‘If this is bloody ’oppmg,’ Flo would chime in, ‘I’ve ’ad my bloody bellyful
of it already ’
Nobby gave Dorothy his private opinion that Flo and Charlie would
probably ‘jack ofF if they got the chance of a lift back to London But as for
Nobby, nothing disheartened him or ruffled his good temper, not even when
the nail in his boot was at its worst and his filthy remnant of a sock was dark
with blood By the third day the nail had worn a permanent hole m his foot,
and Nobby had to halt once in a mile to hammer it down
‘’Scuse me, kid,’ he would say, ‘got to attend to my bloody hoof again This
nail’s a mulligatawny ’
He would search for a round stone, squat m the ditch and carefully hammer
the nail down
‘There'’ he would say optimistically, feelmg the place with his thumb ‘ That
b — ’s in his grave' 5
The epitaph should have been Resurgam, however The nail invariably
worked its way up again within a quarter of an hour
Nobby had tried to make love to Dorothy, of course, and, when she repulsed
him, bore her no grudge He had that happy temperament that is incapable of
taking its own reverses very seriously He was always debonair, always singing
m a lusty baritone voice-his three favourite songs were ‘Sonny Boy’, °Twas
Christmas Day in the Workhouse’ (to the tune of ‘The Church’s One
Foundation’), and “‘ — '” was all the band could play’, given with lively
renderings of military music He was twenty-six years old and was a widower,
and had been successively a seller of newspapers, a petty thief, a Borstal boy, a
soldier, a burglar, and a tramp These facts, however, you had to piece together
for yourself, for he was not equal to giving a consecutive account of his life His
conversation was studded with casual picturesque memories-the six months
he had served m a line regiment before he was invalided out with a damaged
eye, the loathsomeness of the skilly m Holloway, his childhood in the Deptford
gutters, the death of his wife, aged eighteen, in childbirth, when he was
twenty, the horrible suppleness of the Borstal canes, the dull boom of the
nitro-glycerme, blowing in the safe door at Woodward’s boot and shoe factory,
where Nobby had cleared a hundred and twenty-five pounds and spent it m
three weeks
On the afternoon of the third day they reached the fringe of the hop country,
and began to meet discouraged people, mostly tramps, trailing back to London
with the news that there was nothing doing-hops were bad and the price 'was
low, and the gypsies and ‘home pickers’ had collared all the jobs At this Flo
and Charlie gave up hope altogether, but by an adroit mixture of bullying and
persuasion Nobby managed to drive them a few miles farther. In a little village
called Wale they fell m with an old Imhwoman-Mrs McElhgot was her
314 A Clergyman's Daughter
name-who had just been given a job at a neighbouring hopfield, and they
swapped some of their stolen apples for a piece of meat she had ‘bummed’
earlier in the day She gave them some useful hints about hop-picking and
about what farms to try They were all sprawling on the village green, tired
out, opposite a little general shop with some newspaper posters outside
‘You’d best go down’n have a try at Chalmers’s,’ Mrs McElligot advised
them in her base Dublin accent ‘Dat’s a bit above five mile from here I’ve
heard tell as Chalmers wants a dozen pickers still I daresay he’d give y’a job if
you gets dere early enough ’
‘Five miles' Cnpes' Ain’t there none nearer’n that? ’ grumbled Charlie
‘Well, dere’s Norman’s I got a job at Norman’s meself-I’m startin’
tomorrow morning’ But ’twouldn’t be no use for you to try at Norman’s He
ain’t takin’ on none but home pickers, an’ dey say as he’s goin’ to let half his
hops blow ’
‘What’s home pickers? ’ said Nobby
‘Why, dem as has got homes o’ deir own Eider you got to live in de
neighbourhood, or else de farmer’s got to give y’a hut to sleep in Dat’s de law
nowadays In de ole days when you come down hoppm’, you kipped in a stable
an’ dere was no questions asked But dem bloody interferin’ gets of a Labour
Government brought in a law to say as no pickers was to be taken on widout de
farmer had proper accommodation for ’em So Norman only takes on folks as
has got homes o’ deir own ’
‘Well, you ain’t got a home of your own, have you? ’
‘No bloody fear' But Norman t’inks I have I kidded’m I was stayin’ in a
cottage near by Between you an’ me. I’m skipperin’ in a cow byre ’Tain’t so
bad except for de stmk o’ de muck, but you got to be out be five m de mornm’,
else de cowmen ’ud catch you ’
‘We ain’t got no experience of hopping,’ Nobby said ‘I wouldn’t know a
bloody hop if I saw one Best to let on you’re an old hand when you go up for a
job, eh? ’
‘Hell 1 Hops don’t need no experience Tear ’em off an’ flmg ’em into de bin
Dat’s all der is to it, wid hops ’
Dorothy was nearly asleep She heard the others talking desultorily, first
about hop-pickmg, then about some story m the newspapers of a girl who had
disappeared from home Flo and Charlie had been reading the posters on the
shop-front opposite, and this had revived them somewhat, because the posters
reminded them of London and its joys The missing girl, in whose fate they
seemed to be rather interested, was spoken of as ‘The Rector’s Daughter’
‘J’a see that one, Flo? ’ said Charlie, reading a poster aloud with intense
relish ‘“Secret Love Life of Rector’s Daughter Startling Revelations ” Coo'
Wish I ’ad a penny to ’ave a read of that! ’
‘Oh? What’s ’t all about, then? ’
‘What? Didn’t j’a read about it? Papers ’as bm full of it Rector’s Daughter
this and Rector’s Daughter that- wasn’t ’alf smutty, some of it, too ’
‘She’s bit of hot stuff, the ole Rector’s Daughter,’ said Nobby reflec-
tively, lying on his back ‘Wish she was here now' I’d know what to do
A Clergyman’s Daughter 31 5
with her, all right, I w ould ’
‘ ’T was a kid run away from home,’ put in Mrs McElhgot ‘She was carryin’
on wid a man twenty year older’n herself, an’ now she’s disappeared an’ dey’re
searchm’ for her high an’ low *
‘Jacked off m the middle of the night m a motor-car with no clo’es on ’cep’
’er nightdress,’ said Charlie appreciatively ‘The ’ole village sore ’em go ’
‘Dere’s some t’mk as he’s took her abroad an’ sold her to one o’ dem flash
cat-houses in Parrus,’ added Mrs McElhgot
‘No clo’es on ’cep’ ’er nightdress^ Dirty tart she must ’a been 1 ’
The conversation might have proceeded to further details, but at this
moment Dorothy interrupted it What they were saying had roused a faint
curiosity in her She realized that she did not know the meaning of the word
‘Rector’ She sat up and asked Nobby
‘What is a Rector^ 1 ’
‘Rector^ Why, a sky-pilot-parson bloke Bloke that preaches and gives out
the hymns and that in church We passed one of ’em yesterday-riding a green
bicycle and had his collar on back to front A priest-clergyman You know ’
‘Oh Yes, I think so ’
‘Priests 1 Bloody ole getsies dey are too, some o’ dem,’ said Mrs McElhgot
reminiscently
Dorothy was left not much the wiser What Nobby had said did enlighten
her a little, but only a very little The whole train of thought connected with
‘church’ and ‘clergyman’ was strangely vague and blurred in her mind It was
one of the gaps-there was a number of such gaps-m the mysterious
knowledge that she had brought with her out of the past
That was their third night on the road When it was dark they slipped into a
spinney as usual to ‘skipper’, and a little after midnight it began to pelt with
ram They spent a miserable hour stumbling to and fro in the darkness, trying
to find a place to shelter, and finally found a hay- stack, where they huddled
themselves on the lee side till it was light enough to see, Flo blubbered
throughout the night m the most intolerable manner, and by the morning she
was in a state of semi-collapse Her silly fat face, washed clean by rain and
tears, looked like a bladder of lard, if one can imagine a bladder of lard
contorted with self-pity Nobby rooted about under the hedge until he had
collected an armful of partially dry sticks, and then managed to get a fire going
and boil some tea as usual There was no weather so bad that Nobby could not
produce a can of tea He carried, among other things, some pieces of old
motor tyre that would make a flare when the wood was wet, and he even
possessed the art, known only to a few cognoscenti among tramps, of getting
water to boil over a candle
Everyone’s limbs had stiffened after the horrible night, and Flo declared
herself unable to walk a step farther Charlie backed her up So, as the other
two refused to move, Dorothy and Nobby went on to Chalmers’s farm,
arranging a rendezvous where they should meet when they had tried their luck
They got to Chalmers’s, five miles away, found their way through vast
orchards to the hop-fields, and were told that the overseer ‘would be along
316 A Clergyman's Daughter
presently’ So they waited four hours on the edge of the plantation, with the
sun drying their clothes on their backs, watching the hop-pickers at work It
was a scene somehow peaceful and alluring The hop bines, tall climbing
plants like runner beans enormously magnified, grew in green leafy lanes, with
the hops dangling from them m pale green bunches like gigantic grapes When
the wind stirred them they shook forth a fresh, bitter scent of sulphur and cool
beer In each lane of bines a family of sunburnt people were shredding the
hops into sacking bins, and singing as they worked, and presently a hooter
sounded and they knocked off to boil cans of tea over crackling fires of hop
bmes Dorothy envied them greatly How happy they looked, sitting round the
fires with their cans of tea and their hunks of bread and bacon, m the smell of
hops and wood smoke 1 She pined for such a job-however, for the present there
was nothing doing At about one o’clock the overseer arrived and told them
that he had no jobs for them, so they trailed back to the road, only avenging
themselves on Chalmers’s farm by stealing a dozen apples as they went
When they reached their rendezvous, Flo and Charlie had vanished Of
course they searched for them, but, equally of course, they knew very well
what had happened Indeed, it was perfectly obvious Flo had made eyes at
some passing lorry driver, who had given the two of them a lift back to London
for the chance of a good cuddle on the way Worse yet, they had stolen both
bundles Dorothy and Nobby had not a scrap of food left, not a crust of bread
nor a potato nor a pinch of tea, no bedding, and not even a snuff-tin in which to
cook anything they could cadge or steal-nothing, m fact, except the clothes
they stood up in
The next thirty-six hours were a bad time-a very bad time How they pined
for a job, in their hunger and exhaustion 1 But the chances of getting one
seemed to grow smaller and smaller as they got farther into the hop country
They made interminable marches from farm to farm, gettmg the same answer
everywhere-no pickers needed-and they were so busy marching to and fro
that they had not even time to beg, so that they had nothing to eat except stolen
apples and damsons that tormented their stomachs with their acid juice and yet
left them ravenously hungry It did not ram that night, but it was much colder
than before Dorothy did not even attempt to sleep, but spent the night in
crouching over the fire and keeping it alight They were hiding m a beech
wood, under a squat, ancient tree that kept the wind away but also wetted them
periodically with sprinklings of chilly dew Nobby, stretched on his back,
mouth open, one broad cheek faintly illumined by the feeble rays of the fire,
slept as peacefully as a child. All night long a vague wonder, born of
sleeplessness and intolerable discomfort, kept stirring m Dorothy’s mind Was
this the life to which she had been bred-this life of wandering empty-bellied
all day and shivermg at night under dripping trees? Had it been like this even
in the blank past? Where had she come from? Who was she? No answer came,
and they were on the road at dawn By the evening they had tried at eleven
farms m all, and Dorothy’s legs were giving out, and she was so dizzy with
fatigue that she found difficulty in walking straight
But late in the evening, quite unexpectedly, their luck turned They tried at
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 317
a farm named Cairns’s, in the village of Clintock, and were taken on
immediately, with no questions asked The overseer merely looked them up
and down, said briefly, ‘Right you are-you’ll do Start m the morning, bm
number 7, set 19,’ and did not even bother to ask their names Hop-pickmg, it
seemed, needed neither character nor experience
They found their way to the meadow where the pickers’ camp was situated
In a dreamlike state, between exhaustion and the joy of having got a job at last,
Dorothy found herself walking through a maze of tin-roofed huts and gypsies’
caravans with many-coloured washing hanging from the windows Hordes of
children swarmed m the narrow grass alleys between the huts, and ragged,
agreeable-looking people were cooking meals over innumerable faggot fires At
the bottom of the field there were some round tin huts, much inferior to the
others, set apart for unmarried people An old man who was toasting cheese at
a fire directed Dorothy to one of the women’s huts
Dorothy pushed open the door of the hut It was about twelve feet across,
with unglazed windows which had been boarded up, and it had no furniture
whatever There seemed to be nothing in it but an enormous pile of straw
reaching to the roof-m fact, the hut was almost entirely filled with straw To
Dorothy’s eyes, already sticky with sleep, the straw looked paradisically
comfortable She began to push her way into it, and was checked by a sharp
yelp from beneath her
‘’Ere' What yer doing’ of? Get off of it 1 ’Oo asked you to walk about on my
belly, stoopid? ’
Seemingly there were women down among the straw Dorothy burrowed
foward more circumspectly, tripped over something, sank into the straw and m
the same instant began to fall asleep A rough-looking woman, partially
undressed, popped up like a mermaid from the strawy sea
°Ullo, mate'’ she said ‘Jest about all m, ain’t you, mate? ’
‘Yes, I’m tired- very tired ’
‘Well, you’ll bloody freeze m this straw with no bed-clo’es on you Ain’t you
got a blanket? ’
‘No,’
°Alf a mo, then I got a poke ’ere ’
She dived down into the straw and re-emerged with a hop-poke seven feet
long Dorothy was asleep already She allowed herself to be woken up, and
inserted herself somehow into the sack, which was so long that she could get
into it head and all, and then she was half wriggling, half sinking down, deep
down, into a nest of straw warmer and drier than she had conceived possible.
The straw tickled her nostrils and got into her hair and pricked her even
through the sack, but at that moment no imaginable sleeping place-not
Cleopatra’s couch of swan’s-down nor the floating bed of Haroun al
Raschid-could have caressed her more voluptuously
3
It was remarkable how easily, once you had got a job, you settled down to the
routine of hop-picking After only a week of it you ranked as an expert picker,
and felt as though you had been picking hops all your life
It was exceedingly easy work Physically, no doubt, it was exhaustmg-it
kept you on your feet ten or twelve hours a day, and you were dropping with
sleep by six in the evening-but it needed no kind of skill Quite a third of the
pickers in the camp were as new to the job as Dorothy herself Some of them
had come down from London with not the dimmest idea of what hops were
like, or how you picked them, or why One man, it was said, on his first
morning on the way to the fields, had asked, ‘Where are the spades^’ He
imagined that hops were dug up out of the ground
Except for Sundays, one day at the hop camp was very like another At half
past five, at a tap on the wall of your hut, you crawled out of your sleeping nest
and began searching for your shoes, amid sleepy curses from the women (there
were six or seven or possibly even eight of them) who were buried here and
there m the straw In that vast pile of straw any clothes that you were so unwise
as to take off always lost themselves immediately You grabbed an armful of
straw and another of dried hop bmes, and a faggot from the pile outside, and
got the fire going for breakfast Dorothy always cooked Nobby’s breakfast as
well as her own, and tapped on the wall of his hut when it was ready, she being
better at waking up m the mormng than he It was very cold on those
September mornings, the eastern sky was fading slowly from black to cobalt,
and the grass was silvery white with dew Your breakfast was always the
same-bacon, tea, and bread fried in the grease of the bacon While you ate it
you cooked another exactly similar meal, to serve for dinner, and then,
carrying your dinner-pail, you set out for the fields, a mile-and-a-half walk
through the blue, windy dawn, with your nose running so m the cold that you
had to stop occasionally and wipe it on your sacking apron
The hops were divided up into plantations of about an acre, and each
set-forty pickers or thereabouts, under a foreman who was often a
gypsy-picked one plantation at a time The bines grew twelve feet high or
more, and they were trained up strings, and slung over horizontal wires, m
rows a yard or two apart, m each row there was a sacking bin like a very deep
hammock slung on a heavy wooden frame As soon as you arrived you swung
your bin into position, slit the strings from the next two bines, and tore them
down-huge, tapering strands of foliage, like the plaits of Rapunzel’s hair, that
A Clergyman’s Daughter 319
came tumbling down on top of you, showering you with dew You dragged
them into place over the bin, and then, starting at the thick end of the bine,
began tearing off the heavy bunches of hops At that hour of the morning you
could only pick slowly and awkwardly Your hands were still stiff and the
coldness of the dew numbed them, and the hops were wet and slippery The
great difficulty was to pick the hops without picking the leaves and stalks as
well, for the measurer was liable to refuse your hops if they had too many
leaves among them
The stems of the bines were covered with minute thorns which within two
or three days had torn the skm of your hands to pieces In the morning it was a
torment to begin picking when your fingers were almost too stiff to bend and
bleeding in a dozen places, but the pain wore off when the cuts had reopened
and the blood was flowing freely If the hops were good and you picked well,
you could strip a bine m ten minutes, and the best bines yielded half a bushel of
hops But the hops varied greatly from one plantation to another In some they
were as large as walnuts, and hung m great leafless bunches which you could
rip off with a single twist, in others they were miserable things no bigger than
peas, and grew so thmly that you had to pick them one at a time Some hops
were so bad that you could not pick a bushel of them in an hour
It was slow work m the early morning, before the hops were dry enough to
handle But presently the sun came out, and the lovely, bitter odour began to
stream from the warming hops, and people’s early-morning surliness wore off,
and the work got into its stride From eight till midday you were picking,
picking, picking, in a sort of passion of work-a passionate eagerness, which
grew stronger and stronger as the morning advanced, to get each bine done and
shift your bin a little farther along the row At the beginning of each plantation
all the bins started abreast, but by degrees the better pickers forged ahead, and
some of them had finished their lane of hops when the others were barely half-
way along, whereupon, if you were far behind, they were allowed to turn back
and finish your row for you* which was called ‘stealing your hops’ Dorothy
and Nobby were always among the last, there being only two of them-there
were four people at most of the bins And Nobby was a clumsy picker, with his
great coarse hands, on the whole, the women picked better than the men
It Was always a neck and neck race between the two bins on either side of
Dorothy and Nobby, bin number 6 and bin number 8 Bin number 6 was a
family of gypsies-a curly-headed, ear-ringed father, an old dried-up leather-
coloured mother, and two strapping sons- and bin number 8 was an old East
End costerwoman who wore a broad hat and long black cloak and took snuff
out of a papierm&chC box with a steamer painted on the lid She was always
helped by relays of daughters and granddaughters who came down from
London for two days at a time There was quite a troop of children working
with the set, following the bins with baskets and gathering up the fallen hops
while the adults picked And the old costerwoman’s tiny, pale granddaughter
Rose, and a little gypsy girl, dark as an Indian, were perpetually slipping off to
steal autumn raspberries and make swings out of hop bines; and the constant
singing round the bins was pierced by shrill cries from the costerwoman of.
220 A Clergyman’s Daughter
‘Go on, Rose, you lazy little cat’ Pick them ’ops up’ I’ll warm your a — for you 1 ’
etc , etc
Quite half the pickers m the set were gypsies-there were not less than two
hundred of them m the camp Diddykies, the other pickers called them They
were not a bad sort of people, friendly enough, and they flattered you grossly
when they wanted to get anything out of you, yet they were sly, with the
impenetrable slyness of savages In their oafish, Oriental faces there was a look
as of some wild but sluggish animal-a look of dense stupidity existing side by
side with untameable cunning Their talk consisted of about half a dozen
remarks which they repeated over and over again without ever growing tired of
them The two young gypsies at bm number 6 would ask Nobby and Dorothy
as many as a dozen times a day the same conundrum
‘What is it the cleverest man m England couldn’t do ? ’
‘I don’t know What>’
‘Tickle a gnat’s a — with a telegraph pole ’
At this, never-failing bellows of laughter They were all abysmally ignorant,
they informed you with pride that not one of them could read a single word
The old curly-headed father, who had conceived some dim notion that
Dorothy was a ‘scholard’, once seriously asked her whether he could drive his
caravan to New York
At twelve o’clock a hooter down at the farm signalled to the pickers to knock
off work for an hour, and it was generally a little before this that the measurer
came round to collect the hops At a warning shout from the foreman of ‘ ’Ops
ready, number nineteen 1 ’ everyone would hasten to pick up the fallen hops,
finish off the tendrils that had been left unpicked here and there, and clear the
leaves out of the bm There was an art in that It did not pay to pick too ‘clean’,
for leaves and hops alike all went to swell the tally The old hands, such as the
gypsies, were adepts at knowing just how ‘dirty’ it was safe to pick
The measurer would come round, carrying a wicker basket which held a
bushel, and accompanied by the ‘bookie,’ who entered the pickings of each bm
in a ledger The ‘bookies’ were young men, clerks and chartered accountants
and the like, who took this job as a paying holiday The measurer would scoop
the hops out of the bm a bushel at a time, intoning as he did so, ‘One 1 Two 1
Three’ Four! ’ and the pickers would enter the number in their tally books
Each bushel they picked earned them twopence, and naturally there were
endless quarrels and accusations of unfairness over the measuring. Hops are
spongy thmgs-you can crush a bushel of them into a quart pot if you choose,
so after each scoop one of the pickers would lean over into the bm and stir the
hops up to make them he looser, and then the measurer would hoist the end of
the bm and shake the hops together again Some mornings he had orders to
‘take them heavy’, and would shovel them in so that he got a couple of bushels
at each scoop, whereat there were angry yells of, ‘Look how the b— ’s ramming
them down’ Why don’t you bloody well stamp on thenP’ etc. ; and the old
hands would say darkly that they had known measurers to be ducked in
qowponds on the last day of picking From the bins the hops were put into
pokes which theoretically held a hundredweight; but it took two men to hoist a
A Clergyman’s Daughter 321
full poke when the measurer had been ‘taking them heavy’ You had an hour
for dinner, and you made a fire of hop bmes-this was forbidden, but everyone
did lt-and heated up your tea and ate your bacon sandwiches After dinner you
were picking again till five or six m the evening, when the measurer came* once
more to take your hops, after which you were free to go back to the camp
Looking back, afterwards, upon her interlude of hop-picking, it was always
the afternoons that Dorothy remembered Those long, laborious hours in the
strong sunlight, m the sound of forty voices singing, m the smell of hops and
wood smoke, had a quality peculiar and unforgettable As the afternoon wore
on you grew almost too tired to stand, and the small green hop lice got into
your hair and into your ears and worried you, and your hands, from the
sulphurous juice, were as black as a Negro’s except where they were bleeding
Yet you were happy, with an unreasonable happiness The work took hold of
you and absorbed you It was stupid work, mechanical, exhausting, and every
day more painful to the hands, and yet you never wearied of it, when the
weather was fine and the hops were good you had the feeling that you could go
on picking for ever and for ever It gave you a physical joy, a warm satisfied
feeling inside you, to stand there hour after hour, tearing off the heavy clusters
and watching the pale green pile grow higher and higher in your bin, every
bushel another twopence in your pocket The sun burned down upon you,
baking you brown, and the bitter, never-pallmg scent, like a wind from oceans
of cool beer, flowed into your nostrils and refreshed you When the sun was
shining everybody sang as they worked, the plantations rang with singing For
some reason all the songs were sad that autumn- songs about rejected love and
fidelity unrewarded, like gutter versions of Carmen and Manon Lescaut There
was
There they go~in their joy-
’Appy gul-lucky boy-
But ’ere am /-/-/-
Broken- Va-arted 1
And there was
But I’m dan-cmg with tears-in my eyes-
’Cos the girl-in my arms-isn’t you-o-ou 1
And
The bells-are nnging-for Sally-
But no-o-ot-for Sally-and me'
The little gypsy girl used to sing over and over again
We’re so misable, all so misable,
Down on Misable Farm'
And though everyone told her that the name of it was Misery Farm, she
322 A Clergyman's Daughter
persisted in calling it Misable Farm The old costerwoman and her
granddaughter Rose had a hop-pickmg song which went
‘Our lousy ’ops'
Our lousy ’ops 1
When the measurer ’e comes round.
Pick ’em up, pick ’em up off the ground 1
When ’e comes to measure,
’E never knows where to stop,
Ay, ay, get in the bin
And take the bloody lot 1 ’
‘There they go m their joy’, and ‘The bells are ringing for Sally’, were the
especial favourites The pickers never grew tired of singing them, they must
have sung both of them several hundred times over before the season came to
an end As much a part of the atmosphere of the hopfields as the bitter scent
and the blowsy sunlight were the tunes of those two songs, ringing through the
leafy lanes of the bines
When you got back to the camp, at half past six or thereabouts, you squatted
down by the stream that ran past the huts, and washed your face, probably for
the first time that day It took you twenty minutes or so to get the coal-black
filth off your hands Water and even soap made no impression on it, only two
things would remove lt-one of them was mud, and the other, curiously
enough, was hop juice Then you cooked your supper, which was usually
bread and tea and bacon again, unless Nobby had been along to the village and
bought two pennyworth of pieces from the butcher It was always Nobby who
did the shopping He was the sort of man who knows how to get four
pennyworth of meat from the butcher for twopence, and, besides, he was
expert in tiny economies For instance, he always bought a cottage loaf in
preference to any of the other shapes, because, as he used to point out, a cottage
loaf seems like two loaves when you tear it m half
Even before you had eaten your supper you were droppmg with sleep, but
the huge fires that people used to build between the huts were too agreeable to
leave The farm allowed two faggots a day for each hut, but the pickers
plundered as many more as they wanted, and also great lumps of elm root
which kept smouldering till morning On some nights the fires were so
enormous that twenty people could sit round them in comfort, and there was
singing far mto the night, and telling of stories and roasting of stolen apples
Youths and girls slipped off to the dark lanes together, and a few bold spirits
like Nobby set out with sacks and robbed the neighbouring orchards, and the
children played hide-and-seek in the dusk and harried the nightjars which
haunted the camp and which, m their cockney ignorance, they imagined to be
pheasants On Saturday nights fifty or sixty of the pickers used to get drunk m
the pub and then march down the village street roaring bawdy songs, to the
scandal of the inhabitants, who looked on the hopping season as decent
provincials in Roman Gaul might have looked on the yearly incursion of the
Goths,
When finally you managed to drag yourself away to your nest in the straw, it
A Clergyman’s Daughter 32 3
was none too warm or comfortable After that first blissful night, Dorothy
discovered that straw is wretched stuff to sleep m It is not only prickly, but,
unlike hay, it lets m the draught from every possible direction However, you
had the chance to steal an almost unlimited number of hop-pokes from the
fields, and by making herself a sort of cocoon of four hop-pokes, one on top of
the other, she managed to keep warm enough to sleep at any rate five hours a
night
4
As to what you earned by hop-picking, it was just enough to keep body and
soul together, and no more
The rate of pay at Cairns’s was twopence a bushel, and given good hops a
practised picker can average three bushels an hour In theory, therefore, it
would have been possible to earn thirty shillings by a sixty-hour week
Actually, no one in the camp came anywhere near this figure The best pickers
of all earned thirteen or fourteen shillings a week, and the worst hardly as
much as six shillings Nobby and Dorothy, pooling their hops and dividing the
proceeds, made round about ten shillings a week each
There were various reasons for this To begin with, there was the badness of
the hops in some of the fields Again, there were the delays which wasted an
hour or two of every day When one plantation was finished you had to carry
your bin to the next, which might be a mile distant, and then perhaps it would
turn out that there was some mistake, and the set, struggling under their bins
(they weighed a hundredweight), would have to waste another half-hour in
traipsing elsewhere Worst of all, there was the ram It was a bad September
that year, raining one day m three. Sometimes for a whole morning or
afternoon you shivered miserably m the shelter of the unstripped bmes, with a
dripping hop-poke round your shoulders, waiting for the ram to stop It was
impossible to pick when it was raining The hops were too slippery to handle,
and if you did pick them it was worse than useless, for when sodden with water
they shrank all to nothing in the bin Sometimes you were m the fields all day
to earn a shilling or less
This did not matter to the majority of the pickers, for quite half of them were
gypsies and accustomed to starvation wages, and most of the others were
respectable East Enders, costermongers and small shopkeepers and the like,
who came hop-pickmg for a holiday and were satisfied if they earned enough
for their fare both ways and a bit of fun on Saturday mghts The fanners knew
this and traded on it Indeed, were it not that hop-picking is regarded as a
holiday, the industry would collapse forthwith, for the price of hops is now so
low that no farmer could afford to pay his pickers a living wage.
324 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
Twice a week you could ‘sub’ up to the amount of half your earnings If you
left before the picking was finished (an inconvenient thing for the farmers)
they had the right to pay you off at the rate of a penny a bushel instead of
twopence-that is, to pocket half of what they owed you It was also common
knowledge that towards the end of the season, when all the pickers had a fair
sum owing to them and would not want to sacrifice it by throwing up their
jobs, the farmer would reduce the rate of payment from twopence a bushel to a
penny halfpenny Strikes were practically impossible The pickers had no
union, and the foremen of the sets, instead of being paid twopence a bushel like
the others, were paid a weekly wage which stopped automatically if there was a
strike, so naturally they would raise Heaven and earth to prevent one
Altogether, the farmers had the pickers in a cleft stick, but it was not the
farmers who were to blame-the low price of hops was the root of the trouble
Also as Dorothy observed later, very few of the pickers had more than a dim
idea of the amount they earned The system of piecework disguised the low
rate of payment
For the first few days, before they could ‘sub’, Dorothy and Nobby very
nearly starved, and would have starved altogether if the other pickers had not
fed them But everyone was extraordinarily kind There was a party of people
who shared one of the larger huts a little farther up the row, a flower-seller
named Jim Burrows and a man named Jim Turle who was vermin man at a
large London restaurant, who had married sisters and were close friends, and
these people had taken a liking to Dorothy They saw to it that she and Nobby
should not starve Every evening during the first few days May Turle, aged
fifteen, would arrive with a saucepan full of stew, which was presented with
studied casualness, lest there should be any hint of charity about it The
formula was always the same
‘Please, Ellen, mother says as she was just gomg to throw this stew away, and
then she thought as p’raps you might like it She ain’t got no use for it, she says,
and so you’d be doing her a kindness if you was to take it ’
It was extraordinary what a lot of things the Turles and the Burrowses were
‘just gomg to throw away’ during those first few days On one occasion they
even gave Nobby and Dorothy half a pig’s head ready stewed, and besides food
they gave them several cooking pots and a tin plate which could be used as a
frying-pan. Best of all, they asked no uncomfortable questions They knew
well enough that there was some mystery in Dorothy’s life-‘You could see,’
they said, ‘as Ellen had come down in the world ’- but they made it a point of
honour not to embarrass her by asking questions about it It was not until she
had been more than a fortnight at the camp that Dorothy was even obliged to
put herself to the trouble of inventing a surname
As soon as Dorothy and Nobby could ‘sub’, their money troubles were at an
end They lived with surprising ease at the rate of one and sixpence a day for
the two of them. Fourpence of this went on tobacco for Nobby, and fourpence-
halfpenny on a loaf of bread, and they spent about sevenpence a day on tea,
sugar, milk (you could get milk at the farm at a halfpenny a half-pmt), and
margarine and ‘pieces’ of bacon But, of course, you never got through the day
A Clergyman 3 s Daughter 323
without squandering another penny or two You were everlastingly hungry,
everlastingly doing sums in farthings to see whether you could afford a kipper
or a doughnut or a pennyworth of potato chips, and, wretched as the pickers’
earnings were, half the population of Kent seemed to be m conspiracy to tickle
their money out of their pockets The local shopkeepers, with four hundred
hop-pickers quartered upon them, made more during the hop season than all
the rest of the year put together, which did not prevent them from looking
down on the pickers as cockney dirt In the afternoon the farm hands would
come round the bins selling apples and pears at seven a penny, and London
hawkers would come with baskets of doughnuts or water ices or ‘halfpenny
lollies’ At night the camp was thronged by hawkers who drove down from
London with vans of horrifyingly cheap groceries, fish and chips, jellied eels,
shrimps, shop-soiled cakes, and gaunt, glassy-eyed rabbits which had lam two
years on the ice and were being sold off at mnepence a time
For the most part it was a filthy diet upon which the hop-pickers
lived-mevitably so, for even if you had the money to buy proper food, there
was no time to cook it except on Sundays Probably it was only the abundance
of stolen apples that prevented the camp from being ravaged by scurvy There
was constant, systematic thieving of apples, practically everyone in the camp
either stole them or shared them There were even parties of young men
(employed, so it was said, by London fruit-costers) who bicycled down from
London every week-end for the purpose of raiding the orchards As for
Nobby, he had reduced fruit-stealing to a science Within a week he had
collected a gang of youths who looked up to him as a hero because he was a real
burglar and had been m jail four times, and every night they would set out at
dusk with sacks and come back with as much as two hundredweight of fruit
There were vast orchards near the hopfields, and the apples, especially the
beautiful little Golden Russets, were lying m piles under the trees, rotting,
because the farmers could not sell them It was a sm not to take them. Nobby
said On two occasions he and his gang even stole a chicken How they
managed to do it without waking the neighbourhood was a mystery, but it
appeared that Nobby knew some dodge of slipping a sack over a chicken’s
head, so that it ‘ceas’d upon the midnight with no pam’-or at any rate, with no
noise
In this manner a week and then a fortnight went by, and Dorothy was no
nearer to solving the problem of her own identity Indeed, she was further
from it than ever, for except at odd moments the subject had almost vamshed
from her mind More and more she had come to take her curious situation for
granted, to abandon all thoughts of either yesterday or tomorrow. That was
the natural effect of life in the hopfields, it narrowed the range of your
consciousness to the passing minute You could not struggle with nebulous
mental problems when you were everlastingly sleepy and everlastingly
occupied- for when you were not at work m the fields you were either cooking,
or fetching things from the village, or coaxing a fire out of wet sticks, or
trudging to and fro with cans of water, (There was only one water tap m the
camp, and that was two hundred yards from Dorothy’s hut, and the
226 A Clergyman's Daughter
unspeakable earth latrine was at the same distance ) It was a life that wore you
out, used up every ounce of your energy, and kept you profoundly,
unquestionably happy In the literal sense of the word, it stupefied you The
long days m the fields, the coarse food and insufficient sleep, the smell of hops
and wood smoke, lulled you into an almost beastlike heaviness Your wits
seemed to thicken, just as your skin did, in the ram and sunshine and perpetual
fresh air
On Sundays, of course, there was no work in the fields, but Sunday morning
was a busy time, for it was then that people cooked their principal meal of the
week, and did their laundering and mending All over the camp, while the
jangle of bells from the village church came down the wind, mingling with the
thin strains of ‘O God our Help’ from the ill-attended open-air service held by
St Somebody’s Mission to Hop-pickers, huge faggot fires were blazing, and
water boiling in buckets and tin cans and saucepans and anything else that
people could lay their hands on, and ragged washing fluttering from the roofs
of all the huts On the first Sunday Dorothy borrowed a basin from the Turles
and washed first her hair, then her underclothes and Nobby’s shirt Her
underclothes were in a shocking state How long she had worn them she did
not know, but certainly not less than ten days, and they had been slept in all
that while Her stockings had hardly any feet left to them, and as for her shoes,
they only held together because of the mud that caked them
After she had set the washing to dry she cooked the dinner, and they dined
opulently off half a stewed chicken (stolen), boiled potatoes (stolen), stewed
apples (stolen), and tea out of real tea-cups with handles on them, borrowed
from Mrs Burrows And after dinner, the whole afternoon, Dorothy sat
against the sunny side of the hut, with a dry hop-poke across her knees to hold
her dress down, alternately dozing and reawakening Two-thirds of the people
in the camp were doing exactly the same thing, just dozing m the sun, and
waking to gaze at nothing, like cows It was all you felt equal to, after a week of
heavy work
About three o’clock, as she sat there on the verge of sleep. Nobby sauntered
by, bare to the waist-his shirt was drying- with a copy of a Sunday newspaper
that he had succeeded in borrowing It was Pippin's Weekly , the dirtiest of the
five dirty Sunday newspapers He dropped it m Dorothy’s lap as he passed
‘Have a read of that, kid,’ he said generously
Dorothy took Pippin's Weekly and laid it across her knees, feeling herself far
too sleepy to read A huge headline stared her in the face* ‘passion drama in
country rectory’ And then there were some more headlines, and something
m leaded type, and an mset photograph of a girl’s face For the space of five
seconds or thereabouts Dorothy was actually gazing at a blackish, smudgy, but
quite recognizable portrait of herself.
There was a column or so of print beneath the photograph As a matter of
fact, most of the newspapers had dropped the ‘Rector’s Daughter’ mystery by
this time, for it was more than a fortnight old and stale news But Pippin's
Weekly cared little whether its news was new so long as it was spicy, and that
week’s crop of rapes and murders had been a poor one. They were giving the
A Clergyman 3 s Daughter 327
‘Rector’s Daughter’ one final boost-giving her, m fact, the place of honour at
the top left-hand corner of the front page
Dorothy gazed inertly at the photograph A girl’s face, looking out at her
from beds of black unappetizing prmt-it conveyed absolutely nothing to her
mind She re-read mechanically the words, ‘passion drama in country
rectory’, without either understanding them or feeling the slightest interest
in them She was, she discovered, totally unequal to the effort of reading, even
the effort of looking at the photographs was too much for her Heavy sleep was
weighing down her head Her eyes, in the act of closing, flitted across the page
to a photograph that was either of Lord Snowden or of the man who wouldn’t
wear a truss, and then, in the same instant, she fell asleep, with Pippin's Weekly
across her knees
It was not uncomfortable against the corrugated iron wall of the hut, and she
hardly stirred till six o’clock, when Nobby woke her up to tell her that he had
got tea ready, whereat Dorothy put Pippin's Weekly thriftily away (it would
come in for lighting the fire), without looking at it again So for the moment the
chance of solving her problem passed by And the problem might have
remained unsolved even for months longer, had not a disagreeable accident, a
week later, frightened her out of the contented and unreflecting state m which
she was living
5
The following Sunday night two policemen suddenly descended upon the
camp and arrested Nobby and two others for theft
It happened all in a moment, and Nobby could not have escaped even if he
had been warned beforehand, for the countryside was pullulating with special
constables There are vast numbers of special constables m Kent They are
sworn m every autumn-a sort of militia to deal with the marauding tribes of
hop-pickers The farmers had been growing tired of the orchard-robbmg, and
had decided to make an examples in terrorem
Of course there was a tremendous uproar in the camp Dorothy came out of
her hut to discover what was the matter, and saw a firelit ring of people towards
which everyone was running She ran after them, and a horrid chill went
through her, because it seemed to her that she knew already what it was that
had happened She managed to wriggle her way to the front of the crowd, and
saw the very thing that she had been fearing
There stood Nobby, in the grip of an enormous policeman, and another
policeman was holding two frightened youths by the arms One of them, a
wretched child hardly sixteen years old, was crying bitterly Mr Cairns, a stiff-
built man with grey whiskers, and two farm hands, were keeping guard over
228 A Clergyman’s Daughter
the stolen property that had been dug out of the straw of Nobby’s hut Exhibit
A, a pile of apples, Exhibit B, some blood-stained chicken feathers Nobby
caught sight of Dorothy among the crowd, grinned at her with a flash of large
teeth, and winked There was a confused din of shouting
‘Look at the pore little b — crying' Let ’im go' Bloody shame, pore little kid
like that' Serve the young bastard right, getting us all into trouble' Let ’im go'
Always got to put the blame on us bloody hop-pickers' Can’t lose a bloody
apple without it’s us that’s took it Let ’im go' Shut up, can’t you 5 S’pose they
was your bloody apples 5 Wouldn’t you bloodiwell-’ etc , etc , etc And then
‘Stand back mate' ’Ere comes the kid’s mother ’
A huge Toby jug of a woman, with monstrous breasts and her hair coming
down her back, forced her way through the ring of people and began roaring
first at the policeman and Mr Cairns, then at Nobby, who had led her son
astray. Finally the farm hands managed to drag her away Through the
woman’s yells Dorothy could hear Mr Cairns gruffly interrogating Nobby
‘Now then, young man, just you own up and tell us who you shared them
apples with' We’re going to put a stop to this thieving game, once and for all
You own up, and I dessay we’ll take it into consideration ’
Nobby answered, as blithely as ever, ‘Consideration, your a — '*
‘Don’t you get giving me any of your lip, young man' Or else you’ll catch it
all the hotter when you go up before the magistrate ’
‘Catch it hotter, your a — '’
Nobby grinned His own wit filled him with delight He caught Dorothy’s
eye and winked at her once again before being led away And that was the last
she ever saw of him
There was further shouting, and when the prisoners were removed a few
dozen men followed them, booing at the policemen and Mr Cairns, but
nobody dared to interfere Dorothy meanwhile had crept away, she did not
even stop to find out whether there would be an opportunity of saying good-
bye to Nobby-she was too frightened, too anxious to escape Her knees were
trembling uncontrollably When she got back to the hut, the other women
were sitting up, talking excitedly about Nobby’s arrest She burrowed deep
into the straw and hid herself, to be out of the sound of their voices They
continued talking half the night, and of course, because Dorothy had
supposedly been Nobby’s ‘tart’, they kept condoling with her and plying her
with questions She did not answer them-pretended to be asleep. But there
would be, she knew well enough, no sleep for her that night
The whole thing had frightened and upset her-but it had frightened her
more than was reasonable or understandable For she was m no kind of danger
The farm hands did not know that she had shared the stolen apples-for that
matter, nearly everyone m the camp had shared them-and Nobby would never
betray her It was not even that she was greatly concerned for Nobby, who was
frankly not troubled by the prospect of a month in jail It was something that
was happening inside her-some change that was taking place in the
atmosphere of her mind
It seemed to her that she was no longer the same person that she had been an
A Clergyman 3 s Daughter 329
hour ago Within her and without, everything was changed It was as though a
bubble m her brain had burst, setting free thoughts, feelings, fears of which
she had forgotten the existence All the dreamlike apathy of the past three
weeks was shattered For it was precisely as in a dream that she had been
livmg-it is the especial condition of a dream that one accepts everything,
questions nothing Dirt, rags, vagabondage, begging, stealing-all had seemed
natural to her Even the loss of her memory had seemed natural, at least, she
had hardly given it a thought till this moment The question ‘Who am P' had
faded out of her mmd till sometimes she had forgotten it for hours together It
was only now that it returned with any real urgency
For nearly the whole of a miserable night that question went to and fro m her
brain But it was not so much the question itself that troubled her as the
knowledge that it was about to be answered Her memory was coming back to
her, that was certain, and some ugly shock was coming with it She actually
feared the moment when she should discover her own identity Something that
she did not want to face was waiting just below the surface of her
consciousness
At half past five she got up and groped for her shoes as usual She went
outside, got the fire going, and stuck the can of water among the hot embers to
boil Just as she did so a memory, seeming irrelevant, flashed across her mmd
It was of that halt on the village green at Wale, a fortnight ago-the time when
they had met the old Irishwoman, Mrs McElligot Very vividly she
remembered the scene. Herself lying exhausted on the grass, with her arm over
her face, and Nobby and Mrs McElligot talking across her supine body; and
Charlie, with succulent relish, reading out the poster, ‘Secret Love Life of
Rector’s Daughter’, and herself, mystified but not deeply interested, sitting up
and asking, ‘What is a Rector? ’
At that a deadly chill, like a hand of ice, fastened about her heart She got up
and hurried, almost ran back to the hut, then burrowed down to the place
where her sacks lay and felt in the straw beneath them In that vast mound of
straw all your loose possessions got lost and gradually worked their way to the
bottom But after searching for some minutes, and getting herself well cursed
by several women who were still half asleep, Dorothy found what she was
looking for It was the copy of Pippin x s Weekly which Nobby had given her a
week ago. She took it outside, knelt down, and spread it out m the light of the
fire
It was on the front page-a photograph, and three big headlines Yesl There
it was!
PASSION DRAMA IN COUNTRY RECTORY
PARSON S DAUGHTER AND ELDERLY SEDUCER
WHITE-HAIRED FATHER PROSTRATE WITH GRIEF
(Pippin's Weekly Special)
‘I would sooner have seen tier in her grave! ’ was the Jieartbroken cry of the Rev Charles Hare,
Rector qf Knype Hill, Suffolk, on learning of his twenty-eight-year-old daughter’s elopement
with an elderly bachelor reamed Warbntton, describedas an artist
5^0 A Clergyman’s Daughter
Miss Hare, who left the town on the night of the twenty-first of August, is still missing, and all
attempts to trace her have failed [In leaded type] Rumour, as yet unconfirmed, states that she was
recently seen with a male companion m a hotel of evil repute in Vienna
Readers of Pippin’s Weekly will recall that the elopement took place in dramatic circumstances
A little before midnight on the twenty-first of August, Mrs Evelina Sempnll, a widowed lady who
inhabits the house next door to Mr Warburton’s, happened by chance to look out of her bedroom
window and saw Mr Warburton standing at his front gate in conversation with a young woman As
it was a clear moonlight night, Mrs Semprill was able to distinguish this young woman as Miss
Hare, the Rector’s daughter The pair remained at the gate for several minutes, and before going
indoors they exchanged embraces which Mrs Semprill describes as being of a passionate nature
About half an hour later they reappeared in Mr Warburton’s car, which was backed out of the
front gate, and drove off m the direction of the Ipswich road Miss Hare was dressed m scanty
attire, and appeared to be under the influence of alcohol
It is now learned that for some time past Miss Hare had been in the habit of making clandestine
visits to Mr Warburton’s house Mrs Semprill, who could only with great difficulty be persuaded
to speak upon so painful a subject, has further revealed-
Dorothy crumpled Pippin’s Weekly violently between her hands and thrust
it into the fire, upsetting the can of water There was a cloud of ashes and
sulphurous smoke, and almost in the same instant Dorothy pulled the paper
out of the fire unburnt No use funking lt-better to learn the worst She read
on, with a horrible fascination It was not a nice kind of story to read about
yourself For it was strange, but she had no longer any shadow of doubt that
this girl of whom she was reading was herself She examined the photograph
It was a blurred, nebulous thing, but quite unmistakable Besides, she had no
need of the photograph to remind her She could remember everything- every
circumstance of her life, up to that evening when she had come home tired out
from Mr Warburton’s house, and, presumably, fallen asleep m the
conservatory It was all so clear in her mind that it was almost incredible that
she had ever forgotten it
She ate no breakfast that day, and did not think to prepare anything for the
midday meal; but when the time came, from force of habit, she set out for the
hopfields with the other pickers With difficulty, being alone, she dragged the
heavy bin into position, pulled the next bine down and began picking But
after a few minutes she found that it was quite impossible, even the mechanical
labour of picking was beyond her That horrible, lying story m Pippin’s
Weekly had so unstrung her that it was impossible even for an instant to focus
her mmd upon anything else Its lickerish phrases were going over and over m
her head ‘Embraces of a passionate nature’-‘m scanty attire’ -‘under the
influence of alcohol’-as each one came back into her memory it brought with it
such a pang that she wanted to cry out as though m physical pam
After a while she stopped even pretending to pick, let the bine fall across her
bin, and sat down against one of the posts that supported the wires The other
pickers observed her plight, and were sympathetic Ellen was a bit cut up, they
said What else could you expect, after her bloke had been knocked ofiP
(Everyone m the 'camp, Of course, had taken it for granted that Nobby was
Dorothy’s lover ) They advised her to go down to the farm *and report sick
A Clergyman's Daughter 331
And towards twelve o’clock, when the measurer was due, everyone in the set
came across with a hatful of hops and dropped it into her bin
When the measurer arrived he found Dorothy still sitting on the ground
Beneath her dirt and sunburn she was very pale, her face looked haggard, and
much older than before Her bin was twenty yards behind the rest of the set,
and there were less than three bushels of hops in it
‘What’s the game? ’ he demanded ‘You ilP’
‘No ’
‘Well, why ain’t you bin pickin’, then? What you think this is- toff s picnic?
You don’t come up ’ere to sit about on the ground, you know ’
‘You cheese it and don’t get nagging of ’er'’ shouted the old cockney
costerwoman suddenly ‘Can’t the pore girl ’ave a bit of rest and peace if she
wants it? Ain’t ’er bloke m the clink thanks to you and your bloody nosing pals
of coppers? She’s got enough to worry ’er ’thout being — about by every
bloody copper’s nark in Kent 1 ’
‘That’ll be enough from you, Ma 1 ’ said the measurer gruffly, but he looked
more sympathetic on hearing that it was Dorothy’s lover who had been arrested
on the previous night When the costerwoman had got her kettle boiling she
called Dorothy to her bin and gave her a cup of strong tea and a hunk of bread
and cheese, and after the dinner interval another picker who had no partner
was sent up to share Dorothy’s bin He was a small, weazened old tramp
named Deafie Dorothy felt somewhat better after the tea Encouraged by
Deafie’s example-for he was an excellent picker-she managed to do her fair
share of work during the afternoon
She had thought things over, and was less distracted than before The
phrases m Pippin’s Weekly still made her wmce with shame, but she was equal
now to facing the situation She understood well enough what had happened to
her, and what had led to Mrs Semprill’s libel Mrs Sempnll had seen them
together at the gate and had seen Mr Warburton kissing her, and after that,
when they were both missing from Knype Hill, it was only too natural- natural
for Mrs Sempnll, that ls-to infer that they had eloped together As for the
picturesque details, she had invented them later Or had she invented them?
That was the one thing you could never be certain of with Mrs
Sempnll-whether she told her lies consciously and deliberately as lies, or
whether, m her strange and disgusting mind, she somehow succeeded in
believing them
Well, anyway, the harm was done-no use worrying about it any longer.
Meanwhile, there was the question of getting back to Knype Hill She would
have to send for some clothes, and she would need two pounds for her tram
fare home Home 1 The word sent a pang through her heart Home, after weeks
of dirt and hunger 1 How she longed for it, now that she remembered it*
But-'
A chilly little doubt raised its head There was one aspect of the matter that
she had not thought of till this moment Could she, after all, go home? Dared
she?
Could she face Knype Hill after everything that had happened? That was
5 32 A Clergyman's D aught er
the question When you have figured on the front page of Pippin's Weekly- m
scanty attire’-‘under the influence of alcohol’-ah, don’t let’s think of it again'
But when you have been plastered all over with horrible, dishonouring libels,
can you go back to a town of two thousand inhabitants where everybody knows
everybody else’s private history and talks about it all day long’
She did not know-could not decide At one moment it seemed to her that
the story of her elopement was so palpably absurd that no one could possibly
have believed it Mr War burton, for instance, could contradict lt-most
certainly would contradict it, for every possible reason But the next moment
she remembered that Mr Warburton had gone abroad, and unless this affair
had got into the continental newspapers, he might not even have heard of it,
and then she quailed again She knew what it means to have to live down a
scandal in a small country town The glances and furtive nudges when you
passed' The prying eyes following you down the street from behind curtained
windows' The knots of youths on the corners round Blifil-Gordon’s factory,
lewdly discussing you'
‘George 1 Say, George' J’a see that bit of stuff over there’ With fair ’air’’
‘What, the skmny one’ Yes ’Oo’s she’’
‘Rector’s daughter, she is Miss ’Are But, say' What you think she done two
years ago’ Done a bunk with a bloke old enough to bin ’er father Regular
properly went on the razzle with ’im m Paris' Never think it to look at ’er,
would you’’
‘Go on 1 ’
‘She did' Straight, she did It was m the papers and all Only ’e give ’er the
chuck three weeks afterwards, and she come back ’ome again as bold as brass
Nerve, eh’’
Yes, it would take some living down For years, for a decade it might be, they
would be talking about her like that And the worst of it was that the story in
Pippin's Weekly was probably a mere bowdlerized vestige of what Mrs
Sempnll had been saying in the town Naturally, Pippin's Weekly had not
wanted to commit itself too far But was there anything that would ever
restrain Mrs Sempnll’ Only the limits of her imagmation-and they were
almost as wide as the sky
One thing, however, reassured Dorothy, and that was the thought that her
father, at any rate, would do his best to shield her Of course, there would be
others as well It was not as though she were friendless The church
congregation, at least, knew her and trusted her, and the Mothers’ Union and
the Girl Guides and the women on her visiting list would never believe such
stories about her But it was her father who mattered most Almost any
situation is bearable if you have a home to go back to and a family who will
stand by you. With courage, and her father’s support, she might face things
out By the evemng she had decided that it would be perfectly all right to go
back to Knype Hill, though no doubt it would be disagreeable at first, and
when work was over for the day she ‘subbed’ a shilling, and went down to the
general shop in the village and bought a penny packet of notepaper Back m the
camp, sitting on the grass by the fire-no tables or chairs in the camp, of
333
A Clergyman's Daughter
course- she began to write with a stump of pencil
Dearest Father,- 1 can’t tell you how glad I am, after everything that has happened, to be able to
write to you again And I do hope you ’have not been too anxious about me or too worried by those
horrible stories in the newspapers I don’t know what you must have thought when I suddenly
disappeared like that and you didn’t hear from me for nearly a month But you see-’
How strange the pencil felt m her torn and stiffened fingers' She could only
write a large, sprawling hand like that of a child But she wrote a long letter,
explaining everything, and asking him to send her some clothes and two
pounds for her fare home Also, she asked him to write to her under an
assumed name she gave him- Ellen Millborough, after Millborough m
Suffolk It seemed a queer thing to have to do, to use a false name,
dishonest-criminal, almost But she dared not risk its being known m the
village, and perhaps m the camp as well, that she was Dorothy Hare, the
notorious ‘Rector’s Daughter 5
6
Once her mind was made up, Dorothy was pining to escape from the hop
camp On the following day she could hardly bring herself to go on with the
stupid work of picking, and the discomforts and bad food were intolerable now
that she had memories to compare them with She would have taken to flight
immediately if only she had had enough money to get her home The instant
her father’s letter with the two pounds arrived, she would say good-bye to the
Turles and take the tram for home, and breathe a sigh of relief to get there, m
spite of the ugly scandals that had got to be faced.
On the third day after writing she went down the village post office and asked
for her letter The postmistress, a woman with the face of a dachshund and a
bitter contempt for all hop-pickers, told her frostily that no letter had come
Dorothy was disappointed A pity-it must have been held up in the post
However, it didn’t matter; tomorrow would be soon enough-only another day
to wait
The next evemng she went again, quite certain that it would have arrived
this time Still no letter This time a misgiving assailed her; and on the fifth
evening, when there was yet agam no letter, the misgiving changed into a
horrible panic She bought another packet of notepaper and wrote an
enormous letter, using up the whole four sheets, explaining over and over
again what had happened and imploring her father not to leave her in such
suspense. Having posted it, she made up her mind that she would let a whole
week go by before calling at the post office again
This was Saturday, By Wednesday her resolve had broken down When the
hooter sounded for the midday interval she left her bin and hurried down to
334 A Clergyman’s Daughter
the post office-it was a mile and a half away, and it meant missing her dinner
Having got there she went shame-facedly up to the counter, almost afraid to
speak The dog-faced postmistress was sitting m her brass-barred cage at the
end of the counter, ticking figures m a long shaped account book She gave
Dorothy a brief nosy glance and went on with her work, taking no notice of
her
Something painful was happening m Dorothy’s diaphragm She was finding
it difficult to breathe, ‘Are there any letters for me 5 ’ she managed to say at last
‘Name? ’ said the postmistress, ticking away
‘Ellen Millborough ’
The postmistress turned her long dachshund nose over her shoulder for an
instant and glanced at the M partition of the Poste Restante letter-box
‘No,’ she said, turning back to her account book
In some manner Dorothy got herself outside and began to walk back
towards the hopfields, then halted A deadly feeling of emptiness at the pit of
her stomach, caused partly by hunger, made her too weak to walk
Her father’s silence could mean only one thing He believed Mrs Semprill’s
story-believed that she, Dorothy, had run away from home m disgraceful
circumstances and then told lies to excuse herself He was too angry and too
disgusted to write to her All he wanted was to get rid of her, drop all
communication with her, get her out of sight and out of mind, as a mere
scandal to be covered up and forgotten
She could not go home after this She dared not Now that she had seen what
her father’s attitude was, it had opened her eyes to the rashness of the thing she
had been contemplating Of course she could not go home 1 To slink back in
disgrace, to bring shame on her father’s house by coming there-ah,
impossible, utterly impossible 1 How could she even have thought of it?
What then? There was nothing for it but to go right away-nght away to
some place that was big enough to hide m London, perhaps Somewhere
where nobody knew her and the mere sight of her face or mention of her name
would not drag into the light a string of dirty memories
As she stood there the sound of bells floated towards her, from the village
church round the bend of the road, where the ringers were amusing themselves
by ringing ‘Abide with Me’, as one picks out a tune with one finger on the
piano But presently ‘Abide with Me’ gave way to the familiar Sunday-
morning jangle ‘Oh do leave my wife alone' She is so drunk she can’t get
home'’-the same peal that the bells of St Athelstan’s had been used to ring
three years ago before they were unswung The sound planted a spear of
homesickness m Dorothy’s heart, bringing back to her with momentary
vividness a medley of remembered things-the smell of the glue-pot in the
conservatory when she was making costumes for the school play, and the
chatter of starlings outside her bedroom window, interrupting her prayers
before Holy Communion, and Mrs Pither’s doleful voice chronicling the pains
m the backs of her legs, and the worries of the collapsing belfry and the shop-
debts and the bindweed in the peas-all the multitudinous, urgent details of a
life that had alternated between work and prayer
A Clergyman’s Daughter 335
Prayer' For a very short time, a minute perhaps, the thought arrested her
Prayer-m those days it had been the very source and centre of her life In
trouble or m happiness, it was to prayer that she had turned And she
realized-the first time that it had crossed her mmd-that she had not uttered a
prayer since leaving home, not even since her memory had come back to her
Moreover, she was aware that she had no longer the smallest impulse to pray
Mechanically, she began a whispered prayer, and stopped almost instantly, the
words were empty and futile Prayer, which had been the mainstay of her life,
had no meaning for her any longer She recorded this fact as she walked slowly
up the road, and she recorded it briefly, almost casually, as though it had been
something seen m passmg-a flower m the ditch or a bird crossing the
road- something noticed and then dismissed She had not even the time to
reflect upon what it might mean It was shouldered out of her mind by more
momentous things
It was of the future that she had got to be thinking now She was already
fairly clear m her mind as to what she must do When the hop-picking was at an
end she must go up to London, write to her father for money and her
clothes-for however angry he might be, she could not believe that he intended
to leave her utterly in the lurch-and then start looking for a job It was the
measure of her ignorance that those dreaded words ‘looking for a job’ sounded
hardly at all dreadful in her ears She knew herself strong and willmg-knew
that there were plenty of jobs that she was capable of doing She could be a
nursery governess, for instance-no, better, a housemaid or a parlourmaid
There were not many things in a house that she could not do better than most
servants, besides, the more menial her job, the easier it would be to keep her
past history secret
At any rate, her father’s house was closed to her, that was certain From now
on she had got to fend for herself On this decision, with only a very dim idea of
what it meant, she quickened her pace and got back to the fields m time for the
afternoon shift
The hop-picking season had not much longer to run In a week or
thereabouts Cairns’s would be closing down, and the cockneys would take the
hoppers’ tram to London, and the gypsies would catch their horses, pack their
caravans, and march northward to Lincolnshire, to scramble for jobs in the
potato fields As for the cockneys, they had had their bellyful of hop-picking by
this time They were pining to be back m dear old London, with Woolworths
and the fried-fish shop round the corner, and no more sleeping m straw and
frymg bacon in tin lids with your eyes weeping from wood smoke Hoppmg
was a holiday, but the kind of holiday that you were glad to see the last of You
came down cheering, but you went home cheering louder still and swearing
that you would never go hopping again-until next August, when you had
forgotten the cold nights and the bad pay and the damage to your hands, and
remembered only the blowsy afternoons m the sun and the boozmg of stone
pots of beer round the red camp fires at night
The mornings were growing bleak and Novembensh, grey skies, the first
leaves falling, and finches and starlings already flocking for the winter-
3j 6 A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
Dorothy had written yet again to her father, asking for money and some
clothes, he had left her letter unanswered, nor had anybody else written to her
Indeed, there was no one except her father who knew her present address, but
somehow she had hoped that Mr Warburton might write Her courage almost
failed her now, especially at nights m the wretched straw, when she lay awake
thinking of the vague and menacing future She picked her hops with a sort of
desperation, a sort of frenzy of energy, more aware each day that every handful
of hops meant another fraction of a farthing between herself and starvation
Deafie, her bin-mate, like herself, was picking against time, for it was the last
money he would earn till next year’s hopping season came round The figure
they aimed at was five shillings a day- thirty bushels- between the two of them,
but there was no day when they quite attained it
Deafie was a queer old man and a poor companion after Nobby, but not a
bad sort He was a ship’s steward by profession, but a tramp of many years’
i standmg, as deaf as a post and therefore something of a Mr F ’s aunt m
conversation He was also an exhibitionist, but quite harmless For hours
together he used to sing a little song that went ‘With my willy vn\\y~with my
willy willy’, and though he could not hear what he was singing it seemed to
cause him some kind of pleasure He had the hairiest ears Dorothy had ever
seen There were tufts like miniature Dundreary whiskers growing out of each
of his ears Every year Deafie came hop-picking at Cairns’s farm, saved up a
pound, and then spent a paradisiac week m a lodging-house in Newington
Butts before going back to the road This was the only week in the year when
he slept in what could be called, except by courtesy, a bed
The picking came to an end on 28 September There were several fields still
unpicked, but they were poor hops and at the last moment Mr Cairns decided
to ‘let them blow’ Set number 19 finished their last field at two in the
afternoon, and the little gypsy foreman swarmed up the poles and retrieved the
derelict bunches, and the measurer carted the last hops away As he
disappeared there was a sudden shout of ‘Put ’em in the bins 1 ’ and Dorothy
saw six men bearing down upon her with a fiendish expression on their faces,
and all the women m the set scattermg and running Before she could collect
her wits to escape the men had seized her, laid her at full length in a bin and
swung her violently from side to side. Then she was dragged out and kissed by
a young gypsy smelling of onions She struggled at first, but she saw the same
thing being done to the other women m the set, so she submitted It appeared
that putting the women in the bms was an invariable custom on the last day of
picking There were great domgs in the camp that night, and not much sleep
for anybody Long after midnight Dorothy found herself moving with a ring of
people about a mighty fire, one hand clasped by a rosy butcher-boy and the
other by a very drunk old woman in a Scotch bonnet out of a cracker, to the
tune pf ‘Auld Lang Syne’,
In the morning they went up to the farm to draw their money, and Dorothy
drew one pound and fourpence, and earned another fivepence by adding up
their tally books for people who could not read or write The cockney pickers
paid you a penny for this job; the gypsies paid you only in flattery Then
A Clergyman's Daughter 3 37
Dorothy set out for West Ackworth station, four miles away, together with the
Turles, Mr Turle carrying the tin trunk, Mrs Turle carrying the baby, the
other children carrying various odds and ends, and Dorothy wheeling the
perambulator which held the Turles’ entire stock of crockery, and which had
two circular wheels and two elliptical
They got to the station about midday, the hoppers’ train was due to start at
one, and it arrived at two and started at a quarter past three After a journey of
incredible slowness, zigzagging all over Kent to pick up a dozen hop-pickers
here and half a dozen there, going back on its tracks over and over again and
backing into sidings to let other trains pass-taking, in fact, six hours to do
thirty-five miles-it landed them m London a little after nine at night
7
Dorothy slept that night with the Turles They had grown so fond of her that
they would have given her shelter for a week or a fortnight if she had been
willing to impose on their hospitality Their two rooms (they lived in a
tenement house not far from Tower Bridge Road) were a tight fit for seven
people including children, but they made her a bed of sorts on the floor out of
two rag mats, an old cushion and an overcoat
In the morning she said good-bye to the Turles and thanked them for all
their kindness towards her, and then went straight to Bermondsey public baths
and washed off the accumulated dirt of five weeks After that she set out to look
for a lodging, having m her possession sixteen and eightpence m cash, and the
clothes she stood up in She had darned and cleaned her clothes as best she
could, and being black they did not show the dirt quite as badly as they might
have done From the knees down she was now passably respectable On the last
day of picking a ‘home picker’ m the next set, named Mrs Killfrew, had
presented her with a good pair of shoes that had been her daughter’s, and a pair
of woollen stockings
It was not until the evemng that Dorothy managed to find herself a room
For something like ten hours she was wandering up and down, from
Bermondsey into Southwark, from Southwark into Lambeth, through
labyrinthine streets where snotty-nosed children played at hop-scotch on
pavements homble with banana skins and decaying cabbage leaves. At every
house she tried it was the same story-the landlady refused point-blank to take
her in One after another a succession of hostile women, standing in then
doorways as defensively as though she had been a motor bandit or a
government inspector, looked her up and down, said briefly, ‘We don’t take
single girls,’ and shut the door m her face. She did not know it, of course, but
the very took of her was enough to rouse any respectable landlady’s suspicions
3j8 A Clergyman's Daughter
Her stained and ragged clothes they might possibly have put up with, but the
fact that she had no luggage damned her from the start A single girl with no
luggage is invariably a bad lot-this is the first and greatest of the apophthegms
of the London landlady
At about seven o’clock, too tired to stand on her feet any longer, she
ventured into a filthy, flyblown little caf i near the Old Vic theatre and asked
for a cup of tea The proprietress, getting into conversation with her and
learning that she wanted a room, advised her to ‘try at Mary’s, in Wellmgs
Court, jest orff the Cut’ ‘Mary’, it appeared, was not particular and would let a
room to anybody who could pay Her proper name was Mrs Sawyer, but the
boys all called her Mary
Dorothy found Wellmgs Court with some difficulty You went along
Lambeth Cut till you got to a Jew clothes-shop called Knockout Trousers Ltd,
then you turned up a narrow alley, and then turned to your left again up
another alley so narrow that its grimy plaster walls almost brushed you as you
went In the plaster, persevering boys had cut the word — innumerable times
and too deeply to be erased At the far end of the alley you found yourself m a
small court where four tall narrow houses with iron staircases stood facing one
another
Dorothy made inquiries and found ‘Mary’ in a subterranean den beneath
one of the houses She was a drabby old creature with remarkably thm hair and
face so emaciated that it looked like a rouged and powdered skull Her voice
was cracked, shrewish, and nevertheless ineffably dreary She asked Dorothy
no questions, and indeed scarcely even looked at her, but simply demanded ten
shillings and then said m her ugly voice
‘Twenty-nine Third floor Go up be the back stairs ’
Apparently the back stairs were those inside the house Dorothy went up the
dark, spiral staircase, between sweating walls, in a smell of old overcoats,
dishwater and slops As she reached the second floor there was a loud squeal of
laughter, and two rowdy-looking girls came out of one of the rooms and stared
at her for a moment They looked young, their faces being quite hidden under
rouge and pink powder, and their lips painted scarlet as geranium petals But
amid the pink powder their china-blue eyes were tired and old; and that was
somehow horrible, because it reminded you of a girl’s mask with an old
woman’s face behind it The taller of the two greeted Dorothy
‘’Ullo, dearie 1 ’
‘Hullo 1 ’
‘You new ’ere? Which room you kipping in? ’
‘Number twenty-nine ’
‘God, ain’t that a bloody dungeon to put you in' You going out tonight? ’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Dorothy, privately a little astomshed at the
question, ‘I’m too tired ’
‘Thought you wasn’t, when I saw you ’adn’t dolled up But, say 1 dearie, you
ain’t on the beach, are you? Not spoiling the ship for a ’aporth of tar? Because
fnnstance if you Want the lend of a lipstick, you only got to say the word
We’re all chums ’ere, you know ’
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 339
‘Oh No, thank you/ said Dorothy, taken aback
‘Oh, well 1 Time Dons and me was moving Got a ’portant business
engagement m Leicester Square 5 Here she nudged the other girl with her hip,
and both of them sniggered m a silly mirthless manner ‘But, say ! ’ added the
taller girl confidentially, ‘ain’t it a bloody treat to ’ave a good night’s kip all
alone once m a way^ Wish I could All on your Jack Jones with no bloody great
man’s feet shoving you about ’S all right when you can afford it, eh^’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy, feeling that this answer was expected of her, and with
only a very vague notion of what the other was talking about
‘Well, ta ta, dearie 1 Sleep tight And jes’ look out for the smash and grab
raiders ’bout ’ar-parse onei’
When the two girls had skipped downstairs with another of their
meaningless squeals of laughter, Dorothy found her way to room number 29
and opened the door A cold, evil smell met her The room measured about
eight feet each way, and was very dark The furmture was simple. In the
middle of the room, a narrow iron bedstead with a ragged coverlet and greyish
sheets, agamst the wall, a packing case with a tin basin and an empty whisky
bottle intended for water, tacked over the bed, a photograph of Bebe Daniels
torn out of Film Fun
The sheets were not only dirty, but damp Dorothy got into the bed, but she
had only undressed to her chemise, or what was left of her chemise, her
underclothes by this time being almost entirely in rums, she could not bring
herself to lay her bare body between those nauseous sheets And once m bed,
though she was aching from head to foot with fatigue, she could not sleep She
was unnerved and full of forebodings The atmosphere of this vile place
brought home to her more vividly than before the fact that she was helpless
and friendless and had only six shillings between herself and the streets
Moreover, as the night wore on the house grew noisier and noisier The walls
were so thin that you could hear everything that was happening There were
bursts of shrill idiotic laughter, hoarse male voices singing, a gramophone
drawling out limericks, noisy kisses, strange deathlike groans, and once or
twice the violent rattling of an iron bed T owards midnight the noises began to
form themselves into a rhythm m Dorothy’s bram, and she fell lightly and
unrestfully asleep She was woken about a minute later, as it seemed, by her
door being flung open, and two dimly seen female shapes rushed in, tore every
scrap of clothing from her bed except the sheets, and rushed out again. There
was a chronic shortage of blankets at ‘Mary’s’, and the only way of getting
enough of them was to rob somebody else’s bed Hence the term ’smash and
grab raiders’
In the morning, half an hour before opening time, Dorothy went to the
nearest public library to look at the advertisements in the newspapers Already
a score of vaguely mangy-lookmg people were prowling up and down, and the
number swelled by ones and twos till there were no less than sixty Presently
the doors of the library opened, and in they all surged, racing for a board at the
other end of the reading-room where the ‘Situations Vacant’ columns from
various newspapers had been cut out . and pinned up A*|d in the wake of the
A Clergyman's Daughter
job-hunters came poor old bundles of rags, men and women both. , who had
spent the night in the streets and came to the library to sleep They came
shambling m behind the others, flopped down with grunts of relief at the
nearest table, and pulled the nearest periodical towards them, it might be the
Free Church Messenger , it might be the Vegetarian Sentmel-it didn’t matter
what it was, but you couldn’t stay m the library unless you pretended to be
reading They opened their papers, and m the same instant fell asleep, with
their chins on their breasts And the attendant walked round prodding them m
turn like a stoker poking a succession of fires, and they grunted and woke up as
he prodded them, and then fell asleep again the instant he had passed
Meanwhile a battle was raging round the advertisement board, everybody
struggling to get to the front Two young men in blue overalls came running
up behmd the others, and one of them put his head down and fought his way
through the crowd as though it had been a football scrum In a moment he was
at the board He turned to his companion £ ’Ere we are, Joe- 1 got it'
“Mechanics wanted-Locke’s Garage, Camden Town ” C’m on out of it 1 ’ He
fought his way out again, and both of them scooted for the door They were
going to Camden Town as fast as their legs would carry them And at this
moment, m every public library in London, mechanics out of work were
reading that identical notice and starting on the race for the job, which in all
probability had already been given to someone who could afford to buy a paper
for himself and had seen the notice at six in the morning
Dorothy managed to get to the board at last, and made a note of some of the
addresses where ‘cook generals’ were wanted There were plenty to choose
from-indeed, half the ladies m London seemed to be crying out for strong
capable general servants With a list of twenty addresses m her pocket, and
having had a breakfast of bread and margarine and tea which cost her
threepence, Dorothy set out to look for a job, not unhopefully
She was too ignorant as yet to know that her chances of finding work
unaided were practically ml, but the next four days gradually enlightened her
During those four days she applied for eighteen jobs, and sent written
applications for four others She trudged enormous distances all through the
southern suburbs: Clapham, Brixton, Dulwich, Penge, Sydenham, Becken-
ham, Norwood-even as far as Croydon on one occasion She was haled into
neat suburban drawing-rooms and interviewed by women of every
conceivable type-large, chubby, bullying women, thm, acid, catty women,
alert frigid women m gold pince-nez , vague rambling women who looked as
though they practised vegetarianism or attended spiritualist stances And one
and all, fat or thm, chilly or motherly, they reacted to her m precisely the same
way They simply looked her over, heard her speak, stared inquisitively, asked
her a dozen embarrassing and impertinent questions, and then turned her
down.
Any experienced person could have told her how it would be In her
circumstances it was not to be expected that anyone would take the risk of
employing her. Her ragged clothes and her lack of references were against her,
and her educated accent, which she did not know how to disguise, wrecked
A Clergyman's Daughter 341
whatever chances she might have had The tramps and cockney hop-pickers
had not noticed hei accent, but the suburban housewives noticed it quickly
enough, and it scared them in just the same way as the fact that she had no
luggage had scared the landladies The moment they had heard her speak, and
spotted her for a gentlewoman, the game was up She grew quite used to the
startled, mystified look that came over their faces as soon as she opened her
mouth-the prying, feminine glance from her face to her damaged hands, and
from those to the darns m her skirt Some of the women asked her outright
what a girl of her class was doing seeking work as a servant They sniffed, no
doubt, that she had ‘been m trouble 5 -that is, had an illegitimate baby-and
after probing her with their questions they got rid of her as quickly as possible
As soon as she had an address to give Dorothy had written to her father, and
when on the third day no answer came, she wrote again, despairingly this
time-it was her fifth letter, and four had gone unanswered-telling him that
she must starve if he did not send her money at once There was just time for
her to get an answer before her week at ‘Mary’s 9 was up and she was thrown
out for not paying her rent
Meanwhile, she continued the useless search for work, while her money
dwindled at the rate of a shilling a day-a sum just sufficient to keep her alive
while leaving her chronically hungry She had almost given up the hope that
her father would do anything to help her And strangely enough her first panic
had died down, as she grew hungrier and the chances of getting a job grew
remoter, into a species of miserable apathy She suffered, but she was not
greatly afraid The sub-world into which she was descending seemed less
terrible now that it was nearer
The autumn weather, though fine, was growing colder Each day the sun,
fighting his losing battle against the winter, struggled a little later through the
mist to dye the house-fronts with pale aquarelle colours Dorothy was m the
streets all day, or in the public library, only going back to ‘Mary’s’ to sleep, and
then taking the precaution of dragging her bed across the door She had
grasped by this time that ‘Mary’s’ was-not actually a brothel, for there is
hardly such a thing m London, but a well-known refuge of prostitutes It was
for that reason that you paid ten shillings a week for a kennel not worth five
Old ‘Mary’ (she was not the proprietress of the house, merely the manageress)
had been a prostitute herself m her day, and looked it Living in such a place
damned you even m the eyes of Lambeth Cut Women sniffed when you
passed them, men took an offensive interest m you The Jew on the comer, the
owner of Knockout Trousers Ltd, was the worst of all He was a solid young
man of about thirty, with bulging red cheeks and curly black hair like
astrakhan For twelve hours a day he stood on the pavement roaring with
brazen lungs that you couldn’t get a cheaper pair of trousers in London, and
obstructing the passers-by You had only to halt for a fraction of a second, and
he seized you by the arm and bundled you inside the shop by mam force. Once
he got you there his manner became positively threatening If you said
anything disparaging about his trousers he offered to fight, and weak-minded
people bought pairs of trousers m sheer physical terror But busy though he
342 A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
was, he kept a sharp eye open for the ‘birds’, as he called them, and Dorothy
appeared to fascinate him beyond all other ‘birds’ He had grasped that she was
not a prostitute, but living at ‘Mary’s’, she must-so he reasoned-be on the
very verge of becoming one The thought made his mouth water When he saw
her coming down the alley he would post himself at the corner, with his
massive chest well displayed and one black lecherous eye turned inquiringly
upon her (‘Are you ready to begin yet 5 ’ his eye seemed to be saying), and, as
she passed, give her a discreet pinch on the backside
On the last morning of her week at ‘Mary’s’, Dorothy went downstairs and
looked, with only a faint flicker of hope, at the slate m the hallway where the
names of people for whom there were letters were chalked up There was no
letter for ‘Ellen Millborough’ That settled it, there was nothing left to do
except to walk out into the street It did not occur to her to do as every other
woman in the house would have done-that is, pitch a hard-up tale and try to
cadge another mght’s lodging rent free She simply walked out of the house,
and had not even the nerve to tell ‘Mary’ that she was going
She had no plan, absolutely no plan whatever Except for half an hour at
noon when she went out to spend threepence out of her last fourpence on bread
and margarine and tea, she passed the entire day m the public library, reading
weekly papers In the morning she read the Barber’s Record , and in the
afternoon Cage Birds They were the only papers she could get hold of, for
there were always so many idlers in the library that you had to scramble to get
hold of a paper at all She read them from cover to cover, even the
advertisements She pored for hours together over such technicalities as How
to strop French Razors, Why the Electric Hairbrush is Unhygienic, Do
Budgies thrive on Rapeseed 5 It was the only occupation that she felt equal to
She was in a strange lethargic state in which it was easier to interest herself in
How to strop French Razors than m her own desperate plight All fear had left
her Of the future she was utterly unable to thmk, even so far ahead as tonight
she could barely see There was a night m the streets ahead of her, that was all
she knew, and even about that she only vaguely cared Meanwhile there were
Cage Birds and the Barber’s Record , and they were, strangely, absorbingly
interestmg
At nine o’clock the attendant came round with a long hooked pole and
turned out the gaslights, the library was closed Dorothy turned to the left, up
the Waterloo Road, towards the river On the iron footbridge she halted for a
moment The mght wind was blowing Deep banks of mist, like dunes, were
rising from the river, and, as the wind caught them, swirling north-eastward
across the town A swirl of mist enveloped Dorothy, penetrating her thm
clothes and making her shudder with a sudden foretaste of the night’s cold
She walked on and arrived, by the process of gravitation that draws all roofless
people to the same spot, at Trafalgar Square
CHAPTER 3
I
[scene Trafalgar Square Dimly visible through the mist , a dozen people,
Dorothy among them, are grouped about one of the benches near the north
parapet ]
Charlie [singing] ’Ail Mary, ’ail Mary, ’a-i 1 Ma-ary - [Big Ben strikes ten ]
snouter [mimicking the noise ] Ding dong, dmg dong' Shut your — noise, can’t
you? Seven more hours of it on this — square before we get the chance of a
setdown and a bit of sleep 1 Gripes'
MR tallboys [to himself] Non sum quahs eram bom sub regno Edwardi In the
days of my innocence, before the Devil earned me up into a high place and
dropped me into the Sunday newspapers- that is to say when I was Rector of
Little Fawley-cum-Dewsbury
deafie [singing] With my willy willy, with my willy willy —
mrs wayne Ah, dearie, as soon as I set eyes on you I knew as you was a lady
born and bred You and me’ve known what it is to come down m the world,
haven’t we, dearie? It ain’t the same for us as what it is for some of these
others here
Charlie [singing]. ’Ail Mary, ’ail Mary, ’a-il Ma-ary, full of grace'
mrs bendigo Calls himself a bloody husband, does he? Four pound a week m
Covent Garden and ’is wife doing a starry m the bloody Square' Husband!
mr tallboys [to himself] Happy days, happy days' My ivied church under the
sheltering hillside-my red-tiled Rectory slumbering among Elizabethan
yews' My library, my vinery, my cook, house-parlourmaid and groom-
gardener' My cash in the bank, my name in Crockford' My black suit of
irreproachable cut, my collar back to front, my watered silk cassock m the
church precincts
mrs wayne Of course the one thing I do thank God for, dearie, is that my poor
dear mother never lived to see this day Because if she ever had of lived to see
the day when her eldest daughter-as was brought up, mind you, with no
expense spared and milk straight from the cow .
mrs bendigo Husband ’
ginger Come on, less ’ave a drum of tea while we got the chance Last we’ll
get tonight-coffee shop shuts at ’ar-parse ten
the kike Oh Jesus' This bloody cold’s gonna kill me' I ain’t got nothing on
under my trousers Oh Je-e-e-eese'
Charlie [singing] ’Ail Mary, ’ail Mary-
snouter* Fourpence!
I
As the alarm clock on the chest of drawers exploded like a horrid little bomb of
bell metal, Dorothy, wrenched from the depths of some complex, troubling
dream, awoke with a start and lay on her back looking mto the darkness m
extreme exhaustion
The alarm clock continued its nagging, feminine clamour, which would go
on for five minutes or thereabouts if you did not stop it Dorothy was aching
from head to foot, and an insidious and contemptible self-pity, which usually
seized upon her when it was time to get up m the morning, caused her to bury
her head under the bedclothes and try to shut the hateful noise out of her ears
She struggled against her fatigue, however, and, according to her custom,
exhorted herself sharply in the second person plural Come on, Dorothy, up
you get 1 No snoozing, please 1 Proverbs vi, 9 Then she remembered that if the
noise went on any longer it would wake her father, and with a hurried
movement she bounded out of bed, seized the clock from the chest of drawers,
and turned off the alarm It was kept on the chest of drawers precisely in order
that she should have to get out of bed to . silence it Still m darkness, she knelt
down at her bedside and repeated the Lord’s Prayer, but rather distractedly,
her feet being troubled by the cold
It was just half past five, and coldish for an August morning Dorothy (her
name was Dorothy Hare, and she was the only child of the Reverend Charles
Hare, Rector of St Athelstan’s, Knype Hill, Suffolk) put on her aged
flannelette dressing-gown and felt her way downstairs There was a chill
morning smell of dust, damp plaster, and the fried dabs from yesterday’s
supper, and from either side of the passage on the second floor she could hear
the antiphonal snoring of her father and of Ellen, the maid of all work With
care-for the kitchen table had a nasty trick of reaching out of the darkness and
banging you on the hip-bone-Dorothy felt her way into the kitchen, lighted
the candle on the mantelpiece, and, still aching with fatigue, knelt down and
raked the ashes out of the range
The kitchen fire was a ‘beast’ to light The chimney was crooked and there-
fore perpetually half choked, and the fire, before it would light, expected to be
dosed with a cupful of kerosene, like a drunkard’s morning nip of gin Having
set the kettle to boil for her father’s shaving-water, Dorothy went upstairs and
turned on her bath. Ellen was still snoring, with heavy youthful snores She
was a good hard-working servant once she was awake, but she was one of
those girls whom the Devil and all his angels cannot get out of bed before
A Clergyman’ s Daughter
256
seven in the morning
Dorothy filled the bath as slowly as possible-the splashing always woke her
father if she turned on the tap too fast- and stood for a moment regarding the
pale, unappetizing pool of water Her body had gone goose-flesh all over She
detested cold baths, it was for that very reason that she made it a rule to take all
her baths cold from April to November Putting a tentative hand into the
water-and it was horribly cold- she drove herself forward with her usual
exhortations Come on, Dorothy! i n you go' No funking, please' Then she
stepped resolutely into the bath, sat down and let the icy girdle of water
slide up her body and immerse her all except her hair, which she had twisted
up behind her head The next moment she came to the surface gasping and
wriggling, and had no sooner got her breath back than she remembered her
‘memo list 5 , which she had brought down in her dressing-gown pocket and
intended to read She reached out for it, and, leaning over the side of the bath,
waist deep m icy water, read through the ‘memo list 5 by the light of the candle
on the chair
It ran
70c HC
Mrs T baby? Must visit
Breakfast Bacon Must ask father money (P)
Ask Ellen what stuff kitchen father’s tonic nb to ask about stuff for curtains
at Solepipe’s
Visiting call on Mrs P cutting from Daily M angelica tea good for
rheumatism Mrs L’s cornplaster
12 oc Rehearsal Charles I nb to order £lb glue 1 pot aluminium paint
Dinner (crossed out) Luncheon ?
Take round Parish Mag nb Mrs F owes 3/6d
4 30 pm Mothers 5 TJ tea don’t forget 2\ yards casement cloth
Flowers for church nb i tm Brasso
Supper Scrambled eggs
Type Father’s sermon what about new ribbon typewriter?
nb to fork between peas bindweed awful
Dorothy got out of her bath, and as she dried herself with a towel hardly
bigger than a table napkm-they could never afford decent-sized towels at the
Rectory-her hair came unpinned and fell down over her collar-bones in two
heavy strands It was thick, fine, exceedingly pale hair, and it was perhaps as
well that her father had forbidden her to bob it, for it was her only positive
beauty. For the rest, she was a girl of middle height, rather thin, but strong and
shapely, and her face was her weak point It was a thin, blonde, unremarkable
kind of face, with pale eyes and a nose just a shade too long, if you looked
closely you could see crow’s feet round the eyes, and the mouth, when it was in
repose, looked tired. Not definitely a spmstensh face as yet, but it certainly
would be so in a few years’ time Nevertheless, strangers commonly took her to
be several years younger than her real age (she was not quite twenty-eight)
A Clergymans Daughter 257
because of the expression of almost childish earnestness in her eyes Her left
forearm was spotted with tiny red marks like insect bites
Dorothy put on her nightdress again and cleaned her teeth-plam water, of
course, better not to use toothpaste before H C After all, either you are fasting
or you aren’t The R C s are quite right there-and, even as she did so,
suddenly faltered and stopped She put her toothbrush down A deadly pang,
an actual physical pang, had gone through her viscera
She had remembered, with the ugly shock with which one remembers
something disagreeable for the first time m the morning, the bill at Cargill’s,
the butcher’s, which had been owing for seven months That dreadful bill— it
might be nineteen pounds or even twenty, and there was hardly the remotest
hope of paying it- was one of the chief torments of her life At all hours of the
night or day it was waiting just round the corner of her consciousness, ready to
spring upon her and agonize her, and with it came the memory of a score of
lesser bills, mounting up to a figure of which she dared not even think Almost
involuntarily she began to pray, ‘Please God, let not Cargill send in his bill
again today 1 ’ but the next moment she decided that this prayer was worldly
and blasphemous, and she asked forgiveness for it Then she put on her
dressing-gown and ran down to the kitchen in hopes of putting the bill out of
mind
The fire had gone out, as usual Dorothy relaid it, dirtying her hands with
coal-dust, dosed it afresh with kerosene and hung about anxiously until the
kettle boiled Father expected his shaving-water to be ready at a quarter past
six Just seven minutes late, Dorothy took the can upstairs and knocked at her
father’s door
‘Come m, come in 1 ’ said a muffled, irritable voice
The room, heavily curtained, was stuffy, with a masculine smell The Rector
had lighted the candle on his bed-table, and was lying on his side, looking at his
gold watch, which he had just drawn from beneath his pillow His hair was as
white and thick as thistledown One dark bright eye glanced irritably over his
shoulder at Dorothy
‘Good morning, father ’
‘I do wish, Dorothy,’ said the Rector mdistinctly-his voice always sounded
muffled and senile until he put his false teeth m-‘yau would make some effort
to get Ellen out of bed m the mornings Or else be a little more punctual
yourself ’
‘I’m so sorry. Father The kitchen fire kept going out ’
‘Very well 1 Put it down on the dressing-table Put it down and draw those
curtains ’
It was daylight now, but a dull, clouded morning Dorothy hastened up to
her room and dressed herself with the lightning speed which she found neces-
sary six mornings out of seven There was only a tiny square of mirror m the
room, and even that she did not use She simply hung her gold cross about her
neck-plain gold cross, no crucifixes, please'-twisted her hair into a knot
behind, stuck a number of hairpins rather sketchily into it, and threw her
clothes (grey jersey, threadbare Irish tweed epat and skirt, stockings not quite
2 $8 A Clergyman's Daughter
matching the coat and skirt, and much- worn brown shoes) on to herself in the
space of about three minutes She had got to e do out’ the dmmg-room and her
father’s study before church, besides saying her prayers m preparation for
Holy Communion, which took her not less than twenty minutes
When she wheeled her bicycle out of the front gate the morning was still
overcast, and the grass sodden with heavy dew Through the mist that
wreathed the hillside St Athelstan’s Church loomed dimly, like a leaden
sphinx, its single bell tolling funereally boom! boom' boom' Only one of the
bells was now m active use, the other seven had been unswung from their cage
and had lam silent these three years past, slowly splintering the floor of the
belfry beneath their weight In the distance, from the mists below, you could
hear the offensive clatter of the bell in the R C church -a nasty, cheap, tinny
little thing which the Rector of St Athelstan’s used to compare with a muffin-
bell
Dorothy mounted her bicycle and rode swiftly up the hill, leaning over her
handlebars The bridge of her thin nose was pink in the morning cold A
redshank whistled overhead, invisible against the clouded sky Early in the
morning my song shall rise to Thee' Dorothy propped her bicycle against the
lychgate, and, finding her hands still grey with coal-dust, knelt down and
scrubbed them clean m the long wet grass between the graves Then the bell
stopped ringing, and she jumped up and hastened into church, just as
Proggett, the sexton, in ragged cassock and vast labourer’s boots, was
clumping up the aisle to take his place at the side altar
The church was very cold, with a scent of candle-wax and ancient dust It
was a large church, much too large for its congregation, and ruinous and more
than half empty The three narrow islands of pews stretched barely half-way
down the nave, and beyond them were great wastes of bare stone floor in which
a few worn inscriptions marked the sites of ancient graves The roof over the
chancel was sagging visibly, beside the Church Expenses box two fragments of
riddled beam explained mutely that this was due to that mortal foe of
Christendom, the death-watch beetle The light filtered, pale-coloured,
through windows of anaemic glass Through the open south door you could
see a ragged cypress and the boughs of a lime-tree, greyish m the sunless air
and swaying faintly
As usual, there was only one other communicant-old Miss Mayfill, of The
Grange The attendance at Holy Communion was so bad that the Rector could
not even get any boys to serve him, except on Sunday mornings, when the boys
liked showmg off m front of the congregation m their cassocks and surplices
Dorothy went into the pew behind Miss Mayfill, and, m penance for some sm
of yesterday, pushed away the hassock and knelt on the bare stones The
service was beginning The Rector, m cassock and short linen surplice, was
reciting the prayers in a swift practised voice, clear enough now that his teeth
were in, and curiously ungemal In his fastidious, aged face, pale as a silver
com, there was an expression of aloofness, almost of contempt ‘This is a valid
sacrament,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘and it is my duty to administer it to you
But remember that I am only your priest, not your friend As a human being I
A Clergyman's Daughter 259
dislike you and despise you ’ Proggett, the sexton, a man of forty with curly
grey hair and a red, harassed face, stood patiently by, uncomprehending but
reverent, fiddling with the little communion bell which was lost m his huge red
hands
Dorothy pressed her fingers against her eyes She had not yet succeeded m
concentrating her thoughts-mdeed, the memory of Cargill’s bill was still
worrying her intermittently The prayers, which she knew by heart, were
flowing through her head unheeded She raised her eyes for a moment, and
they began immediately to stray First upwards, to the headless roof-angels on
whose necks you could still see the sawcuts of the Puritan soldiers, then back
again, to Miss Mayfill’s black, quasi-pork-pie hat and tremulous jet ear-rings
Miss Mayfill wore a long musty black overcoat, with a little collar of greasy-
lookmg astrakhan, which had been the same ever since Dorothy could
remember It was of some very peculiar stuff, like watered silk but coarser,
with rivulets of black piping wandering all over it in no discoverable pattern It
might even have been that legendary and proverbial substance, black
bombazine Miss Mayfill was very old, so old that no one remembered her as
anything but an old woman A faint scent radiated from her-an ethereal scent,
analysable as eau-de-Cologne, mothballs, and a sub-flavour of gin
Dorothy drew a long glass-headed pm from the lapel of her coat, and
furtively, under cover of Miss Mayfill’s back, pressed the point against her
forearm Her flesh tingled apprehensively She made it a rule, whenever she
caught herself not attending to her prayers, to prick her arm hard enough to
make blood come It was her chosen form of self-discipline, her guard against
irreverence and sacrilegious thoughts
With the pm poised in readiness she managed for several moments to pray
more collectedly Her father had turned one dark eye disapprovingly upon
Miss Mayfill, who was crossing herself at intervals, a practice he disliked A
starling chattered outside With a shock Dorothy discovered that she was
looking vamgloriously at the pleats of her father’s surplice, which she herself
had sewn two years ago She set her teeth and drove the pm an eighth of an
inch into her arm
They were kneeling again It was the General Confession Dorothy recalled
her eyfes-- wandering, alasl yet again, this time to the stained-glass window on
her right, designed by Sir Warde Tooke, ar a, in 1851 and representing St
Athelstan’s welcome at the gate of Heaven by Gabriel and a legion of angels all
remarkably like one another and the Prince Consort-and pressed the pinpoint
against a different part of her arm She began to meditate conscientiously upon
the meaning of each phrase of the prayer, and so brought her mind back to a
more attentive state But even so she was all but obliged to use the pm again
when Proggett tinkled the bell m the middle of ‘Therefore with Angels and
Archangels’ -being visited, as always, by a dreadful temptation to begin
laughing at that passage. It was because of a story her father had told her once,
of how when he was a little boy, and serving the priest at the altar, the
communion bell had a screw-on dapper, which had come loose; and so the
priest had said ‘Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with aU the
260 A Clergyman' s Daughter
company of Heaven, we laud and magnify Thy glorious name, evermore
praising Thee, and saying. Screw it up, you little fat-head, screw it up'*
As the Rector finished the consecration Miss Mayfill began to struggle to her
feet with extreme difficulty and slowness, like some disjointed wooden
creature picking itself up by sections, and disengaging at each movement a
powerful whiff of mothballs There was an extraordinary creaking sound-
from her stays, presumably, but it was a noise as of bones grating against one
another You could have imagined that there was only a dry skeleton inside
that black overcoat
Dorothy remained on her feet a moment longer Miss Mayfill was creeping
towards the altar with slow, tottering steps She could barely walk, but she
took bitter offence if you offered to help her In her ancient, bloodless face her
mouth was surprisingly large, loose, and wet The underlip, pendulous with
age, slobbered forward, exposing a strip of gum and a row of false teeth as
yellow as the keys of an old piano On the upper lip was a fringe of dark, dewy
moustache It was not an appetizing mouth, not the kind of mouth that you
would like to see drinking out of your cup Suddenly, spontaneously, as
though the Devil himself had put it there, the prayer slipped from Dorothy’s
lips O God, let me not have to take the chalice after Miss Mayfill 1
The next moment, in self-horror, she grasped the meaning of what she had
said, and wished that she had bitten her tongue m two rather than utter that
deadly blasphemy upon the altar steps She drew the pm again from her lapel
and drove it into her arm so hard that it was all she could do to suppress a cry of
pam Then she stepped to the altar and knelt down meekly on Miss Mayfill’ s
left, so as to make quite sure of taking the chalice after her
Kneeling, with head bent and hands clasped against her knees, she set
herself swiftly to pray for forgiveness before her father should reach her with
the wafer But the current of her thoughts had been broken Suddenly it was
quite useless attempting to pray, her lips moved, but there was neither heart
nor meaning in her prayers She could hear Proggett’s boots shuffling and her
father’s clear low voice murmuring ‘Take and eat’, she could see the worn strip
of red carpet beneath her knees, she could smell dust and eau-de-Cologne and
mothballs, but of the Body and Blood of Christ, of the purpose for which she
had come here, she was as though deprived of the power to think A deadly
blankness had descended upon her mind It seemed to her that actually she
could not pray She struggled, collected her thoughts, uttered mechanically the
opening phrases of a prayer, but they were useless, meaningless-nothing but
the dead shells of words Her father was holding the wafer before her in his
shapely, aged hand He held it between finger and thumb, fastidiously,
somehow distastefully, as though it had been a spoon of medicine His eye was
upon Miss Mayfill, who was doubling herself up like a geometrid caterpillar,
with many creakmgs and crossing herself so elaborately that one might have
imagined that she was sketching a series of braid frogs on the front of her coat
For several seconds Dorothy hesitated and did not take the wafer She dared
not take it Better, far better to step down from the altar than to accept the
sacrament with such chaos m her heart*
A Clergyman’s Daughter 261
Then it happened that she glanced sidelong, through the open south door A
momentary spear of sunlight had pierced the clouds It struck downwards
through the leaves of the limes, and a spray of leaves m the doorway gleamed
with a transient, matchless green, greener than jade or emerald or Atlantic
waters It was as though some jewel of unimaginable splendour had flashed for
an instant, filling the doorway with green light, and then faded A flood of joy
ran through Dorothy’s heart The flash of living colour had brought back to
her, by a process deeper than reason, her peace of mmd, her love of God, her
power to worship Somehow, because of the greenness of the leaves, it was
again possible to pray O all ye green things upon the earth, praise ye the Lord'
She began to pray, ardently, joyfully, thankfully The wafer melted upon her
tongue She took the chalice from her father, and tasted with repulsion, even
with an added joy in this small act of self-abasement, the wet imprint of Miss
Mayfill’s lips on its silver rim
2
St Athelstan’s Church stood at the highest point of Knype Hill, and if you
chose to climb the tower you could see ten miles or so across the surrounding
country Not that there was anything worth looking at-only the low, barely
undulating East Anglian landscape, intolerably dull in summer, but re-
deemed m winter by the recurring patterns of the elms, naked and fanshaped
against leaden skies
Immediately below you lay the town, with the High Street running east and
west and dividing unequally The southern section of the town was the
ancient, agricultural, and respectable section On the northern side were the
buildings of the Blifil-Gordon sugar-beet refinery, and all round and leading
up to them were higgledy-piggledly rows of vile yellow brick cottages, mostly
inhabited by the employees of the factory The factory employees, who made
up more than half of the town’s two thousand inhabitants, were newcomers,
townfolk, and godless almost to a man
The two pivots, or foci, about which the social life of the town moved were
Knype Hill Conservative Club (fully licensed), from whose bow window, any
time after the bar was open, the large, rosy-gilled faces of the town’s 61ite were
to be seen gazing like chubby goldfish from an aquarium pane, and Ye Olde
Tea Shoppe, a little farther down the High Street, the principal rendezvous of
the Knype Hill ladies Not to be present at Ye Olde Tea Shoppe between ten
and eleven every morning, to drink your ‘morning coffee 5 and spend your half-
hour or so in that agreeable twitter of upper-middle-class voices (‘My dear, he
had nine spades to the ace-queen and he went one no trump, if you please
What, my dear, you don’t mean to say you’re paying for my coffee agamt Oh,
262 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
but my dear, it is simply too sweet of you 1 Now tomorrow I shall simply insist
upon paying for yours And just look at dear little Toto sitting up and looking
such a clever little man with his little black nose wiggling, and he would, would
he, the darling duck, he would, he would, and his mother would give him a
lump of sugar, she would, she would There , Toto' 5 ), was to be definitely out of
Knype Hill society The Rector in his acid way nicknamed these ladies ‘the
coffee brigade* Close to the colony of sham-picturesque villas inhabited by
the coffee brigade, but cut off from them by its larger grounds, was The
Grange, Miss Mayfill’s house It was a curious, machicolated, imitation castle
of dark red brick- somebody’s Folly, built about 1870-and fortunately almost
hidden among dense shrubberies
The Rectory stood half way up the hill, with its face to the church and its
back to the High Street It was a house of the wrong age, inconveniently large,
and faced with chronically peeling yellow plaster Some earlier Rector had
added, at one side, a large greenhouse which Dorothy used as a workroom, but
which was constantly out of repair The front garden was choked with ragged
fir-trees and a great spreading ash which shadowed the front rooms and made
it impossible to grow any flowers There was a large vegetable garden at the
back Proggett did the heavy digging of the garden in the spring and autumn,
and Dorothy did the sowing, planting, and weeding in such spare time as she
could command, in spite of which the vegetable garden was usually an
impenetrable jungle of weeds
Dorothy jumped off her bicycle at the front gate, upon which some officious
person had stuck a poster inscribed ‘Vote for Bhfil-Gordon and Higher
Wages 1 ’ (There was a by-election going on, and Mr Blifil-Gordon was
standing in the Conservative interest ) As Dorothy opened the front door she
saw two letters lying on the worn coconut mat One was from the Rural Dean,
and the other was a nasty, thm-looking letter from Catkin & Palm, her father’s
clerical tailors It was a bill undoubtedly The Rector had followed his usual
practice of collecting the letters that interested him and leaving the others
Dorothy was just bending down to pick up the letters, when she saw, with a
horrid shock of dismay, an unstamped envelope sticking to the letter-flap
It was a bill-for certain it was a bill 1 Moreover, as soon as she set eyes on it
she ‘knew’ that it was that horrible bill from Cargill’s, the butcher’s A sinking
feeling passed through her entrails For a moment she actually began to pray
that it might not be Cargill’s bill-that it might only be the bill for three and
nine from Solepipe’s, the draper’s, or the bill from the International or the
baker’s or the dairy-anythmg except Cargill’s bill 1 Then, mastering her pamc,
she took the envelope from the letter-flap and tore it open with a convulsive
movement
‘To account rendered. £ 21 7s 9d ’
This was written m the innocuous handwriting of Mr Cargill’s accountant-
But underneath, in thick, accusing-looking letters, was added and heavily
underlined ‘Shd like to bring to your notice that this bill has been owing a
very long time The earliest possible settlement will oblige, S Cargill ’
Dorothy had turned a shade paler, and was conscious of not wanting any
A Clergyman’s Daughter 26 3
breakfast She thrust the bill into her pocket and went into the dining-room It
was a smallish, dark room, badly m need of repapering, and, like every other
room m the Rectory, it had the air of having been furnished from the
sweepings of an antique shop The furniture was ‘good 5 , but battered beyond
repair, and the chairs were so worm-eaten that you could only sit on them in
safety if you knew their individual foibles There were old, dark, defaced steel
engravings hanging on the walls, one of them-an engraving of Van Dyck’s
portrait of Charles I -probably of some value if it had not been ruined by
damp
The Rector was standing before the empty grate, warming himself at an
imaginary fire and reading a letter that came from a long blue envelope He was
still wearing his cassock of black watered silk, which set off to perfection his
thick white hair and his pale, fine, none too amiable face As Dorothy came m
he laid the letter aside, drew out his gold watch and scrutinized it significantly
Tm afraid I’m a bit late, Father ’
‘Yes, Dorothy, you are a bit late,’ said the Rector, repeating her words with
delicate but marked emphasis ‘You are twelve minutes late, to be exact Don’t
you think, Dorothy, that when I have to get up at a quarter past six to celebrate
Holy Communion, and come home exceedingly tired and hungry, it would be
better if you could manage to come to breakfast without being a bit late ? ’
It was clear that the Rector was m what Dorothy called, euphemistically, his
‘uncomfortable mood’ He had one of those weary, cultivated voices which are
never definitely angry and never anywhere near good humour-one of those
voices which seem all the while to be saying, ‘I really cannot see what you are
making all this fuss about 1 ’ The impression he gave was of suffering
perpetually from other people’s stupidity and tiresomeness
‘I’m so sorry, Father 1 I simply had to go and ask after Mrs Tawney ’ (Mrs
Tawney was the ‘Mrs T’ of the ‘memo list’ ) ‘Her baby was born last night, and
you know she promised me she’d come and be churched after it was born But
of course she won’t if she thinks we aren’t taking any interest m her You know
what these women are-they seem so to hate bemg churched They’ll never
come unless I coax them into it ’
The Rector did not actually grunt, but he uttered a small dissatisfied sound
as he moved towards the breakfast table, It was intended to mean, first, that it
was Mr£ Tawney’s duty to come and be churched without Dorothy’s coaxing,
secondly, that Dorothy had no business to waste her time visiting all the riff-
raff of the town, especially before breakfast Mrs T awney was a labourer’s wife
and lived in partibus mfidelium, north of the High Street The Rector laid his
hand on the back of his chair, and, without speaking, cast Dorothy a glance
which meant ‘Are we ready now ? Or are there to be any more delays? ’
‘I think everything’s here, Father,’ said Dorothy ‘Perhaps if you’d just say
grace-’
‘Benedictus benedicat/ said the Rector, lifting the worn silver coverlet oft the
breakfast dish The silver coverlet, like the silver-gilt marmalade spoon, was a
family heirloom, the knives and forks, and most of the crockery, came from
Woolworths ‘Bacon again, I see,’ the Rector added, eyeing the three minute
264 A Clergyman’s Daughter
rashers that lay curled up on squares of fried bread
‘It’s all we’ve got m the house, I’m afraid,’ Dorothy said
The Rector picked up his fork between finger and thumb, and with a very
delicate movement, as though playing at spillikins, turned one of the rashers
over
‘I know, of course, 5 he said, ‘that bacon for breakfast is an English
institution almost as old as parliamentary government But still, don’t you
think we might occasionally have a change, Dorothy? ’
‘Bacon’s so cheap now,’ said Dorothy regretfully ‘It seems a sin not to buy
it This was only fivepence a pound, and I saw some quite decent-looking
bacon as low as threepence ’
‘Ah, Danish, I suppose? What a variety of Danish invasions we have had m
this country! First with fire and sword, and now with their abominable cheap
bacon Which has been responsible for the more deaths, I wonder? ’
Feeling a little better after this witticism, the Rector settled himself m his
chair and made a fairly good breakfast off the despised bacon, while Dorothy
(she was not having any bacon this mornmg-a penance she had set herself
yesterday for saying ‘Damn’ and idling for half an hour after lunch) meditated
upon a good conversational opening
There was an unspeakably hateful job in front of her-a demand for money
At the very best of times getting money out of her father was next door to
impossible, and it was obvious that this morning he was going to be even more
‘difficult’ than usual ‘Difficult’ was another of her euphemisms He’s had bad
news, I suppose, she thought despondently, looking at the blue envelope
Probably no one who had ever spoken to the Rector for as long as ten
minutes would have denied that he was a ‘difficult’ kind of man The secret of
his almost unfailing ill humour really lay in the fact that he was an
anachronism He ought never to have been born into the modern world, its
whole atmosphere disgusted and infuriated him A couple of centuries earlier,
a happy pluralist writing poems or collecting fossils while curates at £40 a year
administered his parishes, he would have been perfectly at home Even now, if
he had been a richer man, he might have consoled himself by shutting the
twentieth century out of his consciousness But to live m past ages is very
expensive, you can’t do it on less than two thousand a year The Rector,
tethered by his poverty to the age of Lenin and the Daily Mail , was kept in a
state of chrome exasperation which it was only natural that he should work off
on the person nearest to him-usually, that is, on Dorothy
He had been born m 1871, the younger son of the younger son of a baronet,
and had gone into the Church for the outmoded reason that the Church is the
traditional profession for younger sons His first cure had been in a large,
slummy parish m East London-a nasty, hoohgamsh place it had been, and he
looked back on it with loathing Even m those days the lower class (as he
made a point of calling them) were getting decidedly out of hand It was a little
better when he was curate-m-charge at some remote place m Kent (Dorothy
had been born m Kent), where the decently down-trodden villagers still
touched their hats to ‘parson’ But by that time he had married, and his
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 265
marriage had been diabolically unhappy, moreover, because clergymen must
not quarrel with their wives, its unhappiness had been secret and therefore ten
times worse He had come to Knype Hill m 1908, aged thirty-seven and with a
temper incurably soured-a temper which had ended by alienating every man,
woman, and child m the parish
It was not that he was a bad priest, merely as a priest In his purely clerical
duties he was scrupulously 'correct-perhaps a little too correct for a Low
Church East Anglian parish He conducted his services with perfect taste,
preached admirable sermons, and got up at uncomfortable hours of the
morning to celebrate Holy Communion every Wednesday and Friday But
that a clergyman has any duties outside the four walls of the church was a thing
that had never seriously occurred to him Unable to afford a curate, he left the
dirty work of the parish entirely to his wife, and after her death (she died in
1921) to Dorothy People used to say, spitefully and untruly, that he would
have let Dorothy preach his sermons for him if it had been possible The ‘lower
classes’ had grasped from the first what was his attitude towards them, and if
he had been a rich man they would probably have licked his boots, according to
their custom, as it was, they merely hated him Not that he cared whether they
hated him or not, for he was largely unaware of their existence But even with
the upper classes he had got on no better With the County he had quarrelled
one by one, and as for the petty gentry of the town, as the grandson of a baronet
he despised them, and was at no pains to hide it In twenty-three years he had
succeeded in reducmg the congregation of St Athelstan’s from six hundred to
something under two hundred
This was not solely due to personal reasons It was also because the old-
fashioned High Anglicanism to which the Rector obstinately clung was of a
kind to annoy all parties in the parish about equally Nowadays, a clergyman
who wants to keep his congregation has only two courses open to him Either it
must be Anglo-Catholicism pure and simple-or rather, pure and not simple,
or he must be daringly modern and broad-minded and preach comforting
sermons proving that there is no Hell and all good religions are the same The
Rector did neither On the one hand, he had the deepest contempt for the
Anglo-Catholic movement It had passed over his head, leaving him absolutely
untouched, ‘Roman Fever’ was his name for it On the other hand, he was too
‘High’ for the older members of his congregation From time to time he scared
them almost out of their wits by the use of the fatal word ‘Catholic’, not only in
its sanctified place in the Creeds, but also from the pulpit Naturally the
congregation dwindled year by year, and it was the Best People who were the
first to go Lord Pockthorne of Pockthome Court, who owned a fifth of the
county, Mr Leavis, the retired leather merchant, Sir Edward Huson of
Crabtree Hall, and such of the petty gentry as owned motor-cars, had all
deserted St Athelstan’s Most of them drove over on Sunday mornings to
Millborough, five miles away Millborough was a town of five thousand
inhabitants, and you had your choice of two churches, St Edmund’s and St
Wedekind’s. St Edmund’s was Modernist— text from Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’
blazoned over the altar, and communion wme out of liqueur glasses-and St
266 A Clergyman’s Daughter
Wedekind’s was Anglo-Catholic and m a state of perpetual guerrilla warfare
with the Bishop But Mr Cameron, the secretary of the Knype Hill
Conservative Club, was a Roman Catholic convert, and his children were in
the thick of the Roman Catholic literary movement They were said to have a
parrot which they were teaching to say ‘Extra ecclesiam nulla sains' In effect,
no one of any standing remained true to St Athelstan’s, except Miss Mayfill, of
The Grange Most of Miss Mayfill’ s money was bequeathed to the Church-so
she said, meanwhile, she had never been known to put more than sixpence m
the collection bag, and she seemed likely to go on living for ever
The first ten minutes of breakfast passed in complete silence Dorothy was
trying to summon up courage to speak-obviously she had got to start some
kind of conversation before raising the money-question-but her father was
not an easy man with whom to make small talk At times he would fall into such
deep fits of abstraction that you could hardly get him to listen to you, at other
times he was all too attentive, listened carefully to what you said and then
pointed out, rather wearily, that it was not worth saying Polite platitudes-the
weather, and so forth-generally moved him to sarcasm Nevertheless,
Dorothy decided to try the weather first
c It’s a funny kind of day, isn’t it’’ she said-aware, even as she made it, of the
inanity of this remark
‘What is funny’’ inquired the Rector
‘Well, I mean, it was so cold and misty this morning, and now the sun’s
come out and it’s turned quite fine ’
‘Is there anything particularly funny about that’’
That was no good, obviously He must have had bad news, she thought She
tried again
‘I do wish you’d come out and have a look at the things in the back garden
some time. Father The runner beans are doing so splendidly' The pods are
going to be over a foot long I’m going to keep all the best of them for the
Harvest Festival, of course I thought it would look so nice if we decorated the
pulpit with festoons of runner beans and a few tomatoes hanging m among
them ’
This was a faux pas The Rector looked up from his plate with an expression
of profound distaste
‘My dear Dorothy,’ he said sharply, ‘is it necessary to begin worrying me
about the Harvest Festival already’’
‘I’m sorry, Father' 5 said Dorothy, disconcerted ‘I didn’t mean to worry
you I just thought-’
‘Do you suppose’, proceeded the Rector, ‘it is any pleasure to me to have to
preach my sermon among festoons of runner beans’ I am not a greengrocer It
quite puts me off my breakfast to think of it When is the wretched thing due to
happen’’
‘It’s September the sixteenth, Father ’
‘That’s nearly a month hence For Heaven’s sake let me forget it a little
longer' I suppose we must have this ridiculous business once a year to tickle the
vanity of every amateur gardener m the parish But don’t let’s think of it more
A Clergyman’s Daughter 267
than is absolutely necessary *
The Rector had, as Dorothy ought to have remembered, a perfect
abhorrence of Harvest Festivals He had even lost a valuable parishioner- a Mr
Toagis, a surly retired market gardener-through his dislike, as he said, of
seeing his church dressed up to imitate a coster’s stall Mr Toagis, amma
naturaliter Nonconformistica , had been kept ‘Church’ solely by the privilege, at
Harvest Festival time, of decorating the side altar with a sort of Stonehenge
composed of gigantic vegetable marrows The previous summer he had
succeeded in growing a perfect leviathan of a pumpkin, a fiery red thing so
enormous that it took two men to lift it This monstrous object had been placed
in the chancel, where it dwarfed the altar and took all the colour out of the east
window In no matter what part of the church you were standing, the
pumpkin, as the saying goes, hit you in the eye Mr Toagis was m raptures He
hung about the church at all hours, unable to tear himself away from his
adored pumpkin, and even bringing relays of friends in to admire it From the
expression of his face you would have thought that he was quoting
Wordsworth on Westminster Bridge
Earth has not any thing to show more fair
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty 1
Dorothy even had hopes, after this, of getting him to come to Holy
Communion But when the Rector saw the pumpkin he was seriously angry,
and ordered ‘that revolting thing’ to be removed at once Mr Toagis had
instantly ‘gone chapel’, and he and his heirs were lost to the Church for ever
Dorothy decided to make one final attempt at conversation
‘We’re getting on with the costumes for Charles /,’ she said (The Church
School children were rehearsing a play entitled Charles I in aid of the organ
fund ) ‘But I do wish we’d chosen something a bit easier The armour is a
dreadful job to make, and I’m afraid the jackboots are going to be worse I
think next time we must really have a Roman or Greek play Something where
they only have to wear togas ’
This elicited only another muted grunt from the Rector School plays,
pageants, bazaars, jumble sales, and concerts in aid of were not quite so bad in
his eyes as Harvest Festivals, but he did not pretend to be interested m them
They were necessary evils, he used to say At this moment Ellen, the
maidservant, pushed open the door and came gauchely into the room with one
large, scaly hand holding her sacking apron against her belly She was a tall,
round-shouldered girl with mouse-coloured hair, a plaintive voice, and a bad
complexion, and she suffered chronically from eczema Her eyes flitted
apprehensively towards the Rector, but she addressed herself to Dorothy, for
she was too much afraid of the Rector to speak to him directly
‘Please, Miss-’ she began,
‘Yes, Ellen? ’
‘Please, Miss,’ went on Ellen plaintively, ‘Mr Porter’s m the kitchen, and he
says, please could the Rector come round and baptize Mrs Porter’s baby?
268 A Clergyman's Daughter
Because they don’t think as it’s going to live the day out, and it ain’t been
baptized yet, Miss ’
Dorothy stood up ‘Sit down,’ said the Rector promptly, with his mouth
full
‘What do they think is the matter with the baby? ’ said Dorothy
‘Well, Miss, it’s turning quite black And it’s had diarrhoea something
cruel ’
The Rector emptied his mouth with an effort ‘Must I have these disgusting
details while I am eating my breakfast? ’ he exclaimed He turned on Ellen
‘Send Porter about his business and tell him I’ll be round at his house at twelve
o’clock I really cannot think why it is that the lower classes always seem to
choose mealtimes to come pestering one,’ he added, casting another irritated
glance at Dorothy as she sat down
Mr Porter was a labouring man-a bricklayer, to be exact The Rector’s
views on baptism were entirely sound If it had been urgently necessary he
would have walked twenty miles through snow to baptize a dying baby But he
did not like to see Dorothy proposing to leave the breakfast table at the call of a
common bricklayer
There was no further conversation during breakfast Dorothy’s heart was
sinking lower and lower The demand for money had got to be made, and yet it
was perfectly obvious that it was foredoomed to failure His breakfast finished,
the Rector got up from the table and began to fill his pipe from the tobacco-jar
on the mantelpiece Dorothy uttered a short prayer for courage, and then
pinched herself Go on, Dorothy' Out with it' No funking, please' With an
effort she mastered her voice and said
‘Father-’
‘What is it’’ said the Rector, pausing with the match m his hand
‘Father, I’ve something I want to ask you Something important ’
The expression of the Rector’s face changed He had divined instantly what
she was gomg to say, and, curiously enough, he now looked less irritable than
before A stony calm had settled upon his face He looked like a rather
exceptionally aloof and unhelpful sphinx
‘Now, my dear Dorothy, I know very well what you are gomg to say I
suppose you are gomg to ask me for money again Is that it? ’
‘Yes, Father Because-’
‘Well, I may as well save you the trouble I have no money at all-absolutely
no money at all until next quarter You have had your allowance, and I can’t
give you a halfpenny more It’s quite useless to come worrying me now ’
‘But, Father-’
Dorothy’s heart sank yet lower. What was worst of all when she came to him
for money was the terrible, unhelpful calmness of his attitude He was never so
unmoved as when you were reminding him that he was up to his eyes in debt
Apparently he could not understand that tradesmen occasionally want to be
paid, and that no house can be kept going without an adequate supply of
money He allowed Dorothy eighteen pounds a month for all the household
expenses, including Ellen’s wages, and at the same time he was ‘dainty’ about
A Clergyman’s Daughter 269
his food and instantly detected any falling off in its quality The result was, of
course, that the household was perennially m debt But the Rector paid not the
smallest attention to his debts-indeed, he was hardly even aware of them
When he lost money over an investment, he was deeply agitated, but as for a
debt to a mere tradesman-well, it was the kind of thing that he simply could
not bother his head about
A peaceful plume of smoke floated upwards from the Rector’s pipe He was
gazing with a meditative eye at the steel engraving of Charles I and had
probably forgotten already about Dorothy’s demand for money Seeing him so
unconcerned, a pang of desperation went through Dorothy, and her courage
came back to her She said more sharply than before
‘Father, please listen to me 1 I must have some money soon 1 I simply must ]
We can’t go on as we’re doing We owe money to nearly every tradesman mthe
town It’s got so that some mornings I can hardly bear to go down the street
and think of all the bills that are owing Do you know that we owe Cargill
nearly twenty-two pounds? ’
‘What of it? ’ said the Rector between puffs of smoke
‘But the bill’s been mounting up for over seven months' He’s sent it m over
and over again We must pay it' It’s so unfair to him to keep him waiting for his
money like that'’
‘Nonsense, my dear child' These people expect to be kept waiting for their
money They like it It brings them more in the end Goodness knows how
much I owe to Catkin & Palm - 1 should hardly care to inquire They are
dunning me by every post But you don’t hear me complaining, do you 7 *’
‘But, Father, I can’t look at it as you do, I can’t' It’s so dreadful to be always
m debt' Even if it isn’t actually wrong, it’s so hateful It makes me so ashamed'
When I go into Cargill’s shop to order the joint, he speaks to me so shortly and
makes me wait after the other customers, all because our bill’s mounting up the
whole time And yet I daren’t stop ordering from him I believe he’d run us in
if I did ’
The Rector frowned ‘What' Do you mean to say the fellow has been
impertinent to you? ’
‘I didn’t say he’d been impertinent, Father But you can’t blame him if he’s
angry when his bill’s not paid ’
‘I most certainly can blame him' It is simply abominable how these people
take it upon themselves to behave nowadays-abominable' But there you are,
you see That is the kind of thing that we are exposed to m this delightful
century That is democracy -progress, as they are pleased to call it Don’t order
from the fellow again Tell him at once that you are taking your account
elsewhere That’s the only way to treat these people ’
‘But, Father, that doesn’t settle anything Really and truly, don’t you think
we ought to pay him ? Surely we can get hold of the money somehow? Couldn’t
you sell out some shares, or something? ’
‘My dear child, don’t talk to me about selling out shares! I have just had the
most disagreeable news from my broker He tells me that my Sumatra Tin
shares have dropped from seven and fourpence to six and a penny It means a
2jo A Clergyman's Daughter
loss of nearly sixty pounds I am telling him to sell out at once before they drop
any further ’
‘Then if you sell out you’ll have some ready money, won’t you? Don’t you
think it would be better to get out of debt once and for alP’
‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said the Rector more calmly, putting his pipe back m
his mouth ‘You know nothing whatever about these matters I shall have to
reinvest at once m something more hopeful-it’s the only way of getting my
money back ’
With one thumb m the belt of his cassock he frowned abstractedly at the
steel engraving His broker had advised United Celanese Here— m Sumatra
Tin, United Celanese, and numberless other remote and dimly imagined
companies- was the central cause of the Rector’s money troubles He was an
inveterate gambler Not, of course, that he thought of it as gambling, it was
merely a lifelong search for a ‘good investment’ On coming of age he had
inherited four thousand pounds, which had gradually dwindled, thanks to his
‘investments’, to about twelve hundred What was worse, every year he
managed to scrape together, out of his miserable income, another fifty pounds
which vanished by the same road It is a curious fact that the lure of a ‘good
investment’ seems to haunt clergymen more persistently than any other class
of man Perhaps it is the modern equivalent of the demons in female shape who
used to haunt the anchorites of the Dark Ages
‘I shall buy five hundred United Celanese,’ said the Rector finally
Dorothy began to give up hope Her father was now thinking of his
‘investments’ (she new nothing whatever about these ‘investments’, except
that they went wrong with phenomenal regularity), and in another moment the
question of the shop-debts would have slipped entirely out of his mind She
made a final effort
‘Father, let’s get this settled, please Do you think you’ll be able to let me
have some extra money fairly soon? Not this moment, perhaps-but m the next
month or two? ’
‘No, my dear, I don’t About Christmas time, possibly-it’s very unlikely
even then. But for the present, certainly not I haven’t a halfpenny I can spare ’
‘But, Father, it’s so horrible to feel we can’t pay our debts* It disgraces us so*
Last time Mr Welwyn-Foster was here’ (Mr Welwyn-Foster was the Rural
Dean) ‘Mrs Welwyn-Foster was going all round the town asking everyone the
most personal questions about us- asking how we spent our time, and how
much money we had, and how many tons of coal we used in a year, and
everything She’s always trying to pry into our affairs Suppose she found out
that we were badly in debt 1 ’
‘Surely it is our own business? I fail entirely to see what it has to do with Mrs
Welwyn-Foster or anyone else ’
‘But she’d repeat it all over the place-and she’d exaggerate it too* You know
what Mrs Welwyn-Foster is. In every parish she goes to she tries to find out
something disgraceful about the clergyman, and then she repeats every word
of it to the Bishop I don’t want to be uncharitable about her, but really she-’
Realizing that she did want to be uncharitable, Dorothy was silent
A Clergyman' s Daughter 271
‘She is a detestable woman/ said the Rector evenly ‘What of 1 t? Who ever
heard of a Rural Dean’s wife who wasn’t detestable? ’
‘But, Father, I don’t seem to be able to get you to see how serious things are 1
We’ve simply nothing to live on for the next month I don’t even know where
the meat’s coming from for today’s dinner ’
‘Luncheon, Dorothy, luncheon 1 ’ said the Rector with a touch of irritation ‘I
do wish you would drop that abominable lower-class habit of calling the
midday meal dinner >’
‘For luncheon, then Where are we to get the meat from? I daren’t ask
Cargill for another joint ’
‘Go to the other butcher-what’s his name? Salter-and take no notice of
Cargill He knows he’ll be paid sooner or later Good gracious, I don’t know
what all this fuss is about 1 Doesn’t everyone owe money to his tradesmen? I
distinctly remember’ -the Rector straightened his shoulders a little, and,
putting his pipe back into his mouth, looked into the distance, his voice
became reminiscent and perceptibly more agreeable- ‘I distinctly remember
that when I was up at Oxford, my father had still not paid some of his own
Oxford bills of thirty years earlier Tom’ (Tom was the Rector’s cousin, the
Baronet) ‘owed seven thousand before he came into his money He told me so
himself ’
At that, Dorothy’s last hope vanished When her father began to talk about
his cousin Tom, and about things that had happened ‘when I was up at
Oxford’, there was nothing more to be done with him It meant that he had
slipped into an imaginary golden past in which such vulgar things as butchers’
bills simply did not exist There were long periods together when he seemed
actually to forget that he was only a poverty-stricken country Rector-that he
was not a young man of family with estates and reversions at his back. The
aristocratic, the expensive attitude was the one that m all circumstances came
the most naturally to him And of course while he lived, not uncomfortably, in
the world of his imagination, it was Dorothy who had to fight the tradesmen
and make a leg of mutton last from Sunday to Wednesday But she knew the
complete uselessness of arguing with him any longer It would only end m
making him angry She got up from the table and began to pile the breakfast
things on to the tray
‘You’re absolutely certain you can’t let me have any money, Father? ’ she
said for the last time, at the door, with the tray m her arms
The Rector, gazing into the middle distance, amid comfortable wreaths of
smoke, did not hear her He was thinking, perhaps, of his golden Oxford days
Dorothy went out of the room distressed almost to the point of tears The
miserable question of the debts was once more shelved, as it had been shelved a
thousand times before, with no prospect of final solution.
3
On her elderly bicycle with the basketwork carrier on the handle-bars,
Dorothy free-wheeled down the hill, doing mental arithmetic with three
pounds nineteen and fourpence-her entire stock of money until next quarter-
day
She had been through the list of things that were needed m the kitchen But
indeed, was there anything that was not needed m the kitchen? Tea, coffee,
soap, matches, candles, sugar, lentils, firewood, soda, lamp oil, boot polish,
margarine, baking powder-there seemed to be practically nothing that they
were not running short of And at every moment some fresh item that she had
forgotten popped up and dismayed her The laundry bill, for example, and the
fact that the coal was running short, and the question of the fish for Friday
The Rector was ‘difficult’ about fish Roughly speaking, he would only eat the
more expensive kinds, cod, whiting, sprats, skate, herrings, and kippers he
refused
Meanwhile, she had got to settle about the meat for today’s
dmner-luncheon (Dorothy was careful to obey her father and call it luncheon ,
when she remembered it On the other hand, you could not m honesty call the
evening meal anything but ‘supper’, so there was no such meal as ‘dinner’ at
the Rectory ) Better make an omelette for luncheon today, Dorothy decided
She dared not go to Cargill again Though, of course, if they had an omelette
for luncheon and then scrambled eggs for supper, her father would probably
be sarcastic about it Last time they had eggs twice m one day, he had inquired
coldly, ‘Have you started a chicken farm, Dorothy? ’And perhaps tomorrow
she would get two pounds of sausages at the International, and that staved off
the meat-question for one day more
Thirty-nine further days, with only three pounds mneteen and fburpence to
provide for them, loomed up in Dorothy’s imagination, sending through her a
wave of self-pity which she checked almost instantly. Now then, Dorothy 1 No
snivelling, please' It all comes right somehow if you trust in God Matthew vi,
25 The Lord will provide Will He? Dorothy removed her right hand from
the handle-bars and felt for the glass-headed pm, but the blasphemous
thought faded. At this moment she became aware of the gloomy red face
of Proggett, who was hailing her respectfully but urgently from the side of the
road
Dorothy stopped and got off her bicycle.
‘Beg pardon, Miss,’ said Proggett ‘I been wanting to speak to you,
A Clergyman’s Daughter
273
Miss-partic’lar ’
Dorothy sighed inwardly When Proggett wanted to speak to you partic’lar ,
you could be perfectly certain what was coming, it was some piece of alarming
news about the condition of the church Proggett was a pessimistic,
conscientious man, and very loyal churchman, after his fashion Too dim of
intellect to have any definite religious beliefs, he showed his piety by an intense
solicitude about the state of the church buildings He had decided long ago that
the Church of Christ meant the actual walls, roof, and tower of St Athelstan’s,
Knype Hill, and he would poke round the church at all hours of the day,
gloomily noting a cracked stone here, a worm-eaten beam there-and
afterwards, of course, coming to harass Dorothy with demands for repairs
which would cost impossible sums of money
‘What is it, Proggett ? 5 said Dorothy
‘Well, Miss, it’s they- 5 -here a peculiar, imperfect sound, not a word
exactly, but the ghost of a word, all but formed itself on Proggett’s lips It
seemed to begin with a B Proggett was one of those men who are for ever on
the verge of swearing, but who always recapture the oath as it is escaping
between their teeth Tt 5 s they bells, Miss,’ he said, getting rid of the B sound
with an effort ‘They bells up in the church tower They’re a-splmtermg
through that there belfry floor in a way as it makes you fair shudder to look at
’em We’ll have ’em down atop of us before we know where we are I was up
the belfry ’smormng, and I tell you I come down faster’n I went up, when I
saw how that there floor’s a-bustmg underneath ’em
Proggett came to complain about the condition of the bells not less than once
a fortnight It was now three years that they had been lying on the floor of the
belfry, because the cost of either reswmgmg or removing them was estimated
at twenty-five pounds, which might as well have been twenty-five thousand for
all the chance there was of paying for it They were really almost as dangerous
as Proggett made out It was quite certain that, if not this year or next year, at
any rate at some time m the near future, they would fall through the belfry
floor into the church porch And, as Proggett was fond of pointing out, it
would probably happen on a Sunday morning just as the congregation were
coming into church
Dorothy sighed again Those wretched bells were never out of mind for
long, there were times when the thought of their falling even got into her
dreams There was always some trouble or other at the church Ifitwasnotthe
belfry, then it was the roof or the walls, or it was a broken pew which the
carpenter wanted ten shillings to mend, or it was seven hymn-books needed at
one and sixpence each, or the flue of the stove choked up-and the sweep’s fee
was half a crown-or a smashed window-pane or the choir-boys’ cassocks m
rags There was never enough money for anything The new organ which the
Rector had insisted on buying five years earlier- the old one, he said, reminded
him of a cow with the asthma-was a burden under which the Church Expenses
fund had been staggering ever since
T don’t know what we can do,’ said Dorothy finally; ‘I really don’t. We’ve
simply no money at all And even if we do make anything out of the school-
2j4 A Clergyman' s Daughter
children’s play, it’s all got to go to the organ fund The organ people are really
getting quite nasty about their bill Have you spoken to my father^’
‘Yes, Miss He don’t make nothing of it “Belfry’s held up five hundred
years,” he says, “we can trust it to hold up a few years longer ’”
This was quite according to precedent The fact that the church was visibly
collapsing over his head made no impression on the Rector, he simply ignored
it, as he ignored anything else that he did not wish to be worried about
‘Well, I don’t know what we can do,’ Dorothy repeated ‘Of course there’s
the jumble sale coming off the week after next I’m counting on Miss Mayfill to
give us something really nice for the jumble sale I know she could afford to
She’s got such lots of furniture and things that she never uses I was in her
house the other day, and I saw a most beautiful Lowestoft chma tea service
which was put away in a cupboard, and she told me it hadn’t been used for over
twenty years Just suppose she gave us that tea service 1 It would fetch pounds
and pounds We must just pray that the jumble sale will be a success, Proggett
Pray that it’ll bring us five pounds at least I’m sure we shall get the money
somehow if we really and truly pray for it ’
‘Yes, Miss,’ said Proggett respectfully, and shifted his gaze to the far
distance
At this moment a horn hooted and a vast, gleaming blue car came very
slowly down the road, making for the High Street Out of one window Mr
Blifil-Gordon, the Proprietor of the sugar-beet refinery, was thrusting a sleek
black head which went remarkably ill with his suit of sandy-coloured Harris
tweed As he passed, instead of ignoring Dorothy as usual, he flashed upon her
a smile so warm that it was almost amorous With him were his eldest son
Ralph-or, as he and the rest of the family pronounced it, Walph-an epicene
youth of twenty, given to the writing of sub-Eliot vers libre poems, and Lord
Pockthorne’s two daughters They were all smiling, even Lord Pockthorne’s
daughters Dorothy was astomshed, for it was several years since any of these
people had deigned to recognize her in the street
‘Mr Blifil-Gordon is very friendly this morning,’ she said
‘Aye, Miss I’ll be bound he is It’s the election coming on next week, that’s
what ’tis All honey and butter they are till they’ve made sure as you’ll vote for
them, and then they’ve forgot your very face the day afterwards ’
‘Oh, the election'’ said Dorothy vaguely So remote were such things as
parliamentary elections from the daily round of parish work that she was
virtually unaware of them-hardly, indeed, even knowing the difference
between Liberal and Conservative or Socialist and Communist ‘Well,
Proggett,’ she said, immediately forgetting the election in favour of something
more important, Til speak to Father and tell him how serious it is about the
bells, I think perhaps the best thing we can do will be to get up a special
subscription, just for the bells alone There’s no knowing, we might make five
pounds We might even make ten pounds' Don’t you think if I went to Miss
Mayfill and asked her to start the subscription with five pounds, she might give
it to us? ’
‘You take my word, Miss, and don’t you let Miss Mayfill hear nothing about
A Clergyman’s Daughter 27 s
it It’d scare the life out of her If she thought as that tower wasn’t safe, we’d
never get her inside that church again ’
‘Oh dear 1 1 suppose not ’
‘No, Miss We shan’t get nothing out of her, the old-’
A ghostly B floated once more across Proggett’s lips His mind a little more
at rest now that he had delivered his fortnightly report upon the bells, he
touched his cap and departed, while Dorothy rode on into the High Street,
with the twin problems of the shop-debts and the Church Expenses pursuing
one another through her mind like the twin refrains of a villanelle
The still watery sun, now playing hide-and-seek. April-wise, among woolly
islets of cloud, sent an oblique beam down the High Street, gilding the house-
fronts of the northern side It was one of those sleepy, old-fashioned streets
that look so ideally peaceful on a casual visit and so very different when you live
in them and have an enemy or a creditor behind every window The only
definitely offensive buildings were Ye Olde Tea Shoppe (plaster front with
sham beams nailed on to it, bottle-glass windows and revolting curly roof like
that of a Chinese joss-house), and the new. Doric-pillared post office After
about two hundred yards the High Street forked, forming a tiny market-place,
adorned with a pump, now defunct, and a worm-eaten pair of stocks On either
side of the pump stood the Dog and Bottle, the principal inn of the town, and
the Knype Hill Conservative Club At the end, commanding the street, stood
Cargill’s dreaded shop
Dorothy came round the corner to a terrific dm of cheering, mingled with
the strains of ‘Rule Britannia’ played on the trombone The normally sleepy
street was black with people, and more people were hurrying from all the side-
streets Evidently a sort of triumphal procession was taking place Right across
the street, from the roof of the Dog and Bottle to the roof of the Conservative
Club, hung a line with innumerable blue streamers, and m the middle a vast
banner inscribed ‘Blifil-Gordon and the Empire 1 ’ Towards this, between the
lanes of people, the Blifil-Gordon car was moving at a foot-pace, with Mr
Blifil-Gordon smiling richly, first to one side, then to the other In front of the
car marched a detachment of the Buffaloes, headed by an earnest-looking little
man playing the trombone, and carrying among them another banner
inscribed
Who’ll save Britain from the Reds’
BLIFIL-GORDON
Who’ll put the Beer back into your Pot’
BLIFIL-GORDON
Blifil-Gordon for ever 1
From the window of the Conservative Club floated an enormous Union
Jack, above which six scarlet faces were beaming enthusiastically
Dorothy wheeled her bicycle slowly down the street, too much agitated by
the prospect of passing Cargill’s shop (she had got to pass it, to get to
Solepipe’s) to take much notice of the procession The Blifil-Gordon car had
2j6 A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
halted for a moment outside Ye Olde Tea Shoppe Forward, the coffee
brigade 1 Half the ladies of the town seemed to be hurrying forth, with lapdogs
or shopping baskets on their arms, to cluster about the car like Bacchantes
about the car of the vme-god After all, an election is practically the only time
when you get a chance of exchanging smiles with the County There were
eager feminine cries of ‘Good luck, Mr Blifil- Gordon' Dear Mr Blifil-Gordon'
We do hope you’ll get in, Mr Blifil-Gordon 1 ’ Mr Blifil-Gordon’s largesse of
smiles was unceasing, but carefully graded To the populace he gave a
diffused, general smile, not resting on individuals, to the coffee ladies and the
six scarlet patriots of the Conservative Club he gave one smile each, to the most
favoured of all, young Walph gave an occasional wave of the hand and a
squeaky ‘Cheewio 1 ’
Dorothy’s heart tightened She had seen that Mr Cargill, like the rest of the
shopkeepers, was standing on his doorstep He was a tall, evil-looking man, in
blue-striped apron, with a lean, scraped face as purple as one of his own joints
of meat that had lain a little too long in the window So fascinated were
Dorothy’s eyes by that ominous figure that she did not look where she was
going, and bumped into a very large, stout man who was stepping off the
pavement backwards
The stout man turned round ‘Good Heavens 1 It’s Dorothy 1 ’ he exclaimed
‘Why, Mr Warburton' How extraordinary' Do you know, I had a feeling I
was going to meet you today ’
‘By the pricking of your thumbs, I presume ? 3 said Mr Warburton, beaming
all over a large, pink, Micawberish face ‘And how are you? But by Jove 1 ’ he
added, ‘What need is there to ask? You look more bewitching than ever ’
He pinched Dorothy’s bare elbow-she had changed, after breakfast, into a
sleeveless gingham frock Dorothy stepped hurriedly backwards to get out of
his reach-she hated being pinched or otherwise ‘mauled about’-and said
rather severely
‘ Please don’t pinch my elbow I don’t like it 3
‘My dear Dorothy, who could resist an elbow like yours? It’s the sort of
elbow one pinches automatically A reflex action, if you understand me ’
‘When did you get back to Knype Hill ? 3 said Dorothy, who had put her
bicycle between Mr Warburton and herself ‘It’s over two months since I’ve
seen you 3
‘I got back the day before yesterday But this is only a flying visit I’m off
again tomorrow I’m taking the kids to Brittany The bastards, you know 3
Mr Warburton pronounced the word bastards, at which Dorothy looked
away in discomfort, with a touch of naive pride He and his ‘bastards’ (he had
three of them) were one of the chief scandals of Knype Hill He was a man of
independent income, calling himself a painter-he produced about half a dozen
mediocre landscapes every year-and he had come to Knype Hill two years
earlier and bought one of the new villas behind the Rectory There he lived, or
rather stayed periodically, m open concubinage with a woman whom he called
his housekeeper Four months ago this woman-she was a foreigner, a
Spaniard it was said-had created a fresh and worse scandal by abruptly
A Clergyman 3 s Daughter 277
deserting him, and his three children were now parked with some long-
suffering relative m London In appearance he was a fine, imposing-looking
man, though entirely bald (he was at great pains to conceal this), and he carried
himself with such a rakish air as to give the impression that his fairly sizeable
belly was merely a kind of annexe to his chest His age was forty-eight, and he
owned to forty-four People in the town said that he was a ‘proper old rascal’,
young girls were afraid of him, not without reason
Mr Warburton had laid his hand pseudo-paternally on Dorothy’s shoulder
and was shepherding her through the crowd, talking all the while almost
without a pause The Blifil- Gordon car, having rounded the pump, was now
wending its way back, still accompanied by its troupe of middle-aged
Bacchantes Mr Warburton, his attention caught, paused to scrutinize it
‘What is the meaning of these disgusting antics’’ he asked
‘Oh, they’re- what is it they call lt’-electioneering Trying to get us to vote
for them, I suppose ’
‘Trying to get us to vote for them' Good God 1 ’ murmured Mr Warburton,
as he eyed the triumphal cortege He raised the large, silver-headed cane that
he always carried, and pointed, rather expressively, first at one figure in the
procession and then at another ‘Look at it 1 Just look at it 1 Look at those
fawning hags, and that half-witted oaf grinning at us like a monkey that sees a
bag of nuts Did you ever see such a disgusting spectacle’’
‘Do be careful 1 ’ Dorothy murmured ‘Somebody’s sure to hear you ’
‘Good 1 ’ said Mr Warburton, immediately raising his voice ‘And to think
that low-born hound actually has the impertinence to think that he’s pleasing
us with the sight of his false teeth 1 And that suit he’s wearing is an offence m
itself Is there a Socialist candidate’ If so, I shall certainly vote for him ’
Several people on the pavement turned and stared Dorothy saw little Mr
Twiss, the ironmonger, a weazened, leather-coloured old man, peering with
veiled malevolence round the corner of the rush baskets that hung m his
doorway He had caught the word Socialist, and was mentally registering Mr
Warburton as a Socialist and Dorothy as the friend of Socialists
‘I really must be getting on,’ said Dorothy hastily, feeling that she had better
escape before Mr Warburton said something even more tactless ‘I’ve got ever
such a lot of shopping to do I’ll say good-bye for the present, then ’
‘Oh, no, you won’t 1 ’ said Mr Warburton cheerfully ‘Not a bit of it* I’ll come
with you ’
As she wheeled her bicycle down the street he marched at her side, still
talking, with his large chest well forward and his stick tucked under his arm.
He was a difficult man to shake off, and though Dorothy counted him as a
friend, she did sometimes wish, he being the town scandal and she the Rector’s
daughter, that he would not always choose the most public places to talk to her
in At this moment, however, she was rather grateful for his company, which
made it appreciably easier to pass Cargill’s shop-for Cargill was still on his
doorstep and was regarding her with a sidelong, meaning gaze
‘It was a bit of luck my meeting you this morning,’ Mr Warburton went on.
‘In fact, I was looking for yoti , Who do you think I’ve got coming to dinner
27 8 A Clergyman's Daughter
with me tonight? Bewley- Ronald Bewley You’ve heard of him, of course? ’
‘Ronald Bewley? No, I don’t think so Who is he? ’
‘Why, dash it' Ronald Bewley, the novelist Author of Fishpools and
Concubines Surely you’ve read Fishpools and Concubines ? ’
‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t In fact, I’d never even heard of it ’
‘My dear Dorothy 1 You have been neglecting yourself You certainly ought
to read Fishpools and Concubines It’s hot stuff, I assure you-real high-class
pornography Just the kind of thing you need to take the taste of the Girl
Guides out of your mouth ’
‘I do wish you wouldn’t say such things 1 ’ said Dorothy, looking away
uncomfortably, and then immediately looking back again because she had all
but caught Cargill’s eye ‘Where does this Mr Bewley live? ’ she added ‘Not
here, surely, does he? ’
‘No He’s coming over from Ipswich for dinner, and perhaps to stay the
night That’s why I was looking for you I thought you might like to meet him
How about your coming to dinner tonight? ’
‘I can’t possibly come to dinner,’ said Dorothy ‘I’ve got Father’s supper to
see to, and thousands of other things I shan’t be free till eight o’clock or after ’
‘Well, come along after dinner, then I’d like you to know Bewley He’s an
interesting fellow- very au fait with all the Bloomsbury scandal, and all that
You’ll enjoy meeting him. It’ll do you good to escape from the church hen-
coop for a few hours ’
Dorothy hesitated She was tempted To tell the truth, she enjoyed her
occasional visits to Mr Warburton’s house extremely But of course they were
very occasional-once m three or four months at the oftenest, it so obviously
didn't do to associate too freely with such a man And even when she did go to
his house she was careful to make sure beforehand that there was going to be at
least one other visitor
Two years earlier, when Mr Warburton had first come to Knype Hill (at that
time he was posing as a widower with two children, a little later, however, the
housekeeper suddenly gave birth to a third child in the middle of the night),
Dorothy had met him at a tea-party and afterwards called on him Mr
Warburton had given her a delightful tea, talked amusingly about books, and
then, immediately after tea, sat down beside her on the sofa and begun making
love to her, violently, outrageously, even brutally It was practically an assault
Dorothy was horrified almost out of her wits, though not too horrified to resist
She escaped from him and took refuge on the other side of the sofa, white,
shaking, and almost m tears Mr Warburton, on the other hand, was quite
unashamed and even seemed rather amused
‘Oh, how could you, how could you? ’ she sobbed
‘But it appears that I couldn’t,’ said Mr Warburton
‘Oh, but how could you be such a brute? ’
‘Oh, that> Easily, my child, easily You will understand that when you get to
my age,’
In spite of this bad beginning, a sort of friendship had grown up between the
two, oven to the extent of Dorothy being ‘talked about’ in connexion with Mr
A Clergyman 1 s Daughter 279
Warburton It did not take much to get you ‘talked about’ m Knype Hill She
only saw him at long intervals and took the greatest care never to be alone with
him, but even so he found opportunities of making casual love to her But it
was done m a gentlemanly fashion, the previous disagreeable incident was not
repeated Afterwards, when he was forgiven, Mr Warburton had explained
that he ‘always tried it on’ with every presentable woman he met
‘Don’t you get rather a lot of snubs? ’ Dorothy could not help asking him
‘Oh, certainly But I get quite a number of successes as well, you know ’
People wondered sometimes how such a girl as Dorothy could consort, even
occasionally, with such a man as Mr Warburton, but the hold that he had over
her was the hold that the blasphemer and evil-liver always has over the pious
It is a fact-you have only to look about you to verify it-that the pious and the
immoral drift naturally together The best brothel-scenes in literature have
been written, without exception, by pious believers or pious unbelievers And
of course Dorothy, born into the twentieth century, made a point of listening
to Mr Warburton’s blasphemies as calmly as possible, it is fatal to flatter the
wicked by letting them see that you are shocked by them Besides, she was
genuinely fond of him He teased her and distressed her, and yet she got from
him, without being fully aware of it, a species of sympathy and understanding
which she could not get elsewhere For all his vices he was distinctly likeable,
and the shoddy brilliance of his conversation-Oscar Wilde seven times
watered-which she was too inexperienced to see through, fascinated while it
shocked her Perhaps, too, m this instance, the prospect of meeting the
celebrated Mr Bewley had its effect upon her, though certamly Fishponds and
Concubines sounded like the kind of book that she either didn’t read or else set
herself heavy penances for reading In London, no doubt, one would hardly
cross the road to see fifty novelists, but these things appeared differently in
places like Knype Hill
‘Are you sure Mr Bewley is coming? ’ she said
‘Quite sure And his wife’s coming as well, I believe Full chaperonage No
Tarqum and Lucrece business this evening ?
‘All right,’ said Dorothy finally, ‘thanks very much I’ll come round-
about half past eight, I expect ’
‘Good If you can manage to come while it is still daylight, so much the
better Remember that Mrs Sempnll is my next-door neighbour We can
count on her to be on the qm vive any time after sundown ’
Mrs Semprill was the town scandalmonger-the most eminent, that is, of the
town’s many scandalmongers Having got what he wanted (he was constantly
pestering Dorothy to come to his house more often), Mr Warburton said au
revoir and left Dorothy to do the remainder of her shopping
In the semi-gloom of Solepipe’s shop, she was just moving away from the
counter with her two and a half yards of casement cloth, when she was aware of
a low, mournful voice at her ear It was Mrs Semprill She was a slender
woman of forty, with a lank, sallow, distinguished face, which, with her glossy
dark hair and air of settled melancholy, gave her something the appearance of a
Van Dyck portrait Entrenched behind a pile of cretonnes near the window.
280 A Clergyman's Daughter
she had been watching Dorothy’s conversation with Mr Warburton
Whenever you were doing something that you did not particularly want Mrs
Semprill to see you doing, you could trust her to be somewhere in the
neighbourhood She seemed to have the power of materializing like an Arabian
jmneeyeh at any place where she was not wanted No indiscretion, however
small, escaped her vigilance Mr Warburton used to say that she was like the
four beasts of the Apocalypse- ‘They are full of eyes, you remember, and they
rest not night nor day ’
‘Dorothy dearest ,’ murmured Mrs Semprill in the sorrowful, affectionate
voice of someone breaking a piece of bad news as gently as possible ‘I’ve been
so wanting to speak io you I’ve something simply dreadful to tell you-some-
thing that will really horrify you 1 ’
‘What is it? ’ said Dorothy resignedly, well knowing what was coming-for
Mrs Semprill had only one subject of conversation
They moved out of the shop and began to walk down the street, Dorothy
wheeling her bicycle, Mrs Semprill mmcing at her side with a delicate birdlike
step and bringing her mouth closer and closer to Dorothy’s ear as her remarks
grew more and more intimate
‘Do you happen to have noticed,’ she began, ‘that girl who sits at the end of
the pew nearest the organ in church? A rather pretty girl, with red hair I’ve no
idea what her name is,’ added Mrs Semprill, who knew the surname and all the
Christian names of every man, woman, and child in Knype Hill
‘Molly Freeman,’ said Dorothy ‘She’s the niece of Freeman the
greengrocer ’
‘Oh, Molly Freeman? Is that her name? I’d often wondered Well-’
The delicate red mouth came closer, the mournful voice sank to a shocked
whisper Mrs Semprill began to pour forth a stream of purulent libel involving
Molly Freeman and six young men who worked at the sugar-beet refinery
After a few moments the story became so outrageous that Dorothy, who had
turned very pink, hurriedly withdrew her ear from Mrs SemprilFs whispering
lips. She stopped her bicycle
‘I won’t listen to such things! ’ she said abruptly ‘I know that isn’t true about
Molly Freeman It can't be true 1 She’s such a nice quiet girl-she was one of my
very best Girl Guides, and she’s always been so good about helping with the
church bazaars and everything I’m perfectly certain she wouldn’t do such
things as you’re saying ’
‘But, Dorothy dearest' When, as I told you, I actually saw with my own
eyes ’
‘I don’t care ! It’s not fair to say such things about people Even if they were
true it wouldn’t be right to repeat them There’s quite enough evil in the world
without going about looking for it ’
* Looking for it! ’ sighed Mrs Semprill ‘But, my dear Dorothy, as though one
ever wanted or needed to look 1 The trouble is that one can’t help seeing all the
dreadful wickedness that goes on m this town ’
Mrs Semprill was always genuinely astonished if you accused her of looking
for subjects for scandal Nothing, she would protest, pained her more than the
A Clergyman's Daughter 281
spectacle of human wickedness, but it was constantly forced upon her
unwilling eyes, and only a stern sense of duty impelled her to make it public
Dorothy’s remarks, so far from silencing her, merely set her talking about the
general corruption of Knype Hill, of which Molly Freeman’s misbehaviour
was only one example And so from Molly Freeman and her six young men she
proceeded to Dr Gaythorne, the town medical officer, who had got two of the
nurses at the Cottage Hospital with child, and then to Mrs Corn, the Town
Clerk’s wife, found lymg m a field dead drunk on eau-de-Cologne, and then to
the curate at St Wedekind’s m Millborough, who had involved himself m a
grave scandal with a choirboy, and so it went on, one thing leading to another
For there was hardly a soul m the town or the surrounding country about
whom Mrs Sempnll could not disclose some festering secret if you listened to
her long enough
It was noticeable that her stories were not only dirty and libellous, but they
had nearly always some monstrous tinge of perversion about them Compared
with the ordinary scandalmongers of a country town, she was Freud to
Boccaccio From hearing her talk you would have gathered the impression that
Knype Hill with its thousand inhabitants held more of the refinements of evil
than Sodom, Gomorrah, and Buenos Aires put together Indeed, when you
reflected upon the lives led by the inhabitants of this latter-day City of the
Plam-from the manager of the local bank squandering his clients’ money on
the children of his second and bigamous marriage, to the barmaid of the Dog
and Bottle serving drinks in the taproom dressed only in high-heeled satin
slippers, and from old Miss Channon, the music-teacher, with her secret gm
bottle and her anonymous letters, to Maggie White, the baker’s daughter, who
had borne three children to her own brother-when you considered these
people, all, young and old, rich and poor, sunken in monstrous and Babylonian
vices, you wondered that fire did not come down from Heaven and consume
the town forthwith But if you listened just a little longer, the catalogue of
obscenities became first monstrous and then unbearably dull For in a town m
which everyone is either a bigamist, a pederast, or a drug-taker, the worst
scandal loses its sting In fact, Mrs Sempnll was something worse than a
slanderer, she was a bore
As to the extent to which her stories were believed, it varied At times the
word would go round that she was a foul-mouthed old cat and everything she
said was a pack of lies, at other times one of her accusations would take effect
on some unfortunate person, who would need months or even years to live it
down She had certainly been instrumental m breaking off not less than half a
dozen engagements and starting innumerable quarrels between husbands and
wives
All this while Dorothy had been making abortive efforts to shake Mrs
Semprill off. She had edged her way gradually across the street until she was
wheeling her bicycle along the right-hand kerb> but Mrs Semprill had
followed, whispering without cease It was not until they reached the end of
the High Street that Dorothy summoned up enough firmness to escape She
halted and put her right foot on the pedal of her bicycle
282 A Clergyman’s Daughter
‘I really can’t stop a moment longer , 9 she said ‘I’ve got a thousand things to
do, and I’m late already ’
‘Oh, but, Dorothy dear 1 I’ve something else I simply must tell you-
something most important
‘I’m sorry-I’m in such a terrible hurry Another time, perhaps ’
‘It’s about that dreadful Mr Warburton,’ said Mrs Sempnll hastily, lest
Dorothy should escape without hearing it ‘He’s just come back From London,
and do you know— I most particularly wanted to tell you this-do you know, he
actually-’
But here Dorothy saw that she must make off instantly, at no matter what
cost She could imagine nothing more uncomfortable than to have to discuss
Mr Warburton with Mrs Semprill She mounted her bicycle, and with only a
very brief ‘Sorry - 1 really can’t stop 1 ’ began to ride hurriedly away
‘I wanted to tell you-he’s taken up with a new woman 1 ’ Mrs Semprill cried
after her, even forgetting to whisper in her eagerness to pass on this juicy titbit
But Dorothy rode swiftly round the corner, not looking back, and
pretending not to have heard An unwise thing to do, for it did not pay to cut
Mrs Semprill too short Any unwillingness to listen to her scandals was taken
as a sign of depravity, and led to fresh and worse scandals being published
about yourself the moment you had left her
As Dorothy rode homewards she had uncharitable thoughts about Mrs
Semprill, for which she duly pinched herself Also, there was another, rather
disturbing idea which had not occurred to her till this moment-that Mrs
Semprill would certainly learn of her visit to Mr Warburton’s house this
evening, and would probably have magnified it into something scandalous by
tomorrow The thought sent a vague premonition of evil through Dorothy’s
mind as she jumped off her bicycle at the Rectory gate, where Silly Jack, the
town idiot, a third-grade moron with a triangular scarlet face like a strawberry,
was loitering, vacantly flogging the gatepost with a hazel switch.
4
It was a little after eleven The day, which, like some overripe but hopeful
widow playing at seventeen, had been putting on unseasonable April airs, had
now remembered that it was August and settled down to be boiling hot
Dorothy rode into the hamlet of Fennelwick, a mile out of Knype Hill She
had delivered Mrs Lewm’s corn-plaster, and was dropping in to give old Mrs
Ptther that cutting from the Daily Mail about angelica tea for rheumatism
The sun, burning in the cloudless sky, scorched her back through her
gingham frock, and the dusty road quivered m the heat, and the hot, flat
meadows, over which even at this time of year numberless larks chirruped
A Clergyman 1 s Daughter 283
tiresomely, were so green that it hurt your eyes to look at them It was the kind
of day that is called ‘glorious’ by people who don’t have to work
Dorothy leaned her bicycle against the gate of the Pithers’cottage, and took
her handkerchief out of her bag and wiped her hands, which were sweating
from the handle-bars In the harsh sunlight her face looked pinched and
colourless She looked her age, and something over, at that hour of the
morning Throughout her day-and in general it was a seventeen-hour
day- she had regular, alternating periods of tiredness and energy, the middle of
the morning, when she was doing the first instalment of the day’s ‘visiting’,
was one of the tired periods
‘Visiting’, because of the distances she had to bicycle from house to house,
took up nearly half of Dorothy’s day Every day of her life, except on Sundays,
she made from half a dozen to a dozen visits at parishioners’ cottages She
penetrated into cramped interiors and sat on lumpy, dust-diffusmg chairs
gossiping with overworked, blowsy housewives, she spent hurried half-hours
giving a hand with the mending and the ironing, and read chapters from the
Gospels, and readjusted bandages on ‘bad legs’, and condoled with sufferers
from mornmg-sickness, she played nde-a-cock-horse with sour-smellmg
children who grimed the bosom of her dress with their sticky little fingers, she
gave advice about ailing aspidistras, and suggested names for babies, and
drank ‘nice cups of tea’ mnumerable-for the working women always wanted
her to have a ‘nice cup of tea’, out of the teapot endlessly stewing
Much of it was profoundly discouraging work Few, very few, of the women
seemed to have even a conception of the Christian life that she was trying to
help them to lead Some of them were shy and suspicious, stood on the
defensive, and made excuses when urged to come to Holy Communion, some
shammed piety for the sake of the tiny sums they could wheedle out of the
church alms box, those who welcomed her coming were for the most part the
talkative ones, who wanted an audience for complaints about the ‘goings on’ of
their husbands, or for endless mortuary tales (‘And he had to have glass chubes
let into his veins,’ etc , etc ) about the revolting diseases their relatives had died
of Quite half the women on her list, Dorothy knew, were at heart atheistical in
a vague unreasoning way She came up against it all day long-that vague,
blank disbelief so common in illiterate people, against which all argument is
powerless Do what she would, she could never raise the number of regular
communicants to more than a dozen or thereabouts Women would promise to
communicate, keep their promise for a month or two, and then fall away With
the younger women it was especially hopeless They would not even join the
local branches of the church leagues that were run for their benefit-Dorothy
was honorary secretary of three such leagues, besides being captain of the Girl
Guides, The Band of Hope and the Companionship of Marriage languished
almost memberless, and the Mothers’ Union only kept going because gossip
and unlimited strong tea made the weekly sewing-parties acceptable. Yes> it
was discouraging work, so discouraging that at times it would have seemed
altogether futile if she had not known the sense of futility for what it ls-the
subtlest weapon of the Devil*
284 A Clergyman’s Daughter
Dorothy knocked at the Pither s’ badly fitting door, from beneath which a
melancholy smell of boiled cabbage and dish-water was oozing From long
experience she knew and could taste in advance the individual smell of every
cottage on her rounds Some of their smells were peculiar in the extreme For
instance, there was the salty, feral smell that haunted the cottage of old Mr
Tombs, an aged retired bookseller who lay in bed all day m a darkened room,
with his long, dusty nose and pebble spectacles protruding from what
appeared to be a fur rug of vast size and richness
But if you put your hand on the fur rug it disintegrated, burst and fled in all
directions It was composed entirely of cats -twenty-four cats, to be exact Mr
Tombs ‘found they kept him warm 5 , he used to explain In nearly all the
cottages there was a basic smell of old overcoats and dish-water upon which
the other, individual smells were superimposed, the cesspool smell, the
cabbage smell, the smell of children, the strong, bacon-like reek of corduroys
impregnated with the sweat of a decade
Mrs Pither opened the door, which invariably stuck to the jamb, and then,
when you wrenched it open, shook the whole cottage She was a large,
stooping, grey woman with wispy grey hair, a sacking apron, and shuffling
carpet slippers
‘Why, if it isn’t Miss Dorothy' 5 she exclaimed in a dreary, lifeless but not
unaffectionate voice
She took Dorothy between her large, gnarled hands, whose knuckles were as
shmy as skinned onions from age and ceaseless washing up, and gave her a wet
kiss Then she drew her into the unclean interior of the cottage
‘Pither’s away at work. Miss,’ she announced as they got inside ‘Up to Dr
Gaythorne’s he is, a-diggmg over the doctor’s flower-beds for him ’
Mr Pither was a jobbing gardener He and his wife, both of them over
seventy, were one of the few genuinely pious couples on Dorothy’s visiting
list Mrs Pither led a dreary, wormlike life of shuffling to and fro, with a per-
petual crick m her neck because the door lintels were too low for her, between
the well, the sink, the fireplace, and the tiny plot of kitchen garden The
kitchen was decently tidy, but oppressively hot, evil-smellmg and saturated
with ancient dust At the end opposite the fireplace Mrs Pither had made a
kind of prie-dieu out of a greasy rag mat laid m front of a tiny, defunct
harmonium, on top of which were an oleographed crucifixion, ‘Watch and
Pray’ done m beadwork, and a photograph of Mr and Mrs Pither on their
wedding day in 1882
‘Poor Pither 1 ’ went on Mrs Pither in her depressing voice, ‘him a-diggmg at
his age, with his rheumatism that bad 1 Ain’t it cruel hard, Miss? And he’s had a
kind of a pam between his legs, Miss, as he can’t seem to account for -terrible
bad he’s been with it, these last few mornings Ain’t it bitter hard. Miss, the
lives us poor working folks has to lead? ’
‘It’s a shame,’ said Dorothy ‘But I hope you’ve been keeping a little better
yourself, Mrs Pither? ’
‘Ah, Miss, there’s nothmg don’t make me better I ain’t a case for curing,
not m this world, I ain’t I shan’t never get no better, not m this wicked
A Clergyman's Daughter
285
world down here ’
‘Oh, you mustn’t say that, Mrs Pither 1 1 hope we shall have you with us for a
long time yet ’
‘Ah, Miss, you don’t know how poorly I’ve been this last week 1 I’ve had the
rheumatism a-commg and a-going all down the backs of my poor old legs, till
there’s some mornings when I don’t feel as I can’t walk so far as to pull a
handful of onions m the garden Ah, Miss, it’s a weary world we lives in, ain’t
it, Miss? A weary, sinful world ’
‘But of course we must never forget, Mrs Pither, that there’s a better world
coming This life is only a time of trial-just to strengthen us and teach us to be
patient, so that we’ll be ready for Heaven when the time comes ’
At this a sudden and remarkable change came over Mrs Pither It was
produced by the word ‘Heaven’ Mrs Pither had only two subjects of
conversation, one of them was the joys of Heaven, and the other the miseries of
her present state Dorothy’s remark seemed to act upon her like a charm Her
dull grey eye was not capable of brightening, but her voice quickened with an
almost joyful enthusiasm
‘Ah, Miss, there you said it 1 That’s a true word. Miss' That’s what Pither
and me keeps a-saying to ourselves And that’s just the one thing as keeps us a-
gomg-just the thought of Heaven and the long, long rest we’ll have there
Whatever we’ve suffered, we gets it all back in Heaven, don’t we. Miss? Every
little bit of suffering, you gets it back a hundredfold and a thousandfold That
is true, ain’t it. Miss? There’s rest for us all m Heaven-rest and peace and no
more rheumatism nor digging nor cooking nor laundering nor nothing You do
believe that, don’t you. Miss Dorothy? ’
‘Of course,’ said Dorothy
‘Ah, Miss, if you knew how it comforts us-just the thoughts of Heaven'
Pither he says to me, when he comes home tired of a night and our
rheumatism’s bad, “Never you mind, my dear,” he says, “we ain’t far off
Heaven now,” he says “Heaven was made for the likes of us,” he says, “just
for poor working folks like us, that have been sober and godly and kept our
Communions regular ” That’s the best way, ain’t it, Miss Dorothy-poor m
this life and rich m the next? Not like some of them rich folks as all their motor-
cars and their beautiful houses won’t save from the worm that dieth not and
the fire that’s not quenched Such a beautiful text, that is Do you think you
could say a little prayer with me, Miss Dorothy? I been looking forward all the
morning to a little prayer ’
Mrs Pither was always ready for a ‘little prayer’ at any hour of the night or
day. It was her equivalent to a ‘nice cup of tea’ They knelt down on the rag
mat and said the Lord’s Prayer and the Collect for the week, and then
Dorothy, at Mrs Pither’s request, read the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Mrs
Pither coming m from time to time with ‘Amen' That’s a true word, ain’t it.
Miss Dorothy? “And he was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom. ”
Beautiful' Dh, I do call that just too beautiful' Amen, Miss Dorothy- Amen! ’
Dorothy gave Mrs Pither the cutting from the Daily Mail about angelica tea
for rheumatism, and then, finding that Mrs Pither had been too ‘poorly’ to
286 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
draw the day’s supply of water, she drew three bucketfuls for her from the
well It was a very deep well, with such a low parapet that Mrs Pither’s final
doom would almost certainly be to fall into it and get drowned, and it had not
even a winch- you had to haul the bucket up hand over hand And then they
sat down for a few minutes, and Mrs Pither talked some more about Heaven It
was extraordinary how constantly Heaven reigned m her thoughts, and more
extraordinary yet was the actuality, the vividness with which she could see it
The golden streets and the gates of orient pearl were as real to her as though
they had been actually before her eyes And her vision extended to the most
concrete, the most earthly details The softness of the beds up there! The
deliciousness of the food' The lovely silk clothes that you would put on clean
every morning! The surcease from everlasting to everlasting from work of any
description' In almost every moment of her life the vision of Heaven supported
and consoled her, and her abject complaints about the lives of ‘poor working
folks’ were curiously tempered by a satisfaction m the thought that, after all, it
is ‘poor working folks’ who are the principal inhabitants of Heaven It was a
sort of bargain that she had struck, setting her lifetime of dreary labour against
an eternity of bliss Her faith was almost too great, if that is possible For it was
a curious fact, but the certitude with which Mrs Pither looked forward to
Heaven-as to some kind of glorified home for mcurables-affected Dorothy
with strange uneasiness
Dorothy prepared to depart, while Mrs Pither thanked her, rather too
effusively, for her visit, winding up, as usual, with fresh complaints about her
rheumatism
‘I’ll be sure and take the angelica tea,’ she concluded, ‘and thank you kindly
for telling me of it. Miss Not as I don’t expect as it’ll do me much good Ah,
Miss, if you knew how cruel bad my rheumatism’s been this last week' All
down the backs of my legs, it is, like a regular shooting red-hot poker, and I
don’t seem to be able to get at them to rub them properly Would it be asking
too much of you. Miss, to give me a bit of a rub-down before you go? I got a
bottle of Elliman’s under the sink ’
Unseen by Mrs Pither, Dorothy gave herself a severe pinch She had been
expecting this, and-she had done it so many times before-she really did not
enjoy rubbing Mrs Pither down She exhorted herself angrily Come on,
Dorothy' No smffishness, please' John xrn, 14 ‘Of course I will, Mrs Pither 1 ’
she said instantly
They went up the narrow, rickety staircase, in which you had to bend almost
double at one place to avoid the overhanging ceiling The bedroom was lighted
by a tiny square of window that was jammed in its socket by the creeper
outside, and had not been opened in twenty years There was an enormous
double bed that almost filled the room, with sheets perennially damp and a
flock mattress as full of hills and valleys as a contour map of Switzerland With
many groans the old woman crept on to the bed and laid herself face down
The room reeked of urine and paregoric Dorothy took the bottle of Elliman’s
embrocation and carefully anointed Mrs Pither’s large, grey-vemed, flaccid
legs.
A Clergyman’s Daughter 287
Outside, m the swimming heat, she mounted her bicycle and began to ride
swiftly homewards The sun burned m her face, but the air now seemed sweet
and fresh She was happy, happy 1 She was always extravagantly happy when
her morning’s ‘visiting’ was over, and, curiously enough, she was not aware of
the reason for this In Borlase the dairy-farmer’s meadow the red cows were
grazing, knee-deep in shining seas of grass The scent of cows, like a
distillation of vanilla and fresh hay, floated into Dorothy’s nostrils Though
she had still a morning’s work m front of her she could not resist the
temptation to loiter for a moment, steadying her bicycle with one hand against
the gate of Borlase’s meadow, while a cow, with moist shell-pink nose,
scratched its chin upon the gatepost and dreamily regarded her
Dorothy caught sight of a wild rose, flowerless of course, growing beyond
the hedge, and climbed over the gate with the intention of discovering whether
it were not sweetbriar She knelt down among the tall weeds beneath the
hedge It was very hot down there, close to the ground The humming of many
unseen insects sounded m her ears, and the hot summery fume from the
tangled swathes of vegetation flowed up and enveloped her Near by, tall stalks
of fennel were growing, with trailing fronds of foliage like the tails of sea-green
horses Dorothy pulled a frond of the fennel against her face and breathed m
the strong sweet scent Its richness overwhelmed her, almost dizzied her for a
moment She drank it in, filling her lungs with it Lovely, lovely scent-scent of
summer days, scent of childhood joys, scent of spice-drenched islands m the
warm foam of Oriental seas'
Her heart swelled with sudden joy It was that mystical joy m the beauty of
the earth and the very nature of things that she recognized, perhaps
mistakenly, as the love of God As she knelt there in the heat, the sweet odour
and the drowsy hum of insects, it seemed to her that she could momentarily
hear the mighty anthem of praise that the earth and all created things send up
everlastingly to their maker All vegetation, leaves, flowers, grass, shining,
vibrating, crying out in their joy Larks also chanting, choirs of larks invisible,
dripping music from the sky All the riches of summer, the warmth of the
earth, the song of birds, the fume of cows, the droning of countless bees,
mingling and ascending like the smoke of ever-burning altars Therefore with
Angels and Archangels' She began to pray, and for a moment she prayed
ardently, blissfully, forgetting herself m the joy of her worship Then, less
than a minute later, she discovered that she was kissing the frond of the fennel
that was still against her face
She checked herself instantly, and drew back What was she doing 5 Was it
God that she was worshipping, or was it only the earth 5 The joy ebbed out of
her heart, to be succeeded by the cold, uncomfortable feeling that she had been
betrayed into a half-pagan ecstasy. She admonished herself None of that ,
Dorothy! No Nature-worship, please 1 Her father had warned her against
Nature-worship She had heard him preach more than one sermon against it; it
was, he said, mere pantheism, and, what seemed to offend him even more, a
disgusting modem fad Dorothy took a thorn of the wild rose, and pricked her
arm three times, to remind herself of the Three Persons of the Trinity, before
288 A Clergyman's Daughter
climbing over the gate and remounting her bicycle
A black, very dusty shovel hat was approaching round the corner of the
hedge It was Father McGuire, the Roman Catholic priest, also bicycling his
rounds He was a very large, rotund man, so large that he dwarfed the bicycle
beneath him and seemed to be balanced on top of it like a golf-ball on a tee His
face was rosy, humorous, and a little sly
Dorothy looked suddenly unhappy She turned pink, and her hand moved
instinctively to the neighbourhood of the gold cross beneath her dress Father
McGuire was riding towards her with an untroubled, faintly amused air She
made an endeavour to smile, and murmured unhappily, ‘Good morning 1 But
he rode on without a sign, his eyes swept easily over her face and then beyond
her into vacancy, with an admirable pretence of not having noticed her
existence It was the Cut Direct Dorothy-by nature, alas' unequal to
delivering the Cut Direct- got on to her bicycle and rode away, struggling with
the uncharitable thoughts which a meeting with Father McGuire never failed
to arouse m her
Five or six years earlier, when Father McGuire was holding a funeral in St
Athelstan’s churchyard (there was no Roman Catholic cemetery at Knype
Hill), there had been some dispute with the Rector about the propriety of
Father McGuire robing in the church, or not robing in the church, and the two
priests had wrangled disgracefully over the open grave Since then they had
not been on speaking terms It was better so, the Rector said
As to the other ministers of religion m Knype Hill-Mr Ward the
Congregationalist minister, Mr Foley the Wesleyan pastor, and the braying
bald-headed elder who conducted the orgies at Ebenezer Chapel-the Rector
called them a pack of vulgar Dissenters and had forbidden Dorothy on pain of
his displeasure to have anything to do with them
5
It was twelve o’clock In the large, dilapidated conservatory, whose roof-
panes, from the action of time and dirt, were dim, green, and iridescent like old
Roman glass, they were having a hurried and noisy rehearsal of Charles I
Dorothy was not actually taking part in the rehearsal, but was busy making
costumes She made the costumes, or most of them, for all the plays the
schoolchildren acted- The production and stage management were m the
hands of Victor Stone-Victor, Dorothy called him-the Church school-
master He was a small-boned, excitable, black-haired youth of twenty-seven,
dressed in dark sub-clerical clothes, and at this moment he was gesturing
fiercely with a roll of manuscript at six dense-lookmg children On a long
bench against the wall four more children were alternately practising ‘noises
A Clergyman’s Daughter 289
off’ by clashing fire-irons together, and squabbling over a grimy little bag of
Spearmint Bouncers, forty a penny
It was horribly hot in the conservatory, and there was a powerful smell of
glue and the sour sweat of children Dorothy was kneeling on the floor, with
her mouth full of pms and a pair of shears in her hand, rapidly slicing sheets of
brown paper into long narrow strips The glue-pot was bubbling on an oil-
stove beside her, behind her, on the rickety, ink-stained work-table, were a
tangle of half-finished costumes, more sheets of brown paper, her sewing-
machine, bundles of tow, shards of dry glue, wooden swords, and open pots of
paint With half her mmd Dorothy was meditating upon the two pairs of
seventeenth-century jackboots that had got to be made for Charles I and
Oliver Cromwell, and with the other half listening to the angry shouts of
Victor, who was working himself up into a rage, as he invariably did at
rehearsals He was a natural actor, and withal thoroughly bored by the
drudgery of rehearsing half-witted children He strode up and down,
haranguing the children m a vehement slangy style, and every now and then
breaking off to lunge at one or other of them with a wooden sword that he had
grabbed from the table
Tut a bit of life into it, can’t you 5 ’ he cried, plodding an ox-faced boy of
eleven in the belly ‘Don’t drone 1 Say it as if it meant something' You look like
a corpse that’s been buried and dug up again What’s the good of gurgling it
down m your inside like that 5 Stand up and shout at him Take off that second
murderer expression' 5
‘Come here, Percy' 5 cried Dorothy through her pins ‘Quick 1 ’
She was making the armour-the worst job of the lot, except those wretched
jackboots-out of glue and brown paper From long practice Dorothy could
make very nearly anything out of glue and brown paper, she could even make a
passably good periwig, with a brown paper skull-cap and dyed tow for the hair
Taking the year through, the amount of time she spent m struggling with glue,
brown paper, butter muslin, and all the other paraphernalia of amateur
theatricals was enormous So chronic was the need of money for all the church
funds that hardly a month ever passed when there was not a school play or a
pageant or an exhibition of tableaux vivants on hand-not to mention the
bazaars and jumble sales
As Percy-Percy Jowett, the blacksmith’s son, a small curly-headed boy-got
down from the bench and stood wriggling unhappily before her, Dorothy
seized a sheet of brown paper, measured it against him, snipped out the
neckhole and armholes, draped it round his middle and rapidly pinned it into
the shape of a rough breastplate There was a confused dm of voices.
victor Come on, now, come on! Enter Oliver Cromwell-that’s you! No, not
like that' Do you think Oliver Cromwell would come slinking on like a dog
that’s just had a hiding? Stand up. Stick your chest out. Scowl. That’s
better Now go on, Cromwell : ‘Halt! I hold a pistol m my hand! ’ Go on
a girl’ Please, Miss, Mother said as I was to tell you, Miss-
dorothy Keep still, Percy' For goodness’ sake keep still'
290 A Clergyman's Daughter
cromwell ’Alt' I ’old a pistol in my ’and 1
a small girl on the bench Mister' I’ve dropped my sweetie' [Snivelling] I’ve
dropped by swee-e-e-etie'
victor No, no, no, Tommie' No, no, no'
the girl Please, Miss, Mother said as I was to tell you as she couldn’t make
my knickers like she promised, Miss, because-
dorothy You’ll make me swallow a pin if you do that again
cromwell i/alt' I hold a pistol -
the small girl [in tears] My swee-e-e-e-eetie'
Dorothy seized the glue-brush, and with feverish speed pasted strips of
brown paper all over Percy’s thorax, up and down, backwards and forwards,
one on top of another, pausing only when the paper stuck to her fingers In five
minutes she had made a cuirass of glue and brown paper stout enough, when it
was dry, to have defied a real sword-blade Percy, ‘locked up in complete steel’
and with the sharp paper edge cutting his chin, looked down at himself with
the miserable resigned expression of a dog having its bath Dorothy took the
shears, slit the breastplate up one side, set it on end to dry and started
immediately on another child A fearful clatter broke out as the ‘noises off
began practising the sound of pistol-shots and horses galloping Dorothy’s
fingers were getting stickier and stickier, but from time to time she washed
some of the glue off them in a bucket of hot water that was kept- in readiness In
twenty minutes she had partially completed three breastplates Later on they
would have to be finished off, painted over with aluminium paint and laced up
the sides, and after that there was the job of making the thigh-pieces, and,
worst of all, the helmets to go with them Victor, gesticulating with his sword
and shouting to overcome the dm of galloping horses, was personating m turn
Oliver Cromwell, Charles I, Roundheads, Cavaliers, peasants, and Court
ladies The children were now growing restive and beginning to yawn, whine,
and exchange furtive kicks and pinches The breastplates finished for the
moment, Dorothy swept some of the litter off the table, pulled her sewing-
machine into position and set to work on a Cavalier’s green velvet doublet-it
was butter muslin Twmked green, but it looked all right at a distance
There was another ten minutes of feverish work Dorothy broke her thread,
all but said ‘Damn 1 ’ checked herself and hurriedly re-threaded the needle She
was working against time The play was now a fortnight distant, and there was
such a multitude of things yet to be made-helmets, doublets, swords,
jackboots (those miserable jackboots had been haunting her like a nightmare
for days past), scabbards, ruffles, wigs, spurs, scenery-that her heart sank
when she thought of them The children’s parents never helped with the
costumes for the school plays, more exactly, they always promised to help and
then backed out afterwards, Dorothy’s head was aching diabolically, partly
from the heat of the conservatory, partly from the strain of simultaneously
sewing and trying to visualize patterns for brown paper jackboots For the
moment she had even forgotten the bill for twenty-one pounds seven and
nmepence at Cargill’s She could think of nothing save that fearful mountain
A Clergyman’s Daughter 291
of unmade clothes that lay ahead of her It was so throughout the day One
thing loomed up after another- whether it was the costumes for the school play
or the collapsing floor of the belfry, or the shop -debts or the bindweed in the
peas-and each in its turn so urgent and so harassing that it blotted all the
others out of existence
Victor threw down his wooden sword, took out his watch and looked at it
‘That’ll do 1 ’ he said m the abrupt, ruthless tone from which he never
departed when he was dealing with children ‘We’ll go on on Friday Clear out,
the lot of you 1 I’m sick of the sight of you ’
He watched the children out, and then, having forgotten their existence as
soon as they were out of his sight, produced a page of music from his pocket
and began to fidget up and down, cocking his eye at two forlorn plants m the
corner which trailed their dead brown tendrils over the edges of their pots
Dorothy was still bending over her machine, stitching up the seams of the
green velvet doublet
Victor was a restless, intelligent little creature, and only happy when he was
quarrelling with somebody or something His pale, fine-featured face wore an
expression that appeared to be discontent and was really boyish eagerness
People meeting him for the first time usually said that he was wasting his
talents in his obscure job as a village schoolmaster, but the truth was that
Victor had no very marketable talents except a slight gift for music and a much
more pronounced gift for dealing with children Ineffectual m other ways, he
was excellent with children, he had the proper, ruthless attitude towards them
But of course, like everyone else, he despised his own especial talent His
interests were almost purely ecclesiastical He was what people call a churchy
young man It had always been his ambition to enter the Church, and he would
actually have done so if he had possessed the kind of brain that is capable of
learning Greek and Hebrew Debarred from the priesthood, he had drifted
quite naturally into his position as a Church schoolmaster and organist It kept
him, so to speak, within the Church precincts Needless to say, he was an
Anglo-Catholic of the most truculent Church Times breed-more clerical than
the clerics, knowledgeable about Church history, expert on vestments, and
ready at any moment with a furious tirade against Modernists, Protestants,
scientists, Bolshevists, and atheists
‘I was thinking,’ said Dorothy as she stopped her machine and snipped off
the thread, ‘we might make those helmets out of old bowler hats, if we can get
hold of enough of them Cut the brims off, put on paper brims of the right
shape and silver them over ’
‘Oh Lord, why worry your head about such things? ’ said Victor, who had
lost interest m the play the moment the rehearsal was over
‘It’s those wretched jackboots that are worrying me the most,’ said Dorothy,
taking the doublet on to her knee and looking at it
‘Oh, bother the jackboots 1 Let’s stop thinking about the play for a moment.
Look here,’ said Victor, unrolling his page of music, ‘I want you to speak to
your father for me I wish you’d ask him whether we can’t have a procession
some time next month ’
292 A Clergyman ’s Daughter
‘Another procession? What for? ’
‘Oh, I don’t know You can always find an excuse for a procession There’s
the Nativity of the B V M coming off on the eighth-that’s good enough for a
procession, I should think We’ll do it in style I’ve got hold of a splendid
rousing hymn that they can all bellow, and perhaps we could borrow their blue
banner with the Virgin Mary on it from St Wedekind’s in Millborough If he’ll
say the word I’ll start practising the choir at once ’
‘You know he’ll only say no,’ said Dorothy, threading a needle to sew
buttons on the doublet ‘He doesn’t really approve of processions It’s much
better not to ask him and make him angry ’
‘Oh, but dash it all'’ protested Victor ‘It’s simply months since we’ve had a
procession I never saw such dead-alive services as we have here You’d think
we were a Baptist chapel or something, from the way we go on ’
Victor chafed ceaselessly against the dull correctness of the Rector’s
services His ideal was what he called ‘the real Catholic worship ’-meaning
unlimited incense, gilded images, and more Roman vestments In his capacity
of organist he was for ever pressing for more processions, more voluptuous
music, more elaborate chanting in the liturgy, so that it was a continuous pull
devil, pull baker between him and the Rector And on this point Dorothy sided
with her father Having been brought up in the peculiar, frigid via media of
Anglicanism, she was by nature averse to and half-afraid of anything
‘ritualistic’
‘But dash it all*’ went on Victor, ‘a procession is such fun' Down the aisle,
out through the west door and back through the south door, with the choir
carrying candles behind and the Boy Scouts in front with the banner It would
look fine ’ He sang a stave in a thin but tuneful tenor
‘Hail thee. Festival Day, blest day that art hallowed for ever 1 ’
‘If I had my way,’ he added, ‘I’d have a couple of boys swinging jolly good
censers of incense at the same time ’
‘Yes, but you know how much Father dislikes that kind of thing Especially
when it’s anything to do with the Virgin Mary He says it’s all Roman Fever
and leads to people crossing themselves and genuflecting at the wrong times
and goodness knows what You remember what happened at Advent ’
The previous year, on his own responsibility, Victor had chosen as one of
the hymns for Advent, Number 642, with the refrain ‘Hail Mary, hail Mary,
hail Mary full of grace*’ This piece of popishness had annoyed the Rector
extremely At the close of the first verse he had pointedly laid down his hymn
book, turned round in his stall and stood regarding the congregation with an
air so stony that some of the choirboys faltered and almost broke down
Afterwards he had said that to hear the rustics bawling ‘’Ail Mary' ’Ail Mary*’
made him think he was m the four-ale bar of the Dog and Bottle
‘But dash it'’ said Victor m his aggrieved way, ‘your father always puts his
foot down when I try and get a bit of life into the service He won’t allow us
mcense, or decent music, or proper vestments, or anything And what’s the
result? We can’t get enough people to fill the church a quarter full, even on
Easter Sunday You look round the church on Sunday morning, and it’s
A Clei gyman’ s Daughter 293
nothing but the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides and a few old women ’
‘I know It’s dreadful,’ admitted Dorothy, sewing on her button ‘It doesn’t
seem to make any difference what we do- we simply can’t get the people to
come to church Still,’ she added, ‘they do come to us to be married and
buried And I don’t think the congregation’s actually gone down this year
There were nearly two hundred people at Easter Communion ’
‘Two hundred* It ought to be two thousand That’s the population of this
town The fact is that three quarters of the people in this place never go near a
church in their lives The Church has absolutely lost its hold over them They
don’t know that it exists And why’ That’s what I’m getting at Why’’
‘I suppose it’s all this Science and Free Thought and all that,’ said Dorothy
rather sententiously, quoting her father
This remark deflected Victor from what he had been about to say He had
been on the very point of saying that St Athelstan’s congregation had dwindled
because of the dullness of the services, but the hated words of Science and Free
Thought set him off in another and even more familiar channel
‘Of course it’s this so-called Free Thought*’ he exclaimed, immediately
beginning to fidget up and down again ‘It’s these swine of atheists like
Bertrand Russell and Julian Huxley and all that crowd And what’s ruined the
Church is that instead of jolly well answering them and showing them up for
the fools and liars they are, we just sit tight and let them spread their beastly
atheist propaganda wherever they choose It’s all the fault of the bishops, of
course ’ (Like every Anglo-Catholic, Victor had an abysmal contempt for
bishops ) ‘They’re all Modernists and time-servers By Jove*’ he added more
cheerfully, halting, ‘did you see my letter m the Church Times last week’’
‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t,’ said Dorothy, holding another button m position
with her thumb ‘What was it about’’
‘Oh, Modernist bishops and all that I got m a good swipe at old Barnes ’
It was very rarely that a week passed when Victor did not write a letter to the
Church Times He was m the thick of every controversy and in the forefront of
every assault qpon Modernists and atheists He had twice been in combat with
Dr Major, had written letters of withering irony about Dean Inge and the
Bishop of Birmingham, and had not hesitated to attack even the fiendish
Russell himself-but Russell, of course, had not dared to reply Dorothy, to tell
the truth, very seldom read the Church Times, and the Rector grew angry if he
so much as saw a copy of it m the house The weekly paper they took in the
Rectory was the High Churchman’s Gazette -a fine old High Tory anachronism
with a small and select circulation
‘That swine Russell*’ said Victor reminiscently, with his hands deep m his
pockets ‘How he does make my blood boil*’
‘Isn’t that the man who’s such a clever mathematician, or something’’ said
Dorothy, biting off her thread
‘Oh, I dare say he’s clever enough in his own line, of course,’ admitted
Victor grudgingly ‘But what’s that got to do with it’ Just because a man’s
clever at figures it doesn’t mean to say that- well, anyway* Let’s come back to
what I was saying. Why is it that we can’t get people to come to church in this
294 A Clergyman’s Daughter
placed It’s because our services are so dreary and godless, that’s what it is
People want worship that is worship-they want the real Catholic worship of
the real Catholic Church we belong to And they don’t get if from us All they
get is the old Protestant mumbo-jumbo, and Protestantism’s as dead as a
doornail, and everyone knows it ’
‘That’s not true 1 ’ said Dorothy rather sharply as she pressed the third
button into place ‘You know we’re not Protestants Father’s always saying
that the Church of England is the Catholic Church-he’s preached I don’t
know how many sermons about the Apostolic Succession That’s why Lord
Pockthorne and the others won’t come to church here Only he won’t join m
the Anglo-Catholic movement because he thinks they’re too fond of ritualism
for its own sake And so do I ’
‘Oh, I don’t say your father isn’t absolutely sound on doctrme-absolutely
sound But if he thinks we’re the Catholic Church, why doesn’t he hold the
service in a proper Catholic way? It’s a shame we can’t have incense
occasionally And his ideas about vestments-if you don’t mmd my saying
lt-are simply awful On Easter Sunday he was wearing a Gothic cope with a
modern Italian lace alb Dash it, it’s like wearing a top hat with brown boots ’
‘Well, I don’t think vestments are so important as you do,’ said Dorothy ‘I
think it’s the spirit of the priest that matters, not the clothes he wears ’
‘That’s the kind of thing a Primitive Methodist would say 1 ’ exclaimed
Victor disgustedly ‘Of course vestments are important 1 Where’s the sense of
worshipping at all if we can’t make a proper job of it? Now, if you want to see
what real Catholic worship can be like, look at St Wedekind’s m Millborough'
By Jove, they do things in style there 1 Images of the Virgin, reservation of the
Sacrament-everythmg They’ve had the Kensitites on to them three times,
and they simply defy the Bishop ’
‘Oh, I hate the way they go on at St Wedekind’s 1 ’ said Dorothy ‘They’re
absolutely spiky You can hardly see what’s happening at the altar, there are
such clouds of incense I think people like that ought to turn Roman Catholic
and have done with it ’
‘My dear Dorothy, you ought to have been a Nonconformist You really
ought A Plymouth Brother-or a Plymouth Sister or whatever it’s called I
think your favourite hymn must be Number 567, “O my God I fear Thee,
Thou art very High 1 ” ’
‘Yours is Number 231, “I nightly pitch my moving tent a day’s march
nearer Rome*’” retorted Dorothy, winding the thread round the last button
The argument continued for several minutes while Dorothy adorned a
Cavalier’s beaver hat (it was an old black felt school hat of her own) with plume
and ribbons She and Victor were never long together without being involved
in an argument upon the question of ‘ritualism’ In Dorothy’s opinion Victor
was a kind to ‘go over to Rome’ if not prevented, and she was very likely right
But Victor was not yet aware of his probable destiny At present the fevers of
the Anglo-Catholic movement, with its ceaseless exciting warfare on three
fronts at once-Protestants to right of you, Modernists to the left of you, and,
unfortunately, Roman Catholics to rear of you and always ready for a sly kick
A Clergyman’s Daughter 293
in the pants-filled his mental horizon Scoring off Dr Major m the Church
Times meant more to him than any of the serious business of life But for all his
churchmess he had not an atom of real piety m his constitution It was
essentially as a game that religious controversy appealed to him-the most
absorbing game ever invented, because it goes on for ever and because just a
little cheating is allowed
‘Thank goodness, that’s done 1 ’ said Dorothy, twiddling the Cavalier’s
beaver hat round on her hand and then putting it down ‘Oh dear, what piles of
things there are still to do, though' I wish I could get those wretched jackboots
off my mind What’s the time, Victor’’
‘It’s nearly five to one ’
‘Oh, good gracious 1 I must run I’ve got three omelettes to make I daren’t
trust them to Ellen And, oh, Victor' Have you got anything you can give us for
the jumble sale’ If you had an old pair of trousers you could give us, that would
be best of all, because we can always sell trousers ’
‘Trousers’ No But I tell you what I have got, though I’ve got a copy of The
Pilgrim’s Progress and another of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs that I’ve been
wanting to get rid of for years Beastly Protestant trash' An old Dissenting aunt
of mine gave them to me -Doesn’t it make you sick, all this cadging for
pennies’ Now, if we only held our services m a proper Catholic way, so that we
could get up a proper congregation, don’t you see, we shouldn’t need-’
‘That’ll be splendid,’ said Dorothy ‘We always have a stall for books-we
charge a penny for each book, and nearly all of them get sold We simply must
make that jumble sale a success, Victor' I’m countmg on Miss Mayfill to give
us something really nice What I’m specially hoping is that she might give us
that beautiful old Lowestoft china tea service of hers, and we could sell it for
five pounds at least I’ve been making special prayers all the morning that
she’ll give it to us ’
‘Oh’’ said Victor, less enthusiastically than usual Like Proggett earlier m
the morning, he was embarrassed by the word ‘prayer’ He was ready to talk all
day long about a point of ritual, but the mention of private devotions struck
him as slightly indecent ‘Don’t forget to ask your father about the procession,’
he said, getting back to a more congenial topic
‘All right. I’ll ask him But you know how it’ll be He’ll only get annoyed and
say it’s Roman Fever ’
‘Oh, damn Roman Fever' 5 said Victor, who, unlike Dorothy, did not set
himself penances for swearing
Dorothy hurried to the kitchen, discovered that there were only five eggs to
make the omelettes for three people, and decided to make one large omelette and
swell it out a bit with the cold boiled potatoes left over from yesterday. With a
short prayer for the success of the omelette (for omelettes are so dreadfully apt
to get broken when you take them out of the pan), she whipped up the eggs,
while Victor made off down the drive, half wistfully and half sulkily humming
‘Hail thee, Festival Day’, and passing on his way a disgusted-lookmg
manservant carrying the two handleless chamber-pots which were Miss
May fill’s contribution to the jumble sale
6
It was a little after ten o’clock Various things had happened-nothmg,
however, of any particular importance, only the usual round of parish jobs that
filled up Dorothy’s afternoon and evening Now, as she had arranged earlier in
the day, she was at Mr Warburton’s house, and was trying to hold her own in
one of those meandering arguments in which he delighted to entangle her
They were talking-but indeed, Mr Warburton never failed to manoeuvre
the conversation towards this subject-about the question of religious belief
‘My dear Dorothy,’ he was saying argumentatively, as he walked up and
down with one hand in his coat pocket and the other manipulating a Brazilian
cigar ‘My dear Dorothy, you don’t seriously mean to tell me that at your
age-twenty-seven, I believe-and with your intelligence, you will retain your
religious beliefs more or less in toto > ’
‘Of course I do You know I do ’
‘Oh, come, now 1 The whole bag of tricks? All that nonsense that you learned
at your mother’s knee-surely you’re not going to pretend to me that you still
believe m it? But of course you don’t 1 You can’t 1 You’re afraid to own up,
that’s all it is No need to worry about that here, you know The Rural Dean’s
wife isn’t listening, and / won’t give the show away ’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “all that nonsense”/ began Dorothy, sitting
up straighter m her chair, a little offended
‘Well, let’s take an instance Something particularly hard to swallow-Hell,
for instance Do you believe in Hell? When I say believe , mind you. I’m not
asking whether you believe it m some milk and water metaphorical way like
these Modernist bishops young Victor Stone gets so excited about I mean do
you believe in it literally? Do you believe m Hell as you believe m Australia? ’
‘Yes, of course I do,’ said Dorothy, and she endeavoured to explain to him
that the existence of Hell is much more real and permanent than the existence
of Australia
‘Hm,’ said Mr Warburton, unimpressed ‘Very sound in its way, of course
But what always makes me so suspicious of you religious people is that you’re
so deucedly cold-blooded about your beliefs It shows a very poor imagination,
to say the least of it Here am I an mfidel and blasphemer and neck deep m at
least six out of the Seven Deadly, and obviously doomed to eternal torment
There’s no knowing that in an hour’s time I mayn’t be roasting in the hottest
part of Hell And yet you can sit there talking to me as calmly as though I’d
nothing the matter with me Now, if I’d merely got cancer or leprosy or some
A Clergyman's Daughter 297
other bodily ailment, you’d be quite distressed about lt-at least, I like to flatter
myself that you would Whereas, when I’m going to sizzle on the grid
throughout eternity, you seem positively unconcerned about it ’
‘I never said you were going to Hell,’ said Dorothy somewhat
uncomfortably, and wishing that the conversation would take a different turn
For the truth was, though she was not gomg to tell him so, that the point Mr
Warburton had raised was one with which she herself had had certain
difficulties She did indeed believe in Hell, but she had never been able to
persuade herself that anyone actually went there She believed that Hell
existed, but that it was empty Uncertain of the orthodoxy of this belief, she
preferred to keep it to herself ‘It’s never certain that anyone is gomg to Hell,’
she said more firmly, feeling that here at least she was on sure ground
‘What 1 ’ said Mr Warburton, halting m mock surprise ‘Surely you don’t
mean to say that there’s hope for me yet’’
‘Of course there is It’s only those horrid Predestination people who pretend
that you go to Hell whether you repent or not You don’t think the Church of
England are Calvinists, do you’’
‘I suppose there’s always the chance of getting off on a plea of Invincible
Ignorance,’ said Mr Warburton reflectively, and then, more confidently ‘Do
you know, Dorothy, I’ve a sort of feeling that even now, after knowing me two
years, you’ve still half an idea you can make a convert of me A lost
sheep-brand plucked from the burning, and all that I believe you still hope
against hope that one of these days my eyes will be opened and you’ll meet me
at Holy Communion at seven o’clock on some damned cold winter morning
Don’t you’’
‘Well-’ said Dorothy, again uncomfortably She did, m fact, entertain some
such hope about Mr Warburton, though he was not exactly a promising case
for conversion It was not in her nature to see a fellow being m a state of
unbelief without making some effort to reclaim him What hours she had
spent, at different times, earnestly debating with vague village atheists who
could not produce a single intelligible reason for their unbelief 1 ‘Yes,’ she
admitted finally, not particularly wanting to make the admission, but not
wanting to prevaricate
Mr Warburton laughed delightedly.
‘You’ve a hopeful nature,’ he said ‘But you aren’t afraid, by any chance, that
I might convert you? “The dog it was that died”, you may remember ’
At this Dorothy merely smiled ‘Don’t let him see he’s shocking you’-that
was always her maxim when she was talking to Mr Warburton. They had been
arguing m this manner, without coming to any kmd of conclusion, for the past
hour, and might have gone on for the rest of the night if Dorothy had been
willing to stay, for Mr Warburton delighted in teasing her about her religious
beliefs He had that fatal cleverness that so often goes with unbelief, and in
their arguments, though Dorothy was always right, she was not Sways
victorious They were sitting, or rather Dorothy was sitting and Mr
Warburton was standing, m a large agreeable room, giving on a moonlit lawn,
that Mr Warburton called his ‘studio’ -not that there was any sign of work ever
2^8 A Clergyman's Daughter
having been done in it To Dorothy’s great disappointment, the celebrated Mr
Bewley had not turned up (As a matter of fact, neither Mr Bewley, nor his
wife, nor his novel entitled Fishpools and Concubines , actually existed Mr
Warburton had invented all three of them on the spur of the moment, as a
pretext for inviting Dorothy to his house, well knowing that she would never
come unchaperoned ) Dorothy had felt rather uneasy on finding that Mr
Warburton was alone It had occurred to her, indeed she had felt perfectly
certain, that it would be wiser to go home at once, but she had stayed, chiefly
because she was horribly tired and the leather armchair into which Mr
Warburton had thrust her the moment she entered the house was too
comfortable to leave Now, however, her conscience was pricking her It didn't
do to stay too late at his house-people would talk if they heard of it Besides,
there was a multitude of jobs that she ought to be doing and that she had
neglected in order to come here She was so little used to idleness that even an
hour spent m mere talking seemed to her vaguely sinful
She made an effort, and straightened herself in the too-comfortable chair C I
think, if you don’t mind, it’s really time I was getting home,’ she said
‘Talking of Invincible Ignorance,’ went on Mr Warburton, taking no notice
of Dorothy’s remark, ‘I forget whether I ever told you that once when I was
standing outside the World’s End pub m Chelsea, waiting for a taxi, a damned
ugly little Salvation Army lassie came up to me and said-without any kind of
introduction, you know-“What will you say at the Judgement Seat? ” I said,
“I am reserving my defence ” Rather neat, I think, don’t you? ’
Dorothy did not answer Her conscience had given her another and harder
jab-she had remembered those wretched, unmade jackboots, and the fact that
at least one of them had got to be made tonight She was, however, unbearably
tired She had had an exhausting afternoon, starting off with ten miles or so
bicycling to and fro in the sun, delivering the parish magazine, and continuing
with the Mothers’ Union tea in the hot little wooden-walled room behind the
parish hall The Mothers met every Wednesday afternoon to have tea and do
some charitable sewing while Dorothy read aloud to them (At present she was
reading Gene Stratton Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlosl ) It was nearly always
upon Dorothy that jobs of that kind devolved, because the phalanx of devoted
women (the church fowls, they are called) who do the dirty work of most
parishes had dwindled at Knype Hill to four or five at most The only helper on
whom Dorothy ^ould count at all regularly was Miss Foote, a tall, rabbit-
faced, dithering virgin of thirty-five, who meant well but made a mess of
everything and was in a perpetual state of flurry Mr Warburton used to say
that she reminded him of a comet- ‘a ridiculous blunt-nosed creature rushing
round on an eccentric orbit and always a little behind time’ You could trust
Miss Foote with the church decorations, but not with the Mothers or the
Sunday School, because, though a regular churchgoer, her orthodoxy was
suspect She had confided to Dorothy that she could worship God best under
the blue dome of the sky After tea Dorothy had dashed up to the church to put
fresh flowers on the altar, and then she had typed out her father’s sermon-her
typewriter was a rickety pre-Boer War ‘invisible’, on which you couldn’t
A Clergyman’s Daughter 299
average eight hundred words an hour-and after supper she had weeded the
pea rows until the light failed and her back seemed to be breaking With one
thing and another, she was even more tired than usual
‘I really must be getting home,’ she repeated more firmly ‘I’m sure it’s
getting fearfully late ’
‘Home? ’ said Mr Warburton ‘Nonsense' The evening’s hardly begun ’
He was walking up and down the room again, with his hands in his coat
pockets, having thrown away his cigar The spectre of the unmade jackboots
stalked back into Dorothy’s mind She would, she suddenly decided, make two
jackboots tonight instead of only one, as a penance for the hour she had wasted
She was just beginning to make a mental sketch of the way she would cut out
the pieces of brown paper for the msteps, when she noticed that Mr
Warburton had halted behind her chair
‘What time is it, do you know? ’ she said
‘I dare say it might be half past ten But people like you and me don’t talk of
such vulgar subjects as the time ’
‘If it’s half past ten, then I really must be going,’ said Dorothy I’ve got a
whole lot of work to do before I go to bed ’
‘Work' At this time of night? Impossible'’
‘Yes, I have I’ve got to make a pair of jackboots ’
‘You’ve got to make a pair of what? said Mr Warburton
‘Of jackboots For the play the schoolchildren are acting We make them out
of glue and brown paper ’
‘Glue and brown paper' Good God 1 ’ murmured Mr Warburton He went
on, chiefly to cover the fact that he was drawing nearer to Dorothy’s chair
‘What a life you lead' Messing about with glue and brown paper m the middle
of the night' I must say, there are times when I feel just a little glad that I’m not
a clergyman’s daughter ’
‘I think-’ began Dorothy
But at the same moment Mr Warburton, invisible behind her chair, had
lowered his hands and taken her gently by the shoulders Dorothy immediately
wriggled herself m an effort to get free of him, but Mr Warburton pressed her
back into her place
‘Keep still,’ he said peaceably
‘Let me go'’ exclaimed Dorothy
Mr Warburton ran his right hand caressingly down her upper arm There
was something very revealing, very characteristic in the way he did it, it was
the lingering, appraising touch of a man to whom a woman’s body is valuable
precisely m the same way as though it were something to eat
‘You really have extraordinary nice arms,’ he said ‘How on earth have you
managed to remain unmarried all these years? ’
‘Let me go at once'’ repeated Dorothy, beginning to struggle again
‘But I don’t particularly want to let you go,’ objected Mr Warburton
* Please don’t stroke my arm like that' I don’t like it' 5
‘What a curious child you are' Why don’t you like it? 5
‘I tell you I don’t like it' 5
yoo A Clergyman ’ ? Daughtei
‘Now don’t go and turn round,’ said Mr Warburton mildly ‘ Y ou don’t seem
to realize how tactful it was on my part to approach you from behind your
back If you turn round you’ll see that I’m old enough to be your father, and
hideously bald into the bargain But if you’ll only keep still and not look at me
you can imagine I’m Ivor Novello ’
Dorothy caught sight of the hand that was caressing her- a large, pink, ver>
masculine hand, with thick fingers and a fleece of gold hairs upon the back She
turned very pale, the expression of her face altered from mere annoyance to
aversion and dread She made a violent effort, wrenched herself free, and stood
up, facing him
‘I do wish you wouldn’t do that 1 ’ she said, half in anger and half in distress
‘What is the matter with you’’ said Mr Warburton
He had stood upright, in his normal pose, entirely unconcerned, and he
looked at her with a touch of curiosity Her face had changed It was not only
that she had turned pale, there was a withdrawn, half-frightened look in her
eyes-almost as though, for the moment, she were looking at him with the eyes
of a stranger He perceived that he had wounded her m some way which he did
not understand, and which perhaps she did not want him to understand
‘What is the matter with you’’ he repeated
'Why must you do that every time you meet me’’
“‘Every time I meet you” is an exaggeration,’ said Mr Warburton ‘It’s
really very seldom that I get the opportunity But if you really and truly don’t
like it-’
‘Of course I don’t like it' You know I don’t like it 1 ’
‘Well, well 1 Then let’s say no more about it,’ said Mr Warburton
generously ‘Sit down, and we’ll change the subject ’
He was totally devoid of shame It was perhaps his most outstanding
characteristic Having attempted to seduce her, and failed, he was quite willing
to go on with the conversation as though nothing whatever had happened
‘I’m going home at once,’ said Dorothy ‘I can’t stay here any longer ’
‘Oh nonsense 1 Sit down and forget about it We’ll talk of moral theology, or
cathedral architecture, or the Girl Guides’ cooking classes, or anything you
choose Think how bored I shall be all alone if you go home at this hour ’
But Dorothy persisted, and there was an argument Even if it had not been
his intention to make love to her-and whatever he might promise he would
certainly begin again m a few minutes if she did not go-Mr Warburton would
have pressed her to stay, for, like all thoroughly idle people, he had a horror of
going to bed and no conception of the value of time He would, if you let him,
keep you talking till three or four m the morning Even when Dorothy finally
escaped, he walked beside her down the moonlit drive, still talking
voluminously and with such perfect good humour that she found it impossible
to be angry with him any longer
‘I’m leaving first thing tomorrow,’ he told her as they reached the gate ‘I’m
going to take the car to town and pick up the kids- the bastards, , you know- and
we’re leaving for France the next day I’m not certain where we shall go after
that, eastern Europe, perhaps Prague, Vienna, Bucharest ’
A Clergyman" s Daughter 301
‘How nice,’ said Dorothy
Mr Warburton, with an adroitness surprising m so large and stout a man,
had manoeuvred himself between Dorothy and the gate
‘I shall be away six months or more,’ he said ‘And of course I needn’t ask,
before so long a parting, whether you want to kiss me good-bye ? ’
Before she knew what he was doing he had put his arm about her and drawn
her against him She drew back-too late, he kissed her on the cheek-would
have kissed her on the mouth if she had not turned her head away in time She
struggled in his arms, violently and for a moment helplessly
‘Oh, let me go'’ she cried ‘ Do let me go! ’
‘I believe I pointed out before,’ said Mr Warburton, holding her easily
against him, ‘that I don’t want to let you go ’
‘But we’re standing right m front of Mrs SemprilPs window' She’ll see us
absolutely for certain'’
‘Oh, good God' So she will 1 ’ said Mr Warburton ‘I was forgetting ’
Impressed by this argument, as he would not have been by any other, he let
Dorothy go She promptly put the gate between Mr Warburton and herself
He, meanwhile, was scrutinizing Mrs Sempnll’s windows
‘I can’t see a light anywhere,’ he said finally ‘With any luck the blasted hag
hasn’t seen us ’
‘Good-bye,’ said Dorothy briefly ‘This time I really must go Remember me
to the children ’
With this she made off as fast as she could go without actually running, to get
out of his reach before he should attempt to kiss her again
Even as she did so a sound checked her for an mstant-the unmistakable
bang of a window shutting, somewhere in Mrs Semprill’s house Could Mrs
Semprill have been watching them after alP But (reflected Dorothy) of course
she had been watching them' What else could you expect^ You could hardly
imagine Mrs Semprill missing such a scene as that And if she had been
watching them, undoubtedly the story would be all over the town tomorrow
morning, and it would lose nothing in the telling But this thought, sinister
though it was, did no more than flight momentarily through Dorothy’s mind as
she hurried down the road
When she was well out of sight of Mr Warburton’s house she stopped, took
out her handkerchief and scrubbed the place on her cheek where he had kissed
her She scrubbed it vigorously enough to bring the blood into her cheek It
was not until she had quite rubbed out the imaginary stam which his bps had
left there that she walked on again
What he had done had upset her Even now her heart was knocking and
fluttering uncomfortably I can’t hear that kind of thing' she repeated to herself
several times over And unfortunately this was no more than the literal truth,
she really could not bear it To be kissed or fondled by a man- to feel heavy
male arms about her and thick male lips bearing down upon her own-was
terrifying and repulsive to her Even m memory or imagination it made her
wmce It was her especial secret, the especial, incurable disability that she
carried through life
go 2 A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
If only they would leave you alone ] she thought as she walked onwards a
little more slowly That was how she put it to herself habitually- ‘If only they
would leave you alone '’ For it was not that m other ways she disliked men On
the contrary, she liked them better than women Part of Mr Warburton’s hold
over her was m the fact that he was a man and had the careless good humour
and the intellectual largeness that women so seldom have But why couldn’t
they leave you alone > Why did they always have to kiss you and maul you
about’ They were dreadful when they kissed you-dreadful and a little
disgusting, like some large, furry beast that rubs itself against you, all too
friendly and yet liable to turn dangerous at any moment And beyond their
kissing and mauling there lay always the suggestion of those other, monstrous
things (‘all that 3 was her name for them) of which she could hardly even bear to
think
Of course, she had had her share, and rather more than her share, of casual
attention from men She was just pretty enough, and just plain enough, to be
the kind of girl that men habitually pester For when a man wants a little casual
amusement, he usually picks out a girl who is not too pretty Pretty girls (so he
reasons) are spoilt and therefore capricious, but plain girls are easy game And
even if you are a clergyman’s daughter, even if you live m a town like Knype
Hill and spend almost your entire life in parish work, you don’t altogether
escape pursuit Dorothy was all too used to it— all too used to the fattish
middle-aged men, with their fishily hopeful eyes, who slowed down their cars
when you passed them on the road, or who manoeuvred an introduction and
then began pinching your elbow about ten minutes afterwards Men of all
descriptions Even a clergyman, on one occasion-a bishop’s chaplain, he
was
But the trouble was that it was not better, but oh* infinitely worse when they
were the right kind of man and the advances they made you were honourable
Her mind slipped backwards five years, to Francis Moon, curate m those days
at St Wedekind’s in Millborough Dear Francis 1 How gladly would she have
married him if only it had not been for all that ' Over and over again he had
asked her to marry him, and of course she had had to say No, and, equally of
course, he had never known why Impossible to tell him why And then he had
gone away, and only a year later had died so irrelevantly of pneumonia She
whispered a prayer for his soul, momentarily forgetting that her father did not
really approve of prayers for the dead, and then, with an effort, pushed the
memory aside Ah, better not to think of it again' It hurt her in her breast to
think of it.
She could never marry, she had decided long ago upon that Even when she
was a child she had known it Nothing would ever overcome her horror of all
that-st the very thought of it something within her seemed to shrink and
freeze. And of course, in a sense she did not want to overcome it For, like all
abnormal people, she was not fully aware that she was abnormal
And yet, though her sexual coldness seemed to her natural and inevitable,
she knew well enough how it was that it had begun She could remember, as
clearly as though it were yesterday, certain dreadful scenes between her father
A Clergyman's Daughter 303
and her mother- scenes that she had witnessed when she was no more than
nine years old They had left a deep, secret wound m her mind And then a
little later she had been frightened by some old steel engravings of nymphs
pursued by satyrs To her childish mind there was something inexplicably,
horribly sinister in those horned, semi-human creatures that lurked m thickets
and behind large trees, ready to come bounding forth in sudden swift pursuit
For a whole year of her childhood she had actually been afraid to walk through
woods alone, for fear of satyrs She had grown out of the fear, of course, but not
out of the feeling that was associated with it The satyr had remained with her
as a symbol Perhaps she would never grow out of it, that special feeling of
dread, of hopeless flight from something more than rationally dreadful-the
stamp of hooves in the lonely wood, the lean, furry thighs of the satyr It was a
thing not to be altered, not to be argued away It is, moreover, a thing too
common nowadays, among educated women, to occasion any kind of surprise
Most of Dorothy’s agitation had disappeared by the time she reached the
Rectory The thoughts of satyrs and Mr Warburton, of Francis Moon and her
foredoomed sterility, which had been going to and fro in her mind, faded out of
it and were replaced by the accusing image of a jackboot She remembered that
she had the best part of two hours’ work to do before going to bed tonight The
house was m darkness She went round to the back and slipped m on tiptoe by
the scullery door, for fear of waking her father, who was probably asleep
already
As she felt her way through the dark passage to the conservatory, she
suddenly decided that she had gone wrong m going to Mr Warburton’s house
tonight She would, she resolved, never go there again, even when she was
certain that somebody else would be there as well Moreover, she would do
penance tomorrow for having gone there tonight Having lighted the lamp,
before doing anything else she found her ‘memo list’, which was already
written out for tomorrow, and pencilled a capital P against ‘breakfast’, P stood
for penance-no bacon again for breakfast tomorrow Then she lighted the
oilstove under the glue-pot
The light of the lamp fell yellow upon her sewing-machine and upon the pile
of half-finished clothes on the table, reminding her of the yet greater pile of
clothes that were not even begun, reminding her, also, that she was dreadfully,
overwhelmingly tired She had forgotten her tiredness at the moment when
Mr Warburton laid his hands on her shoulders, but now it had come back upon
her with double force Moreover, there was a somehow exceptional quality
about her tiredness tonight She felt, m an almost literal sense of the words,
washed out As she stood beside the table she had a sudden, very strange
feeling as though her mind had been entirely emptied, so that for several
seconds she actually forgot what it was that she had come into the conservatory
to do
Then she remembered-the jackboots, of course 1 Some contemptible little
demon whispered m her ear, ‘Why not go straight to bed and leave the
jackboots till tomorrow? ’ She uttered a prayer for strength, and pinched
herself Come on, Dorothy 1 No slacking please 1 Luke ix, 62 Then, clearing
204 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
some of the litter off the table, she got out her scissors, a pencil, and four sheets
of brown paper, and sat down to cut out those troublesome insteps for the
jackboots while the glue was boiling
When the grandfather clock in her father’s study struck midnight she was
still at work She had shaped both jackboots by this time, and was reinforcing
them by pasting narrow strips of paper all over them-a long, messy job Every
bone in her body was aching, and her eyes were sticky with sleep Indeed, it
was only rather dimly that she remembered what she was doing But she
worked on, mechanically pasting strip after strip of paper into place, and
pinching herself every two minutes to counteract the hypnotic sound of the
oilstove singing beneath the glue-pot
CHAPTER 2
I
Out of a black, dreamless sleep, with the sense of being drawn upwards
through enormous and gradually lightening abysses, Dorothy awoke to a
species of consciousness
Her eyes were still closed By degrees, however, their lids became less
opaque to the light, and then flickered open of their own accord She was
looking out upon a street-a shabby, lively street of small shops and narrow-
faced houses, with streams of men, trams, and cars passing in either direction
But as yet it could not properly be said that she was looking For the things
she saw were not apprehended as men, trams, and cars, nor as anything m
particular, they were not even apprehended as things moving, not even as
things „ She merely sazo } as an animal sees, without speculation and almost
without consciousness. The noises of the street- the confused din of voices, the
hooting of horns and the scream of the trams grinding on their gritty
rails-flowed through her head provoking purely physical responses She had
no words, nor any conception of the purpose of such things as words, nor any
consciousness of time or place, or of her own body or even of her own
existence
Nevertheless, by degrees her perceptions became sharper The stream of
moving things began to penetrate beyond her eyes and sort themselves out into
separate images in her brain She began, still wordlessly, to observe the shapes
of things A long-shaped thing swam past, supported on four other, narrower
long-shaped things, and drawing after it a square-shaped thmg balanced on
two circles, Dorothy watched it pass, and suddenly, as though spontaneously,
a word flashed into her mind The word was ‘horse’ It faded, but returned
presently in the more complex form ‘ That is a horse*’ Other words
followed- ‘house’, ‘street’, ‘tram’, ‘car’, ‘bicycle’-until m a few minutes she
had found a name for almost everything within sight She discovered the
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 305
words ‘man’ and ‘woman’, and, speculating upon these words, discovered that
she knew the difference between living and inanimate things, and between
human beings and horses, and between men and women
It was only now, after becoming aware of most of the things about her, that
she became aware of herself Hitherto she had been as it were a pair of eyes with
a receptive but purely impersonal brain behind them But now, with a curious
little shock, she discovered her separate and umque existence, she could feel
herself existing, it was as though something within her were exclaiming ‘I am
I 1 ’ Also, in some way she knew that this ‘I’ had existed and been the same from
remote periods in the past, though it was a past of which she had no
remembrance
But it was only for a moment that this discovery occupied her From the first
there was a sense of incompleteness m it, of something vaguely unsatisfactory
And it was this the ‘I am I’ which had seemed an answer had itself become a
question It was no longer ‘I am I’, but ‘who ami’ 5
Who was she ? She turned the question over m her mmd, and found that she
had not the dimmest notion of who she was, except that, watching the people
and horses passing, she grasped that she was a human being and not a horse
And that the question altered itself and took this form ‘Am I a man or a
woman 55 ’ Again neither feeling nor memory gave any clue to the answer But at
that moment, by accident possibly, her finger-tips brushed against her body
She realized more clearly than before that her body existed, and that it was her
own-that it was, m fact, herself She began to explore it with her hands, and
her hands encountered breasts She was a woman, therefore Only women had
breasts In some way she knew, without knowing how she knew, that all those
women who passed had breasts beneath their clothes, though she could not see
them
She now grasped that in order to identify herself she must examine her own
body, beginning with her face, and for some moments she actually attempted
to look at her own face, before realizing that this was impossible She looked
down, and saw a shabby black satin dress, rather long, a pair of flesh-coloured
artificial silk stockings, laddered and dirty, and a pair of very shabby black
satin shoes with high heels None of them was in the least familiar to her She
examined her hands, and they were both strange and unstrange. They were
smallish hands, with hard palms, and very dirty. After a moment she realized
that it was their dirtiness that made them strange to her The hands themselves
seemed natural and appropriate, though she did not recognize them
After hesitating a few moments longer, she turned to her left and began to
walk slowly along the pavement A fragment of knowledge had come to her,
mysteriously, out of the blank past the existence of mirrors, their purpose, and
the fact that there are often mirrors m shop windows After a moment she came
to a cheap little jeweller’s shop in which a strip of mirror, set at an angle,
reflected the faces of people passing Dorothy picked her reflection out from
among a dozen others, immediately realizing it to be her own Yet it could not
be said that she had recognized it, she had no memory of ever havmg seen it till
this moment It showed her a woman’s youngish face, thin, very blonde, with
306 A Clergyman's Daughter
crow’s-feet round the eyes, and faintly smudged with dirt A vulgar black
cloche hat was stuck carelessly on the head, concealing most of the hair The
face was quite unfamiliar to her, and yet not strange She had not known till
this moment what face to expect, but now that she had seen it she realized that
it was the face she might have expected It was appropriate It corresponded to
something within her
As she turned away from the jeweller’s mirror, she caught sight of the words
‘Fry’s Chocolate’ on a shop window opposite, and discovered that she
understood the purpose of writing, and also, after a momentary effort, that she
was able to read Her eyes flitted across the street, taking m and deciphering
odd scraps of print, the names of shops, advertisements, newspaper posters
She spelled out the letters of two red and white posters outside a tobacconist’s
shop One of them read, ‘Fresh Rumours about Rector’s Daughter’, and the
other, ‘Rector’s Daughter Now believed in Paris’ Then she looked upwards,
and saw in white lettering on the corner of a house ‘New Kent Road’ The
words arrested her She grasped that she was standing in the New Kent Road,
and-another fragment of her mysterious knowledge-the New Kent Road was
somewhere in London So she was m London
As she made this discovery a peculiar tremor ran through her Her mind was
now fully awakened, she grasped, as she had not grasped before, the
strangeness of her situation, and it bewildered and frightened her What could
it all mean> What was she doing here? How had she got here? What had
happened to her?
The answer was not long in coming She thought-and it seemed to her that
she understood perfectly well what the words meant ‘Of course 1 I’ve lost my
memory 1 ’
At this moment two youths and a girl who were trudging past, the youths
with clumsy sacking bundles on their backs, stopped and looked curiously at
Dorothy They hesitated for a moment, then walked on, but halted again by a
lamp-post five yards away Dorothy saw them looking back at her and talking
among themselves One of the youths was about twenty, narrow-chested,
black-haired, ruddy-cheeked, good-looking m a nosy cockney way, and
dressed in the wreck of a raffishly smart blue suit and a check cap The other
was about twenty-six, squat, nimble, and powerful, with a snub nose, a clear
pink skin and huge lips as coarse as sausages, exposing strong yellow teeth He
was frankly ragged, and he had a mat of orange-coloured hair cropped short
and growing low on his head, which gave him a startling resemblance to an
orang-outang. The girl was a silly-looking, plump creature, dressed in clothes
very like Dorothy’s own Dorothy could hear some of what they were saying
‘That tart looks ill,’ said the girl
The orange-headed one, who was singing ‘Sonny Boy’ m a good baritone
voice, stopped singing to answer ‘She ain’t ill,’ he said ‘She’s on the beach all
right, though Same as us ’
‘She’d do jest nicely for Nobby, wouldn’t she? ’ said the dark-haired one
‘Oh, you v exclaimed the girl with a shocked-amorous air, pretending to
smack the dark one over the head
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 307
The youths had lowered their bundles and leaned them against the lamp-
post All three of them now came rather hesitantly towards Dorothy, the
orange-headed one, whose name seemed to be Nobby, leading the way as their
ambassador He moved with a gambolling, apelike gait, and his grm was so
frank and wide that it was impossible not to smile back at him He addressed
Dorothy m a friendly way
‘Hullo, kid 1 ’
‘Hullo 1 ’
‘You on the beach, kid? ’
‘On the beach? ’
‘Well, on the bum? ’
‘On the bum? ’
‘Christ! she’s batty,’ murmured the girl, twitching at the black-haired one’s
arm as though to pull him away
‘Well, what I mean to say, kid-have you got any money? ’
‘I don’t know ’
At this all three looked at one another in stupefaction For a moment they
probably thought that Dorothy really was batty But simultaneously Dorothy,
who had earlier discovered a small pocket in the side of her dress, put her hand
into it and felt the outline of a large com
‘I believe I’ve got a penny,’ she said
‘A penny' 5 said the dark youth disgustedly, ‘-lot of good that is to us 1 ’
Dorothy drew it out It was a half-crown An astonishing change came over
the faces of the three others Nobby’s mouth split open with delight, he
gambolled several steps to and fro like some great jubilant ape, and then,
halting, took Dorothy confidentially by the arm
‘That’s the mulligatawny'’ he said ‘We’ve struck it lucky-and so’ve you,
kid, believe me You’re going to bless the day you set eyes on us lot We’re
going to make your fortune for you, we are Now, see here, kid-are you on to
go into cahoots with us three? ’
‘What? ’ said Dorothy
‘What I mean to say-how about you chumming in with Flo and Charlie and
me? Partners, see? Comrades all, shoulder to shoulder United we stand,
divided we fall. We put up the brains, you put up the money How about it,
kid? Are you on, or are you off? ’
‘Shut up, Nobby 1 ’ interrupted the girl ‘She don’t understand a word of
what you’re saying Talk to her proper, can’t you? ’
‘That’ll do, Flo,’ said Nobby equably ‘You keep it shut and leave the
talking to me I got a way with the tarts, I have Now, you listen to me,
kid-what might your name happen to be, kid? ’
Dorothy was within an ace of saying ‘I don’t know,’ but she was sufficiently
on the alert to stop herself in time Choosing a feminine name from the half-
dozen that sprang immediately into her mind, she answered, ‘Ellen ’
‘Ellen That’s the mulligatawny No surnames when you’re on the bum
Well now, Ellen dear, you listen to me. Us three are going down hopping,
see-*
A Clergyman’ s Daughter
308
‘Hopping? ’
‘’Oppmg’’ put m the dark youth impatiently, as though disgusted by
Dorothy’s ignorance His voice and manner were rather sullen, and his accent
much baser than Nobby’s ‘Pickin’ ’ops-dahn in Kent 1 C’n understand that,
can’t yer? ’
‘Oh, hops' For beer? ’
‘That’s the mulligatawny’ Coming on fine, she is Well, kid, ’z I was saying,
here’s us three going down hopping, and got a job promised us and
all-Blessington’s farm, Lower Molesworth Only we’re just a bit m the
mulligatawny, see? Because we ain’t got a brown between us, and we got to do
it on the toby- thirty-five miles it is -and got to tap for our tommy and skipper
at night as well And that’s a bit of a mulligatawny, with ladies m the party But
now s’pose f rmstance you was to come along with us, see? We c’d take the
twopenny tram far as Bromley, and that’s fifteen miles done, and we won’t
need skipper more’n one night on the way And you can chum in at our
bm-four to a bin’s the best pickmg-and if Blessington’s paying twopence a
bushel you’ll turn your ten bob a week easy What do you say to it, kid? Your
two and a tanner won’t do you much good here in Smoke But you go into
partnership with us, and you’ll get your kip for a month and something
over-and we’ll get a lift to Bromley and a bit of scran as well ’
About a quarter of his speech was intelligible to Dorothy She asked rather at
random
‘What is scran * ’
‘Scran? Tommy-food I can see you ain’t been long on the beach, kid ’
‘Oh Well, you want me to come down hop-picking with you, is that it? ’
‘That’s it, Ellen my dear Are you on, or are you off? ’
‘AH right,’ said Dorothy promptly ‘I’ll come ’
She made this decision without any misgiving whatever It is true that if she
had had time to think over her position, she would probably have acted
differently, in all probability she would have gone to a police station and asked
for assistance That would have been the sensible course to take But Nobby
and the others had appeared just at the critical moment, and, helpless as she
was, it seemed quite natural to throw m her lot with the first human being who
presented himself. Moreover, for some reason which she did not understand, it
reassured her to hear that they were making for Kent Kent, it seemed to her,
was the very place to which she wanted to go The others showed no further
curiosity, and asked no uncomfortable questions Nobby simply said, ‘O K
That’s the mulligatawny’’ and then gently took Dorothy’s half-crown out of
her hand and slid it into his pocket-in case she should lose it, he explained
The dark youth-apparently his name was Charlie- said m his surly,
disagreeable way
‘Come on, less get movin’’ It’s ’ar-parse two already We don’t want to miss
that there — tram.
’ sighed Mrs Semprill ‘But, my dear Dorothy, as though one
ever wanted or needed to look 1 The trouble is that one can’t help seeing all the
dreadful wickedness that goes on m this town ’
Mrs Semprill was always genuinely astonished if you accused her of looking
for subjects for scandal Nothing, she would protest, pained her more than the
A Clergyman's Daughter 281
spectacle of human wickedness, but it was constantly forced upon her
unwilling eyes, and only a stern sense of duty impelled her to make it public
Dorothy’s remarks, so far from silencing her, merely set her talking about the
general corruption of Knype Hill, of which Molly Freeman’s misbehaviour
was only one example And so from Molly Freeman and her six young men she
proceeded to Dr Gaythorne, the town medical officer, who had got two of the
nurses at the Cottage Hospital with child, and then to Mrs Corn, the Town
Clerk’s wife, found lymg m a field dead drunk on eau-de-Cologne, and then to
the curate at St Wedekind’s m Millborough, who had involved himself m a
grave scandal with a choirboy, and so it went on, one thing leading to another
For there was hardly a soul m the town or the surrounding country about
whom Mrs Sempnll could not disclose some festering secret if you listened to
her long enough
It was noticeable that her stories were not only dirty and libellous, but they
had nearly always some monstrous tinge of perversion about them Compared
with the ordinary scandalmongers of a country town, she was Freud to
Boccaccio From hearing her talk you would have gathered the impression that
Knype Hill with its thousand inhabitants held more of the refinements of evil
than Sodom, Gomorrah, and Buenos Aires put together Indeed, when you
reflected upon the lives led by the inhabitants of this latter-day City of the
Plam-from the manager of the local bank squandering his clients’ money on
the children of his second and bigamous marriage, to the barmaid of the Dog
and Bottle serving drinks in the taproom dressed only in high-heeled satin
slippers, and from old Miss Channon, the music-teacher, with her secret gm
bottle and her anonymous letters, to Maggie White, the baker’s daughter, who
had borne three children to her own brother-when you considered these
people, all, young and old, rich and poor, sunken in monstrous and Babylonian
vices, you wondered that fire did not come down from Heaven and consume
the town forthwith But if you listened just a little longer, the catalogue of
obscenities became first monstrous and then unbearably dull For in a town m
which everyone is either a bigamist, a pederast, or a drug-taker, the worst
scandal loses its sting In fact, Mrs Sempnll was something worse than a
slanderer, she was a bore
As to the extent to which her stories were believed, it varied At times the
word would go round that she was a foul-mouthed old cat and everything she
said was a pack of lies, at other times one of her accusations would take effect
on some unfortunate person, who would need months or even years to live it
down She had certainly been instrumental m breaking off not less than half a
dozen engagements and starting innumerable quarrels between husbands and
wives
All this while Dorothy had been making abortive efforts to shake Mrs
Semprill off. She had edged her way gradually across the street until she was
wheeling her bicycle along the right-hand kerb> but Mrs Semprill had
followed, whispering without cease It was not until they reached the end of
the High Street that Dorothy summoned up enough firmness to escape She
halted and put her right foot on the pedal of her bicycle
282 A Clergyman’s Daughter
‘I really can’t stop a moment longer , 9 she said ‘I’ve got a thousand things to
do, and I’m late already ’
‘Oh, but, Dorothy dear 1 I’ve something else I simply must tell you-
something most important
‘I’m sorry-I’m in such a terrible hurry Another time, perhaps ’
‘It’s about that dreadful Mr Warburton,’ said Mrs Sempnll hastily, lest
Dorothy should escape without hearing it ‘He’s just come back From London,
and do you know— I most particularly wanted to tell you this-do you know, he
actually-’
But here Dorothy saw that she must make off instantly, at no matter what
cost She could imagine nothing more uncomfortable than to have to discuss
Mr Warburton with Mrs Semprill She mounted her bicycle, and with only a
very brief ‘Sorry - 1 really can’t stop 1 ’ began to ride hurriedly away
‘I wanted to tell you-he’s taken up with a new woman 1 ’ Mrs Semprill cried
after her, even forgetting to whisper in her eagerness to pass on this juicy titbit
But Dorothy rode swiftly round the corner, not looking back, and
pretending not to have heard An unwise thing to do, for it did not pay to cut
Mrs Semprill too short Any unwillingness to listen to her scandals was taken
as a sign of depravity, and led to fresh and worse scandals being published
about yourself the moment you had left her
As Dorothy rode homewards she had uncharitable thoughts about Mrs
Semprill, for which she duly pinched herself Also, there was another, rather
disturbing idea which had not occurred to her till this moment-that Mrs
Semprill would certainly learn of her visit to Mr Warburton’s house this
evening, and would probably have magnified it into something scandalous by
tomorrow The thought sent a vague premonition of evil through Dorothy’s
mind as she jumped off her bicycle at the Rectory gate, where Silly Jack, the
town idiot, a third-grade moron with a triangular scarlet face like a strawberry,
was loitering, vacantly flogging the gatepost with a hazel switch.
4
It was a little after eleven The day, which, like some overripe but hopeful
widow playing at seventeen, had been putting on unseasonable April airs, had
now remembered that it was August and settled down to be boiling hot
Dorothy rode into the hamlet of Fennelwick, a mile out of Knype Hill She
had delivered Mrs Lewm’s corn-plaster, and was dropping in to give old Mrs
Ptther that cutting from the Daily Mail about angelica tea for rheumatism
The sun, burning in the cloudless sky, scorched her back through her
gingham frock, and the dusty road quivered m the heat, and the hot, flat
meadows, over which even at this time of year numberless larks chirruped
A Clergyman 1 s Daughter 283
tiresomely, were so green that it hurt your eyes to look at them It was the kind
of day that is called ‘glorious’ by people who don’t have to work
Dorothy leaned her bicycle against the gate of the Pithers’cottage, and took
her handkerchief out of her bag and wiped her hands, which were sweating
from the handle-bars In the harsh sunlight her face looked pinched and
colourless She looked her age, and something over, at that hour of the
morning Throughout her day-and in general it was a seventeen-hour
day- she had regular, alternating periods of tiredness and energy, the middle of
the morning, when she was doing the first instalment of the day’s ‘visiting’,
was one of the tired periods
‘Visiting’, because of the distances she had to bicycle from house to house,
took up nearly half of Dorothy’s day Every day of her life, except on Sundays,
she made from half a dozen to a dozen visits at parishioners’ cottages She
penetrated into cramped interiors and sat on lumpy, dust-diffusmg chairs
gossiping with overworked, blowsy housewives, she spent hurried half-hours
giving a hand with the mending and the ironing, and read chapters from the
Gospels, and readjusted bandages on ‘bad legs’, and condoled with sufferers
from mornmg-sickness, she played nde-a-cock-horse with sour-smellmg
children who grimed the bosom of her dress with their sticky little fingers, she
gave advice about ailing aspidistras, and suggested names for babies, and
drank ‘nice cups of tea’ mnumerable-for the working women always wanted
her to have a ‘nice cup of tea’, out of the teapot endlessly stewing
Much of it was profoundly discouraging work Few, very few, of the women
seemed to have even a conception of the Christian life that she was trying to
help them to lead Some of them were shy and suspicious, stood on the
defensive, and made excuses when urged to come to Holy Communion, some
shammed piety for the sake of the tiny sums they could wheedle out of the
church alms box, those who welcomed her coming were for the most part the
talkative ones, who wanted an audience for complaints about the ‘goings on’ of
their husbands, or for endless mortuary tales (‘And he had to have glass chubes
let into his veins,’ etc , etc ) about the revolting diseases their relatives had died
of Quite half the women on her list, Dorothy knew, were at heart atheistical in
a vague unreasoning way She came up against it all day long-that vague,
blank disbelief so common in illiterate people, against which all argument is
powerless Do what she would, she could never raise the number of regular
communicants to more than a dozen or thereabouts Women would promise to
communicate, keep their promise for a month or two, and then fall away With
the younger women it was especially hopeless They would not even join the
local branches of the church leagues that were run for their benefit-Dorothy
was honorary secretary of three such leagues, besides being captain of the Girl
Guides, The Band of Hope and the Companionship of Marriage languished
almost memberless, and the Mothers’ Union only kept going because gossip
and unlimited strong tea made the weekly sewing-parties acceptable. Yes> it
was discouraging work, so discouraging that at times it would have seemed
altogether futile if she had not known the sense of futility for what it ls-the
subtlest weapon of the Devil*
284 A Clergyman’s Daughter
Dorothy knocked at the Pither s’ badly fitting door, from beneath which a
melancholy smell of boiled cabbage and dish-water was oozing From long
experience she knew and could taste in advance the individual smell of every
cottage on her rounds Some of their smells were peculiar in the extreme For
instance, there was the salty, feral smell that haunted the cottage of old Mr
Tombs, an aged retired bookseller who lay in bed all day m a darkened room,
with his long, dusty nose and pebble spectacles protruding from what
appeared to be a fur rug of vast size and richness
But if you put your hand on the fur rug it disintegrated, burst and fled in all
directions It was composed entirely of cats -twenty-four cats, to be exact Mr
Tombs ‘found they kept him warm 5 , he used to explain In nearly all the
cottages there was a basic smell of old overcoats and dish-water upon which
the other, individual smells were superimposed, the cesspool smell, the
cabbage smell, the smell of children, the strong, bacon-like reek of corduroys
impregnated with the sweat of a decade
Mrs Pither opened the door, which invariably stuck to the jamb, and then,
when you wrenched it open, shook the whole cottage She was a large,
stooping, grey woman with wispy grey hair, a sacking apron, and shuffling
carpet slippers
‘Why, if it isn’t Miss Dorothy' 5 she exclaimed in a dreary, lifeless but not
unaffectionate voice
She took Dorothy between her large, gnarled hands, whose knuckles were as
shmy as skinned onions from age and ceaseless washing up, and gave her a wet
kiss Then she drew her into the unclean interior of the cottage
‘Pither’s away at work. Miss,’ she announced as they got inside ‘Up to Dr
Gaythorne’s he is, a-diggmg over the doctor’s flower-beds for him ’
Mr Pither was a jobbing gardener He and his wife, both of them over
seventy, were one of the few genuinely pious couples on Dorothy’s visiting
list Mrs Pither led a dreary, wormlike life of shuffling to and fro, with a per-
petual crick m her neck because the door lintels were too low for her, between
the well, the sink, the fireplace, and the tiny plot of kitchen garden The
kitchen was decently tidy, but oppressively hot, evil-smellmg and saturated
with ancient dust At the end opposite the fireplace Mrs Pither had made a
kind of prie-dieu out of a greasy rag mat laid m front of a tiny, defunct
harmonium, on top of which were an oleographed crucifixion, ‘Watch and
Pray’ done m beadwork, and a photograph of Mr and Mrs Pither on their
wedding day in 1882
‘Poor Pither 1 ’ went on Mrs Pither in her depressing voice, ‘him a-diggmg at
his age, with his rheumatism that bad 1 Ain’t it cruel hard, Miss? And he’s had a
kind of a pam between his legs, Miss, as he can’t seem to account for -terrible
bad he’s been with it, these last few mornings Ain’t it bitter hard. Miss, the
lives us poor working folks has to lead? ’
‘It’s a shame,’ said Dorothy ‘But I hope you’ve been keeping a little better
yourself, Mrs Pither? ’
‘Ah, Miss, there’s nothmg don’t make me better I ain’t a case for curing,
not m this world, I ain’t I shan’t never get no better, not m this wicked
A Clergyman's Daughter
285
world down here ’
‘Oh, you mustn’t say that, Mrs Pither 1 1 hope we shall have you with us for a
long time yet ’
‘Ah, Miss, you don’t know how poorly I’ve been this last week 1 I’ve had the
rheumatism a-commg and a-going all down the backs of my poor old legs, till
there’s some mornings when I don’t feel as I can’t walk so far as to pull a
handful of onions m the garden Ah, Miss, it’s a weary world we lives in, ain’t
it, Miss? A weary, sinful world ’
‘But of course we must never forget, Mrs Pither, that there’s a better world
coming This life is only a time of trial-just to strengthen us and teach us to be
patient, so that we’ll be ready for Heaven when the time comes ’
At this a sudden and remarkable change came over Mrs Pither It was
produced by the word ‘Heaven’ Mrs Pither had only two subjects of
conversation, one of them was the joys of Heaven, and the other the miseries of
her present state Dorothy’s remark seemed to act upon her like a charm Her
dull grey eye was not capable of brightening, but her voice quickened with an
almost joyful enthusiasm
‘Ah, Miss, there you said it 1 That’s a true word. Miss' That’s what Pither
and me keeps a-saying to ourselves And that’s just the one thing as keeps us a-
gomg-just the thought of Heaven and the long, long rest we’ll have there
Whatever we’ve suffered, we gets it all back in Heaven, don’t we. Miss? Every
little bit of suffering, you gets it back a hundredfold and a thousandfold That
is true, ain’t it. Miss? There’s rest for us all m Heaven-rest and peace and no
more rheumatism nor digging nor cooking nor laundering nor nothing You do
believe that, don’t you. Miss Dorothy? ’
‘Of course,’ said Dorothy
‘Ah, Miss, if you knew how it comforts us-just the thoughts of Heaven'
Pither he says to me, when he comes home tired of a night and our
rheumatism’s bad, “Never you mind, my dear,” he says, “we ain’t far off
Heaven now,” he says “Heaven was made for the likes of us,” he says, “just
for poor working folks like us, that have been sober and godly and kept our
Communions regular ” That’s the best way, ain’t it, Miss Dorothy-poor m
this life and rich m the next? Not like some of them rich folks as all their motor-
cars and their beautiful houses won’t save from the worm that dieth not and
the fire that’s not quenched Such a beautiful text, that is Do you think you
could say a little prayer with me, Miss Dorothy? I been looking forward all the
morning to a little prayer ’
Mrs Pither was always ready for a ‘little prayer’ at any hour of the night or
day. It was her equivalent to a ‘nice cup of tea’ They knelt down on the rag
mat and said the Lord’s Prayer and the Collect for the week, and then
Dorothy, at Mrs Pither’s request, read the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Mrs
Pither coming m from time to time with ‘Amen' That’s a true word, ain’t it.
Miss Dorothy? “And he was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom. ”
Beautiful' Dh, I do call that just too beautiful' Amen, Miss Dorothy- Amen! ’
Dorothy gave Mrs Pither the cutting from the Daily Mail about angelica tea
for rheumatism, and then, finding that Mrs Pither had been too ‘poorly’ to
286 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
draw the day’s supply of water, she drew three bucketfuls for her from the
well It was a very deep well, with such a low parapet that Mrs Pither’s final
doom would almost certainly be to fall into it and get drowned, and it had not
even a winch- you had to haul the bucket up hand over hand And then they
sat down for a few minutes, and Mrs Pither talked some more about Heaven It
was extraordinary how constantly Heaven reigned m her thoughts, and more
extraordinary yet was the actuality, the vividness with which she could see it
The golden streets and the gates of orient pearl were as real to her as though
they had been actually before her eyes And her vision extended to the most
concrete, the most earthly details The softness of the beds up there! The
deliciousness of the food' The lovely silk clothes that you would put on clean
every morning! The surcease from everlasting to everlasting from work of any
description' In almost every moment of her life the vision of Heaven supported
and consoled her, and her abject complaints about the lives of ‘poor working
folks’ were curiously tempered by a satisfaction m the thought that, after all, it
is ‘poor working folks’ who are the principal inhabitants of Heaven It was a
sort of bargain that she had struck, setting her lifetime of dreary labour against
an eternity of bliss Her faith was almost too great, if that is possible For it was
a curious fact, but the certitude with which Mrs Pither looked forward to
Heaven-as to some kind of glorified home for mcurables-affected Dorothy
with strange uneasiness
Dorothy prepared to depart, while Mrs Pither thanked her, rather too
effusively, for her visit, winding up, as usual, with fresh complaints about her
rheumatism
‘I’ll be sure and take the angelica tea,’ she concluded, ‘and thank you kindly
for telling me of it. Miss Not as I don’t expect as it’ll do me much good Ah,
Miss, if you knew how cruel bad my rheumatism’s been this last week' All
down the backs of my legs, it is, like a regular shooting red-hot poker, and I
don’t seem to be able to get at them to rub them properly Would it be asking
too much of you. Miss, to give me a bit of a rub-down before you go? I got a
bottle of Elliman’s under the sink ’
Unseen by Mrs Pither, Dorothy gave herself a severe pinch She had been
expecting this, and-she had done it so many times before-she really did not
enjoy rubbing Mrs Pither down She exhorted herself angrily Come on,
Dorothy' No smffishness, please' John xrn, 14 ‘Of course I will, Mrs Pither 1 ’
she said instantly
They went up the narrow, rickety staircase, in which you had to bend almost
double at one place to avoid the overhanging ceiling The bedroom was lighted
by a tiny square of window that was jammed in its socket by the creeper
outside, and had not been opened in twenty years There was an enormous
double bed that almost filled the room, with sheets perennially damp and a
flock mattress as full of hills and valleys as a contour map of Switzerland With
many groans the old woman crept on to the bed and laid herself face down
The room reeked of urine and paregoric Dorothy took the bottle of Elliman’s
embrocation and carefully anointed Mrs Pither’s large, grey-vemed, flaccid
legs.
A Clergyman’s Daughter 287
Outside, m the swimming heat, she mounted her bicycle and began to ride
swiftly homewards The sun burned m her face, but the air now seemed sweet
and fresh She was happy, happy 1 She was always extravagantly happy when
her morning’s ‘visiting’ was over, and, curiously enough, she was not aware of
the reason for this In Borlase the dairy-farmer’s meadow the red cows were
grazing, knee-deep in shining seas of grass The scent of cows, like a
distillation of vanilla and fresh hay, floated into Dorothy’s nostrils Though
she had still a morning’s work m front of her she could not resist the
temptation to loiter for a moment, steadying her bicycle with one hand against
the gate of Borlase’s meadow, while a cow, with moist shell-pink nose,
scratched its chin upon the gatepost and dreamily regarded her
Dorothy caught sight of a wild rose, flowerless of course, growing beyond
the hedge, and climbed over the gate with the intention of discovering whether
it were not sweetbriar She knelt down among the tall weeds beneath the
hedge It was very hot down there, close to the ground The humming of many
unseen insects sounded m her ears, and the hot summery fume from the
tangled swathes of vegetation flowed up and enveloped her Near by, tall stalks
of fennel were growing, with trailing fronds of foliage like the tails of sea-green
horses Dorothy pulled a frond of the fennel against her face and breathed m
the strong sweet scent Its richness overwhelmed her, almost dizzied her for a
moment She drank it in, filling her lungs with it Lovely, lovely scent-scent of
summer days, scent of childhood joys, scent of spice-drenched islands m the
warm foam of Oriental seas'
Her heart swelled with sudden joy It was that mystical joy m the beauty of
the earth and the very nature of things that she recognized, perhaps
mistakenly, as the love of God As she knelt there in the heat, the sweet odour
and the drowsy hum of insects, it seemed to her that she could momentarily
hear the mighty anthem of praise that the earth and all created things send up
everlastingly to their maker All vegetation, leaves, flowers, grass, shining,
vibrating, crying out in their joy Larks also chanting, choirs of larks invisible,
dripping music from the sky All the riches of summer, the warmth of the
earth, the song of birds, the fume of cows, the droning of countless bees,
mingling and ascending like the smoke of ever-burning altars Therefore with
Angels and Archangels' She began to pray, and for a moment she prayed
ardently, blissfully, forgetting herself m the joy of her worship Then, less
than a minute later, she discovered that she was kissing the frond of the fennel
that was still against her face
She checked herself instantly, and drew back What was she doing 5 Was it
God that she was worshipping, or was it only the earth 5 The joy ebbed out of
her heart, to be succeeded by the cold, uncomfortable feeling that she had been
betrayed into a half-pagan ecstasy. She admonished herself None of that ,
Dorothy! No Nature-worship, please 1 Her father had warned her against
Nature-worship She had heard him preach more than one sermon against it; it
was, he said, mere pantheism, and, what seemed to offend him even more, a
disgusting modem fad Dorothy took a thorn of the wild rose, and pricked her
arm three times, to remind herself of the Three Persons of the Trinity, before
288 A Clergyman's Daughter
climbing over the gate and remounting her bicycle
A black, very dusty shovel hat was approaching round the corner of the
hedge It was Father McGuire, the Roman Catholic priest, also bicycling his
rounds He was a very large, rotund man, so large that he dwarfed the bicycle
beneath him and seemed to be balanced on top of it like a golf-ball on a tee His
face was rosy, humorous, and a little sly
Dorothy looked suddenly unhappy She turned pink, and her hand moved
instinctively to the neighbourhood of the gold cross beneath her dress Father
McGuire was riding towards her with an untroubled, faintly amused air She
made an endeavour to smile, and murmured unhappily, ‘Good morning 1 But
he rode on without a sign, his eyes swept easily over her face and then beyond
her into vacancy, with an admirable pretence of not having noticed her
existence It was the Cut Direct Dorothy-by nature, alas' unequal to
delivering the Cut Direct- got on to her bicycle and rode away, struggling with
the uncharitable thoughts which a meeting with Father McGuire never failed
to arouse m her
Five or six years earlier, when Father McGuire was holding a funeral in St
Athelstan’s churchyard (there was no Roman Catholic cemetery at Knype
Hill), there had been some dispute with the Rector about the propriety of
Father McGuire robing in the church, or not robing in the church, and the two
priests had wrangled disgracefully over the open grave Since then they had
not been on speaking terms It was better so, the Rector said
As to the other ministers of religion m Knype Hill-Mr Ward the
Congregationalist minister, Mr Foley the Wesleyan pastor, and the braying
bald-headed elder who conducted the orgies at Ebenezer Chapel-the Rector
called them a pack of vulgar Dissenters and had forbidden Dorothy on pain of
his displeasure to have anything to do with them
5
It was twelve o’clock In the large, dilapidated conservatory, whose roof-
panes, from the action of time and dirt, were dim, green, and iridescent like old
Roman glass, they were having a hurried and noisy rehearsal of Charles I
Dorothy was not actually taking part in the rehearsal, but was busy making
costumes She made the costumes, or most of them, for all the plays the
schoolchildren acted- The production and stage management were m the
hands of Victor Stone-Victor, Dorothy called him-the Church school-
master He was a small-boned, excitable, black-haired youth of twenty-seven,
dressed in dark sub-clerical clothes, and at this moment he was gesturing
fiercely with a roll of manuscript at six dense-lookmg children On a long
bench against the wall four more children were alternately practising ‘noises
A Clergyman’s Daughter 289
off’ by clashing fire-irons together, and squabbling over a grimy little bag of
Spearmint Bouncers, forty a penny
It was horribly hot in the conservatory, and there was a powerful smell of
glue and the sour sweat of children Dorothy was kneeling on the floor, with
her mouth full of pms and a pair of shears in her hand, rapidly slicing sheets of
brown paper into long narrow strips The glue-pot was bubbling on an oil-
stove beside her, behind her, on the rickety, ink-stained work-table, were a
tangle of half-finished costumes, more sheets of brown paper, her sewing-
machine, bundles of tow, shards of dry glue, wooden swords, and open pots of
paint With half her mmd Dorothy was meditating upon the two pairs of
seventeenth-century jackboots that had got to be made for Charles I and
Oliver Cromwell, and with the other half listening to the angry shouts of
Victor, who was working himself up into a rage, as he invariably did at
rehearsals He was a natural actor, and withal thoroughly bored by the
drudgery of rehearsing half-witted children He strode up and down,
haranguing the children m a vehement slangy style, and every now and then
breaking off to lunge at one or other of them with a wooden sword that he had
grabbed from the table
Tut a bit of life into it, can’t you 5 ’ he cried, plodding an ox-faced boy of
eleven in the belly ‘Don’t drone 1 Say it as if it meant something' You look like
a corpse that’s been buried and dug up again What’s the good of gurgling it
down m your inside like that 5 Stand up and shout at him Take off that second
murderer expression' 5
‘Come here, Percy' 5 cried Dorothy through her pins ‘Quick 1 ’
She was making the armour-the worst job of the lot, except those wretched
jackboots-out of glue and brown paper From long practice Dorothy could
make very nearly anything out of glue and brown paper, she could even make a
passably good periwig, with a brown paper skull-cap and dyed tow for the hair
Taking the year through, the amount of time she spent m struggling with glue,
brown paper, butter muslin, and all the other paraphernalia of amateur
theatricals was enormous So chronic was the need of money for all the church
funds that hardly a month ever passed when there was not a school play or a
pageant or an exhibition of tableaux vivants on hand-not to mention the
bazaars and jumble sales
As Percy-Percy Jowett, the blacksmith’s son, a small curly-headed boy-got
down from the bench and stood wriggling unhappily before her, Dorothy
seized a sheet of brown paper, measured it against him, snipped out the
neckhole and armholes, draped it round his middle and rapidly pinned it into
the shape of a rough breastplate There was a confused dm of voices.
victor Come on, now, come on! Enter Oliver Cromwell-that’s you! No, not
like that' Do you think Oliver Cromwell would come slinking on like a dog
that’s just had a hiding? Stand up. Stick your chest out. Scowl. That’s
better Now go on, Cromwell : ‘Halt! I hold a pistol m my hand! ’ Go on
a girl’ Please, Miss, Mother said as I was to tell you, Miss-
dorothy Keep still, Percy' For goodness’ sake keep still'
290 A Clergyman's Daughter
cromwell ’Alt' I ’old a pistol in my ’and 1
a small girl on the bench Mister' I’ve dropped my sweetie' [Snivelling] I’ve
dropped by swee-e-e-etie'
victor No, no, no, Tommie' No, no, no'
the girl Please, Miss, Mother said as I was to tell you as she couldn’t make
my knickers like she promised, Miss, because-
dorothy You’ll make me swallow a pin if you do that again
cromwell i/alt' I hold a pistol -
the small girl [in tears] My swee-e-e-e-eetie'
Dorothy seized the glue-brush, and with feverish speed pasted strips of
brown paper all over Percy’s thorax, up and down, backwards and forwards,
one on top of another, pausing only when the paper stuck to her fingers In five
minutes she had made a cuirass of glue and brown paper stout enough, when it
was dry, to have defied a real sword-blade Percy, ‘locked up in complete steel’
and with the sharp paper edge cutting his chin, looked down at himself with
the miserable resigned expression of a dog having its bath Dorothy took the
shears, slit the breastplate up one side, set it on end to dry and started
immediately on another child A fearful clatter broke out as the ‘noises off
began practising the sound of pistol-shots and horses galloping Dorothy’s
fingers were getting stickier and stickier, but from time to time she washed
some of the glue off them in a bucket of hot water that was kept- in readiness In
twenty minutes she had partially completed three breastplates Later on they
would have to be finished off, painted over with aluminium paint and laced up
the sides, and after that there was the job of making the thigh-pieces, and,
worst of all, the helmets to go with them Victor, gesticulating with his sword
and shouting to overcome the dm of galloping horses, was personating m turn
Oliver Cromwell, Charles I, Roundheads, Cavaliers, peasants, and Court
ladies The children were now growing restive and beginning to yawn, whine,
and exchange furtive kicks and pinches The breastplates finished for the
moment, Dorothy swept some of the litter off the table, pulled her sewing-
machine into position and set to work on a Cavalier’s green velvet doublet-it
was butter muslin Twmked green, but it looked all right at a distance
There was another ten minutes of feverish work Dorothy broke her thread,
all but said ‘Damn 1 ’ checked herself and hurriedly re-threaded the needle She
was working against time The play was now a fortnight distant, and there was
such a multitude of things yet to be made-helmets, doublets, swords,
jackboots (those miserable jackboots had been haunting her like a nightmare
for days past), scabbards, ruffles, wigs, spurs, scenery-that her heart sank
when she thought of them The children’s parents never helped with the
costumes for the school plays, more exactly, they always promised to help and
then backed out afterwards, Dorothy’s head was aching diabolically, partly
from the heat of the conservatory, partly from the strain of simultaneously
sewing and trying to visualize patterns for brown paper jackboots For the
moment she had even forgotten the bill for twenty-one pounds seven and
nmepence at Cargill’s She could think of nothing save that fearful mountain
A Clergyman’s Daughter 291
of unmade clothes that lay ahead of her It was so throughout the day One
thing loomed up after another- whether it was the costumes for the school play
or the collapsing floor of the belfry, or the shop -debts or the bindweed in the
peas-and each in its turn so urgent and so harassing that it blotted all the
others out of existence
Victor threw down his wooden sword, took out his watch and looked at it
‘That’ll do 1 ’ he said m the abrupt, ruthless tone from which he never
departed when he was dealing with children ‘We’ll go on on Friday Clear out,
the lot of you 1 I’m sick of the sight of you ’
He watched the children out, and then, having forgotten their existence as
soon as they were out of his sight, produced a page of music from his pocket
and began to fidget up and down, cocking his eye at two forlorn plants m the
corner which trailed their dead brown tendrils over the edges of their pots
Dorothy was still bending over her machine, stitching up the seams of the
green velvet doublet
Victor was a restless, intelligent little creature, and only happy when he was
quarrelling with somebody or something His pale, fine-featured face wore an
expression that appeared to be discontent and was really boyish eagerness
People meeting him for the first time usually said that he was wasting his
talents in his obscure job as a village schoolmaster, but the truth was that
Victor had no very marketable talents except a slight gift for music and a much
more pronounced gift for dealing with children Ineffectual m other ways, he
was excellent with children, he had the proper, ruthless attitude towards them
But of course, like everyone else, he despised his own especial talent His
interests were almost purely ecclesiastical He was what people call a churchy
young man It had always been his ambition to enter the Church, and he would
actually have done so if he had possessed the kind of brain that is capable of
learning Greek and Hebrew Debarred from the priesthood, he had drifted
quite naturally into his position as a Church schoolmaster and organist It kept
him, so to speak, within the Church precincts Needless to say, he was an
Anglo-Catholic of the most truculent Church Times breed-more clerical than
the clerics, knowledgeable about Church history, expert on vestments, and
ready at any moment with a furious tirade against Modernists, Protestants,
scientists, Bolshevists, and atheists
‘I was thinking,’ said Dorothy as she stopped her machine and snipped off
the thread, ‘we might make those helmets out of old bowler hats, if we can get
hold of enough of them Cut the brims off, put on paper brims of the right
shape and silver them over ’
‘Oh Lord, why worry your head about such things? ’ said Victor, who had
lost interest m the play the moment the rehearsal was over
‘It’s those wretched jackboots that are worrying me the most,’ said Dorothy,
taking the doublet on to her knee and looking at it
‘Oh, bother the jackboots 1 Let’s stop thinking about the play for a moment.
Look here,’ said Victor, unrolling his page of music, ‘I want you to speak to
your father for me I wish you’d ask him whether we can’t have a procession
some time next month ’
292 A Clergyman ’s Daughter
‘Another procession? What for? ’
‘Oh, I don’t know You can always find an excuse for a procession There’s
the Nativity of the B V M coming off on the eighth-that’s good enough for a
procession, I should think We’ll do it in style I’ve got hold of a splendid
rousing hymn that they can all bellow, and perhaps we could borrow their blue
banner with the Virgin Mary on it from St Wedekind’s in Millborough If he’ll
say the word I’ll start practising the choir at once ’
‘You know he’ll only say no,’ said Dorothy, threading a needle to sew
buttons on the doublet ‘He doesn’t really approve of processions It’s much
better not to ask him and make him angry ’
‘Oh, but dash it all'’ protested Victor ‘It’s simply months since we’ve had a
procession I never saw such dead-alive services as we have here You’d think
we were a Baptist chapel or something, from the way we go on ’
Victor chafed ceaselessly against the dull correctness of the Rector’s
services His ideal was what he called ‘the real Catholic worship ’-meaning
unlimited incense, gilded images, and more Roman vestments In his capacity
of organist he was for ever pressing for more processions, more voluptuous
music, more elaborate chanting in the liturgy, so that it was a continuous pull
devil, pull baker between him and the Rector And on this point Dorothy sided
with her father Having been brought up in the peculiar, frigid via media of
Anglicanism, she was by nature averse to and half-afraid of anything
‘ritualistic’
‘But dash it all*’ went on Victor, ‘a procession is such fun' Down the aisle,
out through the west door and back through the south door, with the choir
carrying candles behind and the Boy Scouts in front with the banner It would
look fine ’ He sang a stave in a thin but tuneful tenor
‘Hail thee. Festival Day, blest day that art hallowed for ever 1 ’
‘If I had my way,’ he added, ‘I’d have a couple of boys swinging jolly good
censers of incense at the same time ’
‘Yes, but you know how much Father dislikes that kind of thing Especially
when it’s anything to do with the Virgin Mary He says it’s all Roman Fever
and leads to people crossing themselves and genuflecting at the wrong times
and goodness knows what You remember what happened at Advent ’
The previous year, on his own responsibility, Victor had chosen as one of
the hymns for Advent, Number 642, with the refrain ‘Hail Mary, hail Mary,
hail Mary full of grace*’ This piece of popishness had annoyed the Rector
extremely At the close of the first verse he had pointedly laid down his hymn
book, turned round in his stall and stood regarding the congregation with an
air so stony that some of the choirboys faltered and almost broke down
Afterwards he had said that to hear the rustics bawling ‘’Ail Mary' ’Ail Mary*’
made him think he was m the four-ale bar of the Dog and Bottle
‘But dash it'’ said Victor m his aggrieved way, ‘your father always puts his
foot down when I try and get a bit of life into the service He won’t allow us
mcense, or decent music, or proper vestments, or anything And what’s the
result? We can’t get enough people to fill the church a quarter full, even on
Easter Sunday You look round the church on Sunday morning, and it’s
A Clei gyman’ s Daughter 293
nothing but the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides and a few old women ’
‘I know It’s dreadful,’ admitted Dorothy, sewing on her button ‘It doesn’t
seem to make any difference what we do- we simply can’t get the people to
come to church Still,’ she added, ‘they do come to us to be married and
buried And I don’t think the congregation’s actually gone down this year
There were nearly two hundred people at Easter Communion ’
‘Two hundred* It ought to be two thousand That’s the population of this
town The fact is that three quarters of the people in this place never go near a
church in their lives The Church has absolutely lost its hold over them They
don’t know that it exists And why’ That’s what I’m getting at Why’’
‘I suppose it’s all this Science and Free Thought and all that,’ said Dorothy
rather sententiously, quoting her father
This remark deflected Victor from what he had been about to say He had
been on the very point of saying that St Athelstan’s congregation had dwindled
because of the dullness of the services, but the hated words of Science and Free
Thought set him off in another and even more familiar channel
‘Of course it’s this so-called Free Thought*’ he exclaimed, immediately
beginning to fidget up and down again ‘It’s these swine of atheists like
Bertrand Russell and Julian Huxley and all that crowd And what’s ruined the
Church is that instead of jolly well answering them and showing them up for
the fools and liars they are, we just sit tight and let them spread their beastly
atheist propaganda wherever they choose It’s all the fault of the bishops, of
course ’ (Like every Anglo-Catholic, Victor had an abysmal contempt for
bishops ) ‘They’re all Modernists and time-servers By Jove*’ he added more
cheerfully, halting, ‘did you see my letter m the Church Times last week’’
‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t,’ said Dorothy, holding another button m position
with her thumb ‘What was it about’’
‘Oh, Modernist bishops and all that I got m a good swipe at old Barnes ’
It was very rarely that a week passed when Victor did not write a letter to the
Church Times He was m the thick of every controversy and in the forefront of
every assault qpon Modernists and atheists He had twice been in combat with
Dr Major, had written letters of withering irony about Dean Inge and the
Bishop of Birmingham, and had not hesitated to attack even the fiendish
Russell himself-but Russell, of course, had not dared to reply Dorothy, to tell
the truth, very seldom read the Church Times, and the Rector grew angry if he
so much as saw a copy of it m the house The weekly paper they took in the
Rectory was the High Churchman’s Gazette -a fine old High Tory anachronism
with a small and select circulation
‘That swine Russell*’ said Victor reminiscently, with his hands deep m his
pockets ‘How he does make my blood boil*’
‘Isn’t that the man who’s such a clever mathematician, or something’’ said
Dorothy, biting off her thread
‘Oh, I dare say he’s clever enough in his own line, of course,’ admitted
Victor grudgingly ‘But what’s that got to do with it’ Just because a man’s
clever at figures it doesn’t mean to say that- well, anyway* Let’s come back to
what I was saying. Why is it that we can’t get people to come to church in this
294 A Clergyman’s Daughter
placed It’s because our services are so dreary and godless, that’s what it is
People want worship that is worship-they want the real Catholic worship of
the real Catholic Church we belong to And they don’t get if from us All they
get is the old Protestant mumbo-jumbo, and Protestantism’s as dead as a
doornail, and everyone knows it ’
‘That’s not true 1 ’ said Dorothy rather sharply as she pressed the third
button into place ‘You know we’re not Protestants Father’s always saying
that the Church of England is the Catholic Church-he’s preached I don’t
know how many sermons about the Apostolic Succession That’s why Lord
Pockthorne and the others won’t come to church here Only he won’t join m
the Anglo-Catholic movement because he thinks they’re too fond of ritualism
for its own sake And so do I ’
‘Oh, I don’t say your father isn’t absolutely sound on doctrme-absolutely
sound But if he thinks we’re the Catholic Church, why doesn’t he hold the
service in a proper Catholic way? It’s a shame we can’t have incense
occasionally And his ideas about vestments-if you don’t mmd my saying
lt-are simply awful On Easter Sunday he was wearing a Gothic cope with a
modern Italian lace alb Dash it, it’s like wearing a top hat with brown boots ’
‘Well, I don’t think vestments are so important as you do,’ said Dorothy ‘I
think it’s the spirit of the priest that matters, not the clothes he wears ’
‘That’s the kind of thing a Primitive Methodist would say 1 ’ exclaimed
Victor disgustedly ‘Of course vestments are important 1 Where’s the sense of
worshipping at all if we can’t make a proper job of it? Now, if you want to see
what real Catholic worship can be like, look at St Wedekind’s m Millborough'
By Jove, they do things in style there 1 Images of the Virgin, reservation of the
Sacrament-everythmg They’ve had the Kensitites on to them three times,
and they simply defy the Bishop ’
‘Oh, I hate the way they go on at St Wedekind’s 1 ’ said Dorothy ‘They’re
absolutely spiky You can hardly see what’s happening at the altar, there are
such clouds of incense I think people like that ought to turn Roman Catholic
and have done with it ’
‘My dear Dorothy, you ought to have been a Nonconformist You really
ought A Plymouth Brother-or a Plymouth Sister or whatever it’s called I
think your favourite hymn must be Number 567, “O my God I fear Thee,
Thou art very High 1 ” ’
‘Yours is Number 231, “I nightly pitch my moving tent a day’s march
nearer Rome*’” retorted Dorothy, winding the thread round the last button
The argument continued for several minutes while Dorothy adorned a
Cavalier’s beaver hat (it was an old black felt school hat of her own) with plume
and ribbons She and Victor were never long together without being involved
in an argument upon the question of ‘ritualism’ In Dorothy’s opinion Victor
was a kind to ‘go over to Rome’ if not prevented, and she was very likely right
But Victor was not yet aware of his probable destiny At present the fevers of
the Anglo-Catholic movement, with its ceaseless exciting warfare on three
fronts at once-Protestants to right of you, Modernists to the left of you, and,
unfortunately, Roman Catholics to rear of you and always ready for a sly kick
A Clergyman’s Daughter 293
in the pants-filled his mental horizon Scoring off Dr Major m the Church
Times meant more to him than any of the serious business of life But for all his
churchmess he had not an atom of real piety m his constitution It was
essentially as a game that religious controversy appealed to him-the most
absorbing game ever invented, because it goes on for ever and because just a
little cheating is allowed
‘Thank goodness, that’s done 1 ’ said Dorothy, twiddling the Cavalier’s
beaver hat round on her hand and then putting it down ‘Oh dear, what piles of
things there are still to do, though' I wish I could get those wretched jackboots
off my mind What’s the time, Victor’’
‘It’s nearly five to one ’
‘Oh, good gracious 1 I must run I’ve got three omelettes to make I daren’t
trust them to Ellen And, oh, Victor' Have you got anything you can give us for
the jumble sale’ If you had an old pair of trousers you could give us, that would
be best of all, because we can always sell trousers ’
‘Trousers’ No But I tell you what I have got, though I’ve got a copy of The
Pilgrim’s Progress and another of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs that I’ve been
wanting to get rid of for years Beastly Protestant trash' An old Dissenting aunt
of mine gave them to me -Doesn’t it make you sick, all this cadging for
pennies’ Now, if we only held our services m a proper Catholic way, so that we
could get up a proper congregation, don’t you see, we shouldn’t need-’
‘That’ll be splendid,’ said Dorothy ‘We always have a stall for books-we
charge a penny for each book, and nearly all of them get sold We simply must
make that jumble sale a success, Victor' I’m countmg on Miss Mayfill to give
us something really nice What I’m specially hoping is that she might give us
that beautiful old Lowestoft china tea service of hers, and we could sell it for
five pounds at least I’ve been making special prayers all the morning that
she’ll give it to us ’
‘Oh’’ said Victor, less enthusiastically than usual Like Proggett earlier m
the morning, he was embarrassed by the word ‘prayer’ He was ready to talk all
day long about a point of ritual, but the mention of private devotions struck
him as slightly indecent ‘Don’t forget to ask your father about the procession,’
he said, getting back to a more congenial topic
‘All right. I’ll ask him But you know how it’ll be He’ll only get annoyed and
say it’s Roman Fever ’
‘Oh, damn Roman Fever' 5 said Victor, who, unlike Dorothy, did not set
himself penances for swearing
Dorothy hurried to the kitchen, discovered that there were only five eggs to
make the omelettes for three people, and decided to make one large omelette and
swell it out a bit with the cold boiled potatoes left over from yesterday. With a
short prayer for the success of the omelette (for omelettes are so dreadfully apt
to get broken when you take them out of the pan), she whipped up the eggs,
while Victor made off down the drive, half wistfully and half sulkily humming
‘Hail thee, Festival Day’, and passing on his way a disgusted-lookmg
manservant carrying the two handleless chamber-pots which were Miss
May fill’s contribution to the jumble sale
6
It was a little after ten o’clock Various things had happened-nothmg,
however, of any particular importance, only the usual round of parish jobs that
filled up Dorothy’s afternoon and evening Now, as she had arranged earlier in
the day, she was at Mr Warburton’s house, and was trying to hold her own in
one of those meandering arguments in which he delighted to entangle her
They were talking-but indeed, Mr Warburton never failed to manoeuvre
the conversation towards this subject-about the question of religious belief
‘My dear Dorothy,’ he was saying argumentatively, as he walked up and
down with one hand in his coat pocket and the other manipulating a Brazilian
cigar ‘My dear Dorothy, you don’t seriously mean to tell me that at your
age-twenty-seven, I believe-and with your intelligence, you will retain your
religious beliefs more or less in toto > ’
‘Of course I do You know I do ’
‘Oh, come, now 1 The whole bag of tricks? All that nonsense that you learned
at your mother’s knee-surely you’re not going to pretend to me that you still
believe m it? But of course you don’t 1 You can’t 1 You’re afraid to own up,
that’s all it is No need to worry about that here, you know The Rural Dean’s
wife isn’t listening, and / won’t give the show away ’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “all that nonsense”/ began Dorothy, sitting
up straighter m her chair, a little offended
‘Well, let’s take an instance Something particularly hard to swallow-Hell,
for instance Do you believe in Hell? When I say believe , mind you. I’m not
asking whether you believe it m some milk and water metaphorical way like
these Modernist bishops young Victor Stone gets so excited about I mean do
you believe in it literally? Do you believe m Hell as you believe m Australia? ’
‘Yes, of course I do,’ said Dorothy, and she endeavoured to explain to him
that the existence of Hell is much more real and permanent than the existence
of Australia
‘Hm,’ said Mr Warburton, unimpressed ‘Very sound in its way, of course
But what always makes me so suspicious of you religious people is that you’re
so deucedly cold-blooded about your beliefs It shows a very poor imagination,
to say the least of it Here am I an mfidel and blasphemer and neck deep m at
least six out of the Seven Deadly, and obviously doomed to eternal torment
There’s no knowing that in an hour’s time I mayn’t be roasting in the hottest
part of Hell And yet you can sit there talking to me as calmly as though I’d
nothing the matter with me Now, if I’d merely got cancer or leprosy or some
A Clergyman's Daughter 297
other bodily ailment, you’d be quite distressed about lt-at least, I like to flatter
myself that you would Whereas, when I’m going to sizzle on the grid
throughout eternity, you seem positively unconcerned about it ’
‘I never said you were going to Hell,’ said Dorothy somewhat
uncomfortably, and wishing that the conversation would take a different turn
For the truth was, though she was not gomg to tell him so, that the point Mr
Warburton had raised was one with which she herself had had certain
difficulties She did indeed believe in Hell, but she had never been able to
persuade herself that anyone actually went there She believed that Hell
existed, but that it was empty Uncertain of the orthodoxy of this belief, she
preferred to keep it to herself ‘It’s never certain that anyone is gomg to Hell,’
she said more firmly, feeling that here at least she was on sure ground
‘What 1 ’ said Mr Warburton, halting m mock surprise ‘Surely you don’t
mean to say that there’s hope for me yet’’
‘Of course there is It’s only those horrid Predestination people who pretend
that you go to Hell whether you repent or not You don’t think the Church of
England are Calvinists, do you’’
‘I suppose there’s always the chance of getting off on a plea of Invincible
Ignorance,’ said Mr Warburton reflectively, and then, more confidently ‘Do
you know, Dorothy, I’ve a sort of feeling that even now, after knowing me two
years, you’ve still half an idea you can make a convert of me A lost
sheep-brand plucked from the burning, and all that I believe you still hope
against hope that one of these days my eyes will be opened and you’ll meet me
at Holy Communion at seven o’clock on some damned cold winter morning
Don’t you’’
‘Well-’ said Dorothy, again uncomfortably She did, m fact, entertain some
such hope about Mr Warburton, though he was not exactly a promising case
for conversion It was not in her nature to see a fellow being m a state of
unbelief without making some effort to reclaim him What hours she had
spent, at different times, earnestly debating with vague village atheists who
could not produce a single intelligible reason for their unbelief 1 ‘Yes,’ she
admitted finally, not particularly wanting to make the admission, but not
wanting to prevaricate
Mr Warburton laughed delightedly.
‘You’ve a hopeful nature,’ he said ‘But you aren’t afraid, by any chance, that
I might convert you? “The dog it was that died”, you may remember ’
At this Dorothy merely smiled ‘Don’t let him see he’s shocking you’-that
was always her maxim when she was talking to Mr Warburton. They had been
arguing m this manner, without coming to any kmd of conclusion, for the past
hour, and might have gone on for the rest of the night if Dorothy had been
willing to stay, for Mr Warburton delighted in teasing her about her religious
beliefs He had that fatal cleverness that so often goes with unbelief, and in
their arguments, though Dorothy was always right, she was not Sways
victorious They were sitting, or rather Dorothy was sitting and Mr
Warburton was standing, m a large agreeable room, giving on a moonlit lawn,
that Mr Warburton called his ‘studio’ -not that there was any sign of work ever
2^8 A Clergyman's Daughter
having been done in it To Dorothy’s great disappointment, the celebrated Mr
Bewley had not turned up (As a matter of fact, neither Mr Bewley, nor his
wife, nor his novel entitled Fishpools and Concubines , actually existed Mr
Warburton had invented all three of them on the spur of the moment, as a
pretext for inviting Dorothy to his house, well knowing that she would never
come unchaperoned ) Dorothy had felt rather uneasy on finding that Mr
Warburton was alone It had occurred to her, indeed she had felt perfectly
certain, that it would be wiser to go home at once, but she had stayed, chiefly
because she was horribly tired and the leather armchair into which Mr
Warburton had thrust her the moment she entered the house was too
comfortable to leave Now, however, her conscience was pricking her It didn't
do to stay too late at his house-people would talk if they heard of it Besides,
there was a multitude of jobs that she ought to be doing and that she had
neglected in order to come here She was so little used to idleness that even an
hour spent m mere talking seemed to her vaguely sinful
She made an effort, and straightened herself in the too-comfortable chair C I
think, if you don’t mind, it’s really time I was getting home,’ she said
‘Talking of Invincible Ignorance,’ went on Mr Warburton, taking no notice
of Dorothy’s remark, ‘I forget whether I ever told you that once when I was
standing outside the World’s End pub m Chelsea, waiting for a taxi, a damned
ugly little Salvation Army lassie came up to me and said-without any kind of
introduction, you know-“What will you say at the Judgement Seat? ” I said,
“I am reserving my defence ” Rather neat, I think, don’t you? ’
Dorothy did not answer Her conscience had given her another and harder
jab-she had remembered those wretched, unmade jackboots, and the fact that
at least one of them had got to be made tonight She was, however, unbearably
tired She had had an exhausting afternoon, starting off with ten miles or so
bicycling to and fro in the sun, delivering the parish magazine, and continuing
with the Mothers’ Union tea in the hot little wooden-walled room behind the
parish hall The Mothers met every Wednesday afternoon to have tea and do
some charitable sewing while Dorothy read aloud to them (At present she was
reading Gene Stratton Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlosl ) It was nearly always
upon Dorothy that jobs of that kind devolved, because the phalanx of devoted
women (the church fowls, they are called) who do the dirty work of most
parishes had dwindled at Knype Hill to four or five at most The only helper on
whom Dorothy ^ould count at all regularly was Miss Foote, a tall, rabbit-
faced, dithering virgin of thirty-five, who meant well but made a mess of
everything and was in a perpetual state of flurry Mr Warburton used to say
that she reminded him of a comet- ‘a ridiculous blunt-nosed creature rushing
round on an eccentric orbit and always a little behind time’ You could trust
Miss Foote with the church decorations, but not with the Mothers or the
Sunday School, because, though a regular churchgoer, her orthodoxy was
suspect She had confided to Dorothy that she could worship God best under
the blue dome of the sky After tea Dorothy had dashed up to the church to put
fresh flowers on the altar, and then she had typed out her father’s sermon-her
typewriter was a rickety pre-Boer War ‘invisible’, on which you couldn’t
A Clergyman’s Daughter 299
average eight hundred words an hour-and after supper she had weeded the
pea rows until the light failed and her back seemed to be breaking With one
thing and another, she was even more tired than usual
‘I really must be getting home,’ she repeated more firmly ‘I’m sure it’s
getting fearfully late ’
‘Home? ’ said Mr Warburton ‘Nonsense' The evening’s hardly begun ’
He was walking up and down the room again, with his hands in his coat
pockets, having thrown away his cigar The spectre of the unmade jackboots
stalked back into Dorothy’s mind She would, she suddenly decided, make two
jackboots tonight instead of only one, as a penance for the hour she had wasted
She was just beginning to make a mental sketch of the way she would cut out
the pieces of brown paper for the msteps, when she noticed that Mr
Warburton had halted behind her chair
‘What time is it, do you know? ’ she said
‘I dare say it might be half past ten But people like you and me don’t talk of
such vulgar subjects as the time ’
‘If it’s half past ten, then I really must be going,’ said Dorothy I’ve got a
whole lot of work to do before I go to bed ’
‘Work' At this time of night? Impossible'’
‘Yes, I have I’ve got to make a pair of jackboots ’
‘You’ve got to make a pair of what? said Mr Warburton
‘Of jackboots For the play the schoolchildren are acting We make them out
of glue and brown paper ’
‘Glue and brown paper' Good God 1 ’ murmured Mr Warburton He went
on, chiefly to cover the fact that he was drawing nearer to Dorothy’s chair
‘What a life you lead' Messing about with glue and brown paper m the middle
of the night' I must say, there are times when I feel just a little glad that I’m not
a clergyman’s daughter ’
‘I think-’ began Dorothy
But at the same moment Mr Warburton, invisible behind her chair, had
lowered his hands and taken her gently by the shoulders Dorothy immediately
wriggled herself m an effort to get free of him, but Mr Warburton pressed her
back into her place
‘Keep still,’ he said peaceably
‘Let me go'’ exclaimed Dorothy
Mr Warburton ran his right hand caressingly down her upper arm There
was something very revealing, very characteristic in the way he did it, it was
the lingering, appraising touch of a man to whom a woman’s body is valuable
precisely m the same way as though it were something to eat
‘You really have extraordinary nice arms,’ he said ‘How on earth have you
managed to remain unmarried all these years? ’
‘Let me go at once'’ repeated Dorothy, beginning to struggle again
‘But I don’t particularly want to let you go,’ objected Mr Warburton
* Please don’t stroke my arm like that' I don’t like it' 5
‘What a curious child you are' Why don’t you like it? 5
‘I tell you I don’t like it' 5
yoo A Clergyman ’ ? Daughtei
‘Now don’t go and turn round,’ said Mr Warburton mildly ‘ Y ou don’t seem
to realize how tactful it was on my part to approach you from behind your
back If you turn round you’ll see that I’m old enough to be your father, and
hideously bald into the bargain But if you’ll only keep still and not look at me
you can imagine I’m Ivor Novello ’
Dorothy caught sight of the hand that was caressing her- a large, pink, ver>
masculine hand, with thick fingers and a fleece of gold hairs upon the back She
turned very pale, the expression of her face altered from mere annoyance to
aversion and dread She made a violent effort, wrenched herself free, and stood
up, facing him
‘I do wish you wouldn’t do that 1 ’ she said, half in anger and half in distress
‘What is the matter with you’’ said Mr Warburton
He had stood upright, in his normal pose, entirely unconcerned, and he
looked at her with a touch of curiosity Her face had changed It was not only
that she had turned pale, there was a withdrawn, half-frightened look in her
eyes-almost as though, for the moment, she were looking at him with the eyes
of a stranger He perceived that he had wounded her m some way which he did
not understand, and which perhaps she did not want him to understand
‘What is the matter with you’’ he repeated
'Why must you do that every time you meet me’’
“‘Every time I meet you” is an exaggeration,’ said Mr Warburton ‘It’s
really very seldom that I get the opportunity But if you really and truly don’t
like it-’
‘Of course I don’t like it' You know I don’t like it 1 ’
‘Well, well 1 Then let’s say no more about it,’ said Mr Warburton
generously ‘Sit down, and we’ll change the subject ’
He was totally devoid of shame It was perhaps his most outstanding
characteristic Having attempted to seduce her, and failed, he was quite willing
to go on with the conversation as though nothing whatever had happened
‘I’m going home at once,’ said Dorothy ‘I can’t stay here any longer ’
‘Oh nonsense 1 Sit down and forget about it We’ll talk of moral theology, or
cathedral architecture, or the Girl Guides’ cooking classes, or anything you
choose Think how bored I shall be all alone if you go home at this hour ’
But Dorothy persisted, and there was an argument Even if it had not been
his intention to make love to her-and whatever he might promise he would
certainly begin again m a few minutes if she did not go-Mr Warburton would
have pressed her to stay, for, like all thoroughly idle people, he had a horror of
going to bed and no conception of the value of time He would, if you let him,
keep you talking till three or four m the morning Even when Dorothy finally
escaped, he walked beside her down the moonlit drive, still talking
voluminously and with such perfect good humour that she found it impossible
to be angry with him any longer
‘I’m leaving first thing tomorrow,’ he told her as they reached the gate ‘I’m
going to take the car to town and pick up the kids- the bastards, , you know- and
we’re leaving for France the next day I’m not certain where we shall go after
that, eastern Europe, perhaps Prague, Vienna, Bucharest ’
A Clergyman" s Daughter 301
‘How nice,’ said Dorothy
Mr Warburton, with an adroitness surprising m so large and stout a man,
had manoeuvred himself between Dorothy and the gate
‘I shall be away six months or more,’ he said ‘And of course I needn’t ask,
before so long a parting, whether you want to kiss me good-bye ? ’
Before she knew what he was doing he had put his arm about her and drawn
her against him She drew back-too late, he kissed her on the cheek-would
have kissed her on the mouth if she had not turned her head away in time She
struggled in his arms, violently and for a moment helplessly
‘Oh, let me go'’ she cried ‘ Do let me go! ’
‘I believe I pointed out before,’ said Mr Warburton, holding her easily
against him, ‘that I don’t want to let you go ’
‘But we’re standing right m front of Mrs SemprilPs window' She’ll see us
absolutely for certain'’
‘Oh, good God' So she will 1 ’ said Mr Warburton ‘I was forgetting ’
Impressed by this argument, as he would not have been by any other, he let
Dorothy go She promptly put the gate between Mr Warburton and herself
He, meanwhile, was scrutinizing Mrs Sempnll’s windows
‘I can’t see a light anywhere,’ he said finally ‘With any luck the blasted hag
hasn’t seen us ’
‘Good-bye,’ said Dorothy briefly ‘This time I really must go Remember me
to the children ’
With this she made off as fast as she could go without actually running, to get
out of his reach before he should attempt to kiss her again
Even as she did so a sound checked her for an mstant-the unmistakable
bang of a window shutting, somewhere in Mrs Semprill’s house Could Mrs
Semprill have been watching them after alP But (reflected Dorothy) of course
she had been watching them' What else could you expect^ You could hardly
imagine Mrs Semprill missing such a scene as that And if she had been
watching them, undoubtedly the story would be all over the town tomorrow
morning, and it would lose nothing in the telling But this thought, sinister
though it was, did no more than flight momentarily through Dorothy’s mind as
she hurried down the road
When she was well out of sight of Mr Warburton’s house she stopped, took
out her handkerchief and scrubbed the place on her cheek where he had kissed
her She scrubbed it vigorously enough to bring the blood into her cheek It
was not until she had quite rubbed out the imaginary stam which his bps had
left there that she walked on again
What he had done had upset her Even now her heart was knocking and
fluttering uncomfortably I can’t hear that kind of thing' she repeated to herself
several times over And unfortunately this was no more than the literal truth,
she really could not bear it To be kissed or fondled by a man- to feel heavy
male arms about her and thick male lips bearing down upon her own-was
terrifying and repulsive to her Even m memory or imagination it made her
wmce It was her especial secret, the especial, incurable disability that she
carried through life
go 2 A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
If only they would leave you alone ] she thought as she walked onwards a
little more slowly That was how she put it to herself habitually- ‘If only they
would leave you alone '’ For it was not that m other ways she disliked men On
the contrary, she liked them better than women Part of Mr Warburton’s hold
over her was m the fact that he was a man and had the careless good humour
and the intellectual largeness that women so seldom have But why couldn’t
they leave you alone > Why did they always have to kiss you and maul you
about’ They were dreadful when they kissed you-dreadful and a little
disgusting, like some large, furry beast that rubs itself against you, all too
friendly and yet liable to turn dangerous at any moment And beyond their
kissing and mauling there lay always the suggestion of those other, monstrous
things (‘all that 3 was her name for them) of which she could hardly even bear to
think
Of course, she had had her share, and rather more than her share, of casual
attention from men She was just pretty enough, and just plain enough, to be
the kind of girl that men habitually pester For when a man wants a little casual
amusement, he usually picks out a girl who is not too pretty Pretty girls (so he
reasons) are spoilt and therefore capricious, but plain girls are easy game And
even if you are a clergyman’s daughter, even if you live m a town like Knype
Hill and spend almost your entire life in parish work, you don’t altogether
escape pursuit Dorothy was all too used to it— all too used to the fattish
middle-aged men, with their fishily hopeful eyes, who slowed down their cars
when you passed them on the road, or who manoeuvred an introduction and
then began pinching your elbow about ten minutes afterwards Men of all
descriptions Even a clergyman, on one occasion-a bishop’s chaplain, he
was
But the trouble was that it was not better, but oh* infinitely worse when they
were the right kind of man and the advances they made you were honourable
Her mind slipped backwards five years, to Francis Moon, curate m those days
at St Wedekind’s in Millborough Dear Francis 1 How gladly would she have
married him if only it had not been for all that ' Over and over again he had
asked her to marry him, and of course she had had to say No, and, equally of
course, he had never known why Impossible to tell him why And then he had
gone away, and only a year later had died so irrelevantly of pneumonia She
whispered a prayer for his soul, momentarily forgetting that her father did not
really approve of prayers for the dead, and then, with an effort, pushed the
memory aside Ah, better not to think of it again' It hurt her in her breast to
think of it.
She could never marry, she had decided long ago upon that Even when she
was a child she had known it Nothing would ever overcome her horror of all
that-st the very thought of it something within her seemed to shrink and
freeze. And of course, in a sense she did not want to overcome it For, like all
abnormal people, she was not fully aware that she was abnormal
And yet, though her sexual coldness seemed to her natural and inevitable,
she knew well enough how it was that it had begun She could remember, as
clearly as though it were yesterday, certain dreadful scenes between her father
A Clergyman's Daughter 303
and her mother- scenes that she had witnessed when she was no more than
nine years old They had left a deep, secret wound m her mind And then a
little later she had been frightened by some old steel engravings of nymphs
pursued by satyrs To her childish mind there was something inexplicably,
horribly sinister in those horned, semi-human creatures that lurked m thickets
and behind large trees, ready to come bounding forth in sudden swift pursuit
For a whole year of her childhood she had actually been afraid to walk through
woods alone, for fear of satyrs She had grown out of the fear, of course, but not
out of the feeling that was associated with it The satyr had remained with her
as a symbol Perhaps she would never grow out of it, that special feeling of
dread, of hopeless flight from something more than rationally dreadful-the
stamp of hooves in the lonely wood, the lean, furry thighs of the satyr It was a
thing not to be altered, not to be argued away It is, moreover, a thing too
common nowadays, among educated women, to occasion any kind of surprise
Most of Dorothy’s agitation had disappeared by the time she reached the
Rectory The thoughts of satyrs and Mr Warburton, of Francis Moon and her
foredoomed sterility, which had been going to and fro in her mind, faded out of
it and were replaced by the accusing image of a jackboot She remembered that
she had the best part of two hours’ work to do before going to bed tonight The
house was m darkness She went round to the back and slipped m on tiptoe by
the scullery door, for fear of waking her father, who was probably asleep
already
As she felt her way through the dark passage to the conservatory, she
suddenly decided that she had gone wrong m going to Mr Warburton’s house
tonight She would, she resolved, never go there again, even when she was
certain that somebody else would be there as well Moreover, she would do
penance tomorrow for having gone there tonight Having lighted the lamp,
before doing anything else she found her ‘memo list’, which was already
written out for tomorrow, and pencilled a capital P against ‘breakfast’, P stood
for penance-no bacon again for breakfast tomorrow Then she lighted the
oilstove under the glue-pot
The light of the lamp fell yellow upon her sewing-machine and upon the pile
of half-finished clothes on the table, reminding her of the yet greater pile of
clothes that were not even begun, reminding her, also, that she was dreadfully,
overwhelmingly tired She had forgotten her tiredness at the moment when
Mr Warburton laid his hands on her shoulders, but now it had come back upon
her with double force Moreover, there was a somehow exceptional quality
about her tiredness tonight She felt, m an almost literal sense of the words,
washed out As she stood beside the table she had a sudden, very strange
feeling as though her mind had been entirely emptied, so that for several
seconds she actually forgot what it was that she had come into the conservatory
to do
Then she remembered-the jackboots, of course 1 Some contemptible little
demon whispered m her ear, ‘Why not go straight to bed and leave the
jackboots till tomorrow? ’ She uttered a prayer for strength, and pinched
herself Come on, Dorothy 1 No slacking please 1 Luke ix, 62 Then, clearing
204 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
some of the litter off the table, she got out her scissors, a pencil, and four sheets
of brown paper, and sat down to cut out those troublesome insteps for the
jackboots while the glue was boiling
When the grandfather clock in her father’s study struck midnight she was
still at work She had shaped both jackboots by this time, and was reinforcing
them by pasting narrow strips of paper all over them-a long, messy job Every
bone in her body was aching, and her eyes were sticky with sleep Indeed, it
was only rather dimly that she remembered what she was doing But she
worked on, mechanically pasting strip after strip of paper into place, and
pinching herself every two minutes to counteract the hypnotic sound of the
oilstove singing beneath the glue-pot
CHAPTER 2
I
Out of a black, dreamless sleep, with the sense of being drawn upwards
through enormous and gradually lightening abysses, Dorothy awoke to a
species of consciousness
Her eyes were still closed By degrees, however, their lids became less
opaque to the light, and then flickered open of their own accord She was
looking out upon a street-a shabby, lively street of small shops and narrow-
faced houses, with streams of men, trams, and cars passing in either direction
But as yet it could not properly be said that she was looking For the things
she saw were not apprehended as men, trams, and cars, nor as anything m
particular, they were not even apprehended as things moving, not even as
things „ She merely sazo } as an animal sees, without speculation and almost
without consciousness. The noises of the street- the confused din of voices, the
hooting of horns and the scream of the trams grinding on their gritty
rails-flowed through her head provoking purely physical responses She had
no words, nor any conception of the purpose of such things as words, nor any
consciousness of time or place, or of her own body or even of her own
existence
Nevertheless, by degrees her perceptions became sharper The stream of
moving things began to penetrate beyond her eyes and sort themselves out into
separate images in her brain She began, still wordlessly, to observe the shapes
of things A long-shaped thing swam past, supported on four other, narrower
long-shaped things, and drawing after it a square-shaped thmg balanced on
two circles, Dorothy watched it pass, and suddenly, as though spontaneously,
a word flashed into her mind The word was ‘horse’ It faded, but returned
presently in the more complex form ‘ That is a horse*’ Other words
followed- ‘house’, ‘street’, ‘tram’, ‘car’, ‘bicycle’-until m a few minutes she
had found a name for almost everything within sight She discovered the
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 305
words ‘man’ and ‘woman’, and, speculating upon these words, discovered that
she knew the difference between living and inanimate things, and between
human beings and horses, and between men and women
It was only now, after becoming aware of most of the things about her, that
she became aware of herself Hitherto she had been as it were a pair of eyes with
a receptive but purely impersonal brain behind them But now, with a curious
little shock, she discovered her separate and umque existence, she could feel
herself existing, it was as though something within her were exclaiming ‘I am
I 1 ’ Also, in some way she knew that this ‘I’ had existed and been the same from
remote periods in the past, though it was a past of which she had no
remembrance
But it was only for a moment that this discovery occupied her From the first
there was a sense of incompleteness m it, of something vaguely unsatisfactory
And it was this the ‘I am I’ which had seemed an answer had itself become a
question It was no longer ‘I am I’, but ‘who ami’ 5
Who was she ? She turned the question over m her mmd, and found that she
had not the dimmest notion of who she was, except that, watching the people
and horses passing, she grasped that she was a human being and not a horse
And that the question altered itself and took this form ‘Am I a man or a
woman 55 ’ Again neither feeling nor memory gave any clue to the answer But at
that moment, by accident possibly, her finger-tips brushed against her body
She realized more clearly than before that her body existed, and that it was her
own-that it was, m fact, herself She began to explore it with her hands, and
her hands encountered breasts She was a woman, therefore Only women had
breasts In some way she knew, without knowing how she knew, that all those
women who passed had breasts beneath their clothes, though she could not see
them
She now grasped that in order to identify herself she must examine her own
body, beginning with her face, and for some moments she actually attempted
to look at her own face, before realizing that this was impossible She looked
down, and saw a shabby black satin dress, rather long, a pair of flesh-coloured
artificial silk stockings, laddered and dirty, and a pair of very shabby black
satin shoes with high heels None of them was in the least familiar to her She
examined her hands, and they were both strange and unstrange. They were
smallish hands, with hard palms, and very dirty. After a moment she realized
that it was their dirtiness that made them strange to her The hands themselves
seemed natural and appropriate, though she did not recognize them
After hesitating a few moments longer, she turned to her left and began to
walk slowly along the pavement A fragment of knowledge had come to her,
mysteriously, out of the blank past the existence of mirrors, their purpose, and
the fact that there are often mirrors m shop windows After a moment she came
to a cheap little jeweller’s shop in which a strip of mirror, set at an angle,
reflected the faces of people passing Dorothy picked her reflection out from
among a dozen others, immediately realizing it to be her own Yet it could not
be said that she had recognized it, she had no memory of ever havmg seen it till
this moment It showed her a woman’s youngish face, thin, very blonde, with
306 A Clergyman's Daughter
crow’s-feet round the eyes, and faintly smudged with dirt A vulgar black
cloche hat was stuck carelessly on the head, concealing most of the hair The
face was quite unfamiliar to her, and yet not strange She had not known till
this moment what face to expect, but now that she had seen it she realized that
it was the face she might have expected It was appropriate It corresponded to
something within her
As she turned away from the jeweller’s mirror, she caught sight of the words
‘Fry’s Chocolate’ on a shop window opposite, and discovered that she
understood the purpose of writing, and also, after a momentary effort, that she
was able to read Her eyes flitted across the street, taking m and deciphering
odd scraps of print, the names of shops, advertisements, newspaper posters
She spelled out the letters of two red and white posters outside a tobacconist’s
shop One of them read, ‘Fresh Rumours about Rector’s Daughter’, and the
other, ‘Rector’s Daughter Now believed in Paris’ Then she looked upwards,
and saw in white lettering on the corner of a house ‘New Kent Road’ The
words arrested her She grasped that she was standing in the New Kent Road,
and-another fragment of her mysterious knowledge-the New Kent Road was
somewhere in London So she was m London
As she made this discovery a peculiar tremor ran through her Her mind was
now fully awakened, she grasped, as she had not grasped before, the
strangeness of her situation, and it bewildered and frightened her What could
it all mean> What was she doing here? How had she got here? What had
happened to her?
The answer was not long in coming She thought-and it seemed to her that
she understood perfectly well what the words meant ‘Of course 1 I’ve lost my
memory 1 ’
At this moment two youths and a girl who were trudging past, the youths
with clumsy sacking bundles on their backs, stopped and looked curiously at
Dorothy They hesitated for a moment, then walked on, but halted again by a
lamp-post five yards away Dorothy saw them looking back at her and talking
among themselves One of the youths was about twenty, narrow-chested,
black-haired, ruddy-cheeked, good-looking m a nosy cockney way, and
dressed in the wreck of a raffishly smart blue suit and a check cap The other
was about twenty-six, squat, nimble, and powerful, with a snub nose, a clear
pink skin and huge lips as coarse as sausages, exposing strong yellow teeth He
was frankly ragged, and he had a mat of orange-coloured hair cropped short
and growing low on his head, which gave him a startling resemblance to an
orang-outang. The girl was a silly-looking, plump creature, dressed in clothes
very like Dorothy’s own Dorothy could hear some of what they were saying
‘That tart looks ill,’ said the girl
The orange-headed one, who was singing ‘Sonny Boy’ m a good baritone
voice, stopped singing to answer ‘She ain’t ill,’ he said ‘She’s on the beach all
right, though Same as us ’
‘She’d do jest nicely for Nobby, wouldn’t she? ’ said the dark-haired one
‘Oh, you v exclaimed the girl with a shocked-amorous air, pretending to
smack the dark one over the head
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 307
The youths had lowered their bundles and leaned them against the lamp-
post All three of them now came rather hesitantly towards Dorothy, the
orange-headed one, whose name seemed to be Nobby, leading the way as their
ambassador He moved with a gambolling, apelike gait, and his grm was so
frank and wide that it was impossible not to smile back at him He addressed
Dorothy m a friendly way
‘Hullo, kid 1 ’
‘Hullo 1 ’
‘You on the beach, kid? ’
‘On the beach? ’
‘Well, on the bum? ’
‘On the bum? ’
‘Christ! she’s batty,’ murmured the girl, twitching at the black-haired one’s
arm as though to pull him away
‘Well, what I mean to say, kid-have you got any money? ’
‘I don’t know ’
At this all three looked at one another in stupefaction For a moment they
probably thought that Dorothy really was batty But simultaneously Dorothy,
who had earlier discovered a small pocket in the side of her dress, put her hand
into it and felt the outline of a large com
‘I believe I’ve got a penny,’ she said
‘A penny' 5 said the dark youth disgustedly, ‘-lot of good that is to us 1 ’
Dorothy drew it out It was a half-crown An astonishing change came over
the faces of the three others Nobby’s mouth split open with delight, he
gambolled several steps to and fro like some great jubilant ape, and then,
halting, took Dorothy confidentially by the arm
‘That’s the mulligatawny'’ he said ‘We’ve struck it lucky-and so’ve you,
kid, believe me You’re going to bless the day you set eyes on us lot We’re
going to make your fortune for you, we are Now, see here, kid-are you on to
go into cahoots with us three? ’
‘What? ’ said Dorothy
‘What I mean to say-how about you chumming in with Flo and Charlie and
me? Partners, see? Comrades all, shoulder to shoulder United we stand,
divided we fall. We put up the brains, you put up the money How about it,
kid? Are you on, or are you off? ’
‘Shut up, Nobby 1 ’ interrupted the girl ‘She don’t understand a word of
what you’re saying Talk to her proper, can’t you? ’
‘That’ll do, Flo,’ said Nobby equably ‘You keep it shut and leave the
talking to me I got a way with the tarts, I have Now, you listen to me,
kid-what might your name happen to be, kid? ’
Dorothy was within an ace of saying ‘I don’t know,’ but she was sufficiently
on the alert to stop herself in time Choosing a feminine name from the half-
dozen that sprang immediately into her mind, she answered, ‘Ellen ’
‘Ellen That’s the mulligatawny No surnames when you’re on the bum
Well now, Ellen dear, you listen to me. Us three are going down hopping,
see-*
A Clergyman’ s Daughter
308
‘Hopping? ’
‘’Oppmg’’ put m the dark youth impatiently, as though disgusted by
Dorothy’s ignorance His voice and manner were rather sullen, and his accent
much baser than Nobby’s ‘Pickin’ ’ops-dahn in Kent 1 C’n understand that,
can’t yer? ’
‘Oh, hops' For beer? ’
‘That’s the mulligatawny’ Coming on fine, she is Well, kid, ’z I was saying,
here’s us three going down hopping, and got a job promised us and
all-Blessington’s farm, Lower Molesworth Only we’re just a bit m the
mulligatawny, see? Because we ain’t got a brown between us, and we got to do
it on the toby- thirty-five miles it is -and got to tap for our tommy and skipper
at night as well And that’s a bit of a mulligatawny, with ladies m the party But
now s’pose f rmstance you was to come along with us, see? We c’d take the
twopenny tram far as Bromley, and that’s fifteen miles done, and we won’t
need skipper more’n one night on the way And you can chum in at our
bm-four to a bin’s the best pickmg-and if Blessington’s paying twopence a
bushel you’ll turn your ten bob a week easy What do you say to it, kid? Your
two and a tanner won’t do you much good here in Smoke But you go into
partnership with us, and you’ll get your kip for a month and something
over-and we’ll get a lift to Bromley and a bit of scran as well ’
About a quarter of his speech was intelligible to Dorothy She asked rather at
random
‘What is scran * ’
‘Scran? Tommy-food I can see you ain’t been long on the beach, kid ’
‘Oh Well, you want me to come down hop-picking with you, is that it? ’
‘That’s it, Ellen my dear Are you on, or are you off? ’
‘AH right,’ said Dorothy promptly ‘I’ll come ’
She made this decision without any misgiving whatever It is true that if she
had had time to think over her position, she would probably have acted
differently, in all probability she would have gone to a police station and asked
for assistance That would have been the sensible course to take But Nobby
and the others had appeared just at the critical moment, and, helpless as she
was, it seemed quite natural to throw m her lot with the first human being who
presented himself. Moreover, for some reason which she did not understand, it
reassured her to hear that they were making for Kent Kent, it seemed to her,
was the very place to which she wanted to go The others showed no further
curiosity, and asked no uncomfortable questions Nobby simply said, ‘O K
That’s the mulligatawny’’ and then gently took Dorothy’s half-crown out of
her hand and slid it into his pocket-in case she should lose it, he explained
The dark youth-apparently his name was Charlie- said m his surly,
disagreeable way
‘Come on, less get movin’’ It’s ’ar-parse two already We don’t want to miss
that there — tram. Where d’they start from. Nobby? ’
‘The Elephant,’ said Nobby ‘and we got to catch it before four o’clock,
because they don’t give no free rides after four ’
‘Come on, then, don’t less waste no more time Nice job we’ll ’ave of it if we
A Clergyman 's Daughter 309
got to ’ike it down to Bromley and look for a place to skipper in the — dark
C’m on, Flo ’
‘Quick march 1 ’ said Nobby, swinging his bundle on to his shoulder
They set out, without more words said, Dorothy, still bewildered but feeling
much better than she had felt half an hour ago, walked beside Flo and Charlie,
who talked to one another and took no further notice of her From the very first
they seemed to hold themselves a little aloof from Dorothy- willing enough to
share her half-crown, but with no friendly feelings towards her Nobby
marched m front, stepping out briskly m spite of his burden, and singing, with
spirited imitations of military music, the well-known military song of which
the only recorded words seem to be
was all the band could play,
“ — 1 — And the same to you 1 ’
2
This was the twenty-ninth of August It was on the mght of the twenty-first
that Dorothy had fallen asleep in the conservatory, so that there had been an
interregnum in her life of not quite eight days
The thing that had happened to her was commonplace enough-almost
every week one reads m the newspapers of a similar case A man disappears
from home, is lost sight of for days or weeks, and presently fetches up at a
police station or m a hospital, with no notion of who he is or where he has come
from As a rule it is impossible to tell how he has spent the intervening time, he
has been wandering, presumably, m some hypnotic or somnambulistic state m
which he has nevertheless been able to pass for normal In Dorothy’s case only
one thing is certain, and that is that she had been robbed at some time durmg
her travels, for the clothes she was wearing were not her own, and her gold
cross was missing
At the moment when Nobby accosted her, she was already on the road to
recovery; and if she had been properly cared for, her memory might have come
back to her within a few days or even hours, A very small thing would have
been enough to accomplish it, a chance meeting with a friend, a photograph of
her home, a few questions skilfully put But as it was, the slight mental
stimulus that she needed was never given. She was left in the peculiar state m
which she had first found herself-a state m which her mind was potentially
normal, but not quite strung up to the effort of puzzling out her own identity.
For of course, once she had thrown in her lot with Nobby and the others, all
chance of reflection was gone There was no time to sit down and think the
matter over-no time to come to grips with her difficulty and reason her way to
its solution In the strange, dirty sub-world into which she was instantly
gio A Clergyman’ s Daughter
plunged, even five minutes of consecutive thought would have been
impossible The days passed m ceaseless nightmarish activity Indeed, it was
very like a nightmare, a nightmare not of urgent terrors, but of hunger,
squalor, and fatigue, and of alternating heat and cold Afterwards, when she
looked back upon that time, days and nights merged themselves together so
that she could never remember with perfect certainty how many of them there
had been She only knew that for some indefinite period she had been
perpetually footsore and almost perpetually hungry Hunger and the soreness
of her feet were her clearest memories of that time, and also the cold of the
nights, and a peculiar, blowsy, witless feeling that came of sleeplessness and
constant exposure to the air
After getting to Bromley they had ‘drummed up’ on a horrible, paper-
littered rubbish dump, reeking with the refuse of several slaughter-houses,
and then passed a shuddering night, with only sacks for cover, in long wet
grass on the edge of a recreation ground In the morning they had started out,
on foot, for the hopfields Even at this early date Dorothy had discovered that
the tale Nobby had told her, about the promise of a job, was totally untrue He
had invented it~he confessed this quite light-heartedly-to induce her to come
with them Their only chance of getting a job was to march down into the hop
country and apply at every farm till they found one where pickers were still
needed
They had perhaps thirty-five miles to go, as the crow flies, and yet at the end
of three days they had barely reached the fringe of the hopfields The need of
getting food, of course, was what slowed their progress They could have
marched the whole distance in two days or even in a day if they had not been
obliged to feed themselves As it was, they had hardly even time to think of
whether they were going m the direction of the hopfields or not, it was food
that dictated all their movements Dorothy’s half-crown had melted within a
few hours, and after that there was nothing for it except to beg But there came
the difficulty One person can beg his food easily enough on the road, and even
two can manage it, but it is a very different matter when there are four people
together In such circumstances one can only keep alive if one hunts for food as
persistently and single-mmdedly as a wild beast Food-that was their sole
preoccupation during those three days-just food, and the endless difficulty of
getting it
From morning to night they were begging They wandered enormous
distances, zigzagging right across the country, trailing from village to village
and from house to house, ‘tapping’ at every butcher’s and every baker’s and
every likely looking cottage, and hanging hopefully round picnic parties, and
wavmg-always vamly-at passing cars, and accosting old gentlemen with the
right kind of face and pitching hard-up stones Often they went five miles out
of their way to get a crust of bread or a handful of scraps of bacon. All of them
begged, Dorothy with the others, she had no remembered past, no standards of
comparison to make her ashamed of it And yet with all their efforts they would
have gone empty-bellied half the time if they had not stolen as well as begged
At dusk and in the early mornings they pillaged the orchards and the fields.
A Clergyman's Daughter 31 1
stealing apples, damsons, pears, cobnuts, autumn raspberries, and, above all,
potatoes, Nobby counted it a sm to pass a potato field without getting at least a
pocketful It was Nobby who did most of the stealing, while the others kept
guard He was a bold thief, it was his peculiar boast that he would steal
anything that was not tied down, and he would have landed them all m prison
if they had not restrained him sometimes Once he even laid hands on a goose,
but the goose set up a fearful clamour, and Charlie and Dorothy dragged
Nobby off just as the owner came out of doors to see what was the matter
Each of those first days they walked between twenty and twenty-five miles
They trailed across commons and through buried villages with incredible
names, and lost themselves in lanes that led nowhere, and sprawled exhausted
in dry ditches smelling of fennel and tansies, and sneaked into private woods
and ‘drummed up’ m thickets were firewood and water were handy, and
cooked strange, squalid meals m the two two-pound snuff-tins that were their
only cooking pots Sometimes, when their luck was in, they had excellent stews
of cadged bacon and stolen cauliflowers, sometimes great insipid gorges of
potatoes roasted m the ashes, sometimes jam made of stolen autumn
raspberries which they boiled in one of the snuff-tins and devoured while it
was still scalding hot Tea was the one thing they never ran short of Even
when there was no food at all there was always tea, stewed, dark brown and
reviving It is a thing that can be begged more easily than most ‘Please,
ma’am, could you spare me a pinch of tea^’ is a plea that seldom fails, even with
the case-hardened Kentish housewives
The days were burning hot, the white roads glared and the passing cars sent
stinging dust into their faces Often families of hop-pickers drove past,
cheering, in lorries piled sky-high with furniture, children, dogs, and
birdcages The nights were always cold There is hardly such a thing as a night
in England when it is really warm after midnight Two large sacks were all the
bedding they had between them Flo and Charlie had one sack, Dorothy had
the other, and Nobby slept on the bare ground The discomfort was almost as
bad as the cold If you lay on your back, your head, with no pillow, lolled
backwards so that your neck seemed to be breaking, if you lay on your side,
your hip-bone pressing against the earth caused you torments Even when,
towards the small hours, you managed to fall asleep by fits and starts, the cold
penetrated into your deepest dreams Nobby was the only one who could really
stand it He could sleep as peacefully in a nest of sodden grass as in a bed, and
his coarse, simian face, with barely a dozen red-gold hairs glittering on the chm
like snippmgs of copper wire, never lost its warm, pink colour He was one of
those red-haired people who seem to glow with an inner radiance that warms
not only themselves but the surrounding air
All this strange, comfortless life Dorothy took utterly for granted-only
dimly aware, if at all, that the other, unremembered life that lay behind her had
been m some way different from this After only a couple of days she had
ceased to wonder any longer about her queer predicament She accepted
everythmg-accepted the dirt and hunger and fatigue, the endless trailing to
and fro, the hot, dusty days and the sleepless, shivering nights. She was, m any
312 A Clergyman’s Daughter
case, far too tired to think By the afternoon of the second day they were all
desperately, overwhelmingly tired, except Nobby, whom nothing could tire
Even the fact that soon after they set out a nail began to work its way through
the sole of his boot hardly seemed to trouble him There were periods of an
hour at a time when Dorothy seemed almost to be sleeping as she walked She
had a burden to carry now, for as the two men were already loaded and Flo
steadfastly refused to carry anything, Dorothy had volunteered to carry the
sack that held the stolen potatoes They generally had ten pounds or so of
potatoes in reserve Dorothy slung the sack over her shoulder as Nobby and
Charlie did with their bundles, but the string cut into her like a saw and the
sack bumped against her hip and chafed it so that finally it began to bleed Her
wretched, flimsy shoes had begun to go to pieces from the very beginning On
the second day the heel of her right shoe came off and left her hobbling, but
Nobby, expert m such matters, advised her to tear the heel off the other shoe
and walk flatfooted The result was a fiery pain down her shins when she
walked uphill, and a feeling as though the soles of her feet had been hammered
with an iron bar
But Flo and Charlie were in a much worse case than she They were not so
much exhausted as amazed and scandalized by the distances they were
expected to walk Walking twenty miles m a day was a thing they had never
heard of till now They were cockneys born and bred, and though they had had
several months of destitution in London, neither of them had ever been on the
road before Charlie, till fairly recently, had been m good employment, and
Flo, too, had had a good home until she had been seduced and turned out of
doors to live on the streets They had fallen in with Nobby in Trafalgar Square
and agreed to come hop-picking with him, imagining that it would be a bit of a
lark Of course, having been ‘on the beach’ a comparatively short time, they
looked down on Nobby and Dorothy They valued Nobby’s knowledge of the
road and his boldness in thieving, but he was their social mferior-that was
their attitude And as for Dorothy, they scarcely even deigned to look at her
after her half-crown came to an end
Even on the second day their courage was failing They lagged behind,
grumbled incessantly, and demanded more than their fair share of food By
the third day it was almost impossible to keep them on the road at all They
were pining to be back in London, and had long ceased to care whether they
ever got to the hopfields or not, all they wanted to do was to sprawl in any
comfortable halting place they could find, and, when there was any food left,
devour endless snacks, After every halt there was a tedious argument before
they could be got to their feet again
‘Come on, blokes 1 ’ Nobby would say ‘Pack your peter up, Charlie Time we
was getting off ” 5
‘Oh, — getting off 1 ’ Charlie would answer morosely
‘Well, we can’t skipper here, can we^ We said we was going to hike as far as
Sevenoaks tonight, didn’t we>’
‘Oh, — Sevenoaks 1 Sevenoaks or any other bleeding place-it don’t make
any bleeding difference to me ’
A Clergyman’s Daughter 31 3
‘But — it' We want to get a job tomorrow, don’t we ? And we got to get down
among the farms ’fore we can start looking for one ’
‘Oh, — the farms' I wish I’d never ’eard of a — ’op' I wasn’t brought up to
this-’ikmg and skippering like you was I’m fed up, that’s what I am — fed
up ’
‘If this is bloody ’oppmg,’ Flo would chime in, ‘I’ve ’ad my bloody bellyful
of it already ’
Nobby gave Dorothy his private opinion that Flo and Charlie would
probably ‘jack ofF if they got the chance of a lift back to London But as for
Nobby, nothing disheartened him or ruffled his good temper, not even when
the nail in his boot was at its worst and his filthy remnant of a sock was dark
with blood By the third day the nail had worn a permanent hole m his foot,
and Nobby had to halt once in a mile to hammer it down
‘’Scuse me, kid,’ he would say, ‘got to attend to my bloody hoof again This
nail’s a mulligatawny ’
He would search for a round stone, squat m the ditch and carefully hammer
the nail down
‘There'’ he would say optimistically, feelmg the place with his thumb ‘ That
b — ’s in his grave' 5
The epitaph should have been Resurgam, however The nail invariably
worked its way up again within a quarter of an hour
Nobby had tried to make love to Dorothy, of course, and, when she repulsed
him, bore her no grudge He had that happy temperament that is incapable of
taking its own reverses very seriously He was always debonair, always singing
m a lusty baritone voice-his three favourite songs were ‘Sonny Boy’, °Twas
Christmas Day in the Workhouse’ (to the tune of ‘The Church’s One
Foundation’), and “‘ — '” was all the band could play’, given with lively
renderings of military music He was twenty-six years old and was a widower,
and had been successively a seller of newspapers, a petty thief, a Borstal boy, a
soldier, a burglar, and a tramp These facts, however, you had to piece together
for yourself, for he was not equal to giving a consecutive account of his life His
conversation was studded with casual picturesque memories-the six months
he had served m a line regiment before he was invalided out with a damaged
eye, the loathsomeness of the skilly m Holloway, his childhood in the Deptford
gutters, the death of his wife, aged eighteen, in childbirth, when he was
twenty, the horrible suppleness of the Borstal canes, the dull boom of the
nitro-glycerme, blowing in the safe door at Woodward’s boot and shoe factory,
where Nobby had cleared a hundred and twenty-five pounds and spent it m
three weeks
On the afternoon of the third day they reached the fringe of the hop country,
and began to meet discouraged people, mostly tramps, trailing back to London
with the news that there was nothing doing-hops were bad and the price 'was
low, and the gypsies and ‘home pickers’ had collared all the jobs At this Flo
and Charlie gave up hope altogether, but by an adroit mixture of bullying and
persuasion Nobby managed to drive them a few miles farther. In a little village
called Wale they fell m with an old Imhwoman-Mrs McElhgot was her
314 A Clergyman's Daughter
name-who had just been given a job at a neighbouring hopfield, and they
swapped some of their stolen apples for a piece of meat she had ‘bummed’
earlier in the day She gave them some useful hints about hop-picking and
about what farms to try They were all sprawling on the village green, tired
out, opposite a little general shop with some newspaper posters outside
‘You’d best go down’n have a try at Chalmers’s,’ Mrs McElligot advised
them in her base Dublin accent ‘Dat’s a bit above five mile from here I’ve
heard tell as Chalmers wants a dozen pickers still I daresay he’d give y’a job if
you gets dere early enough ’
‘Five miles' Cnpes' Ain’t there none nearer’n that? ’ grumbled Charlie
‘Well, dere’s Norman’s I got a job at Norman’s meself-I’m startin’
tomorrow morning’ But ’twouldn’t be no use for you to try at Norman’s He
ain’t takin’ on none but home pickers, an’ dey say as he’s goin’ to let half his
hops blow ’
‘What’s home pickers? ’ said Nobby
‘Why, dem as has got homes o’ deir own Eider you got to live in de
neighbourhood, or else de farmer’s got to give y’a hut to sleep in Dat’s de law
nowadays In de ole days when you come down hoppm’, you kipped in a stable
an’ dere was no questions asked But dem bloody interferin’ gets of a Labour
Government brought in a law to say as no pickers was to be taken on widout de
farmer had proper accommodation for ’em So Norman only takes on folks as
has got homes o’ deir own ’
‘Well, you ain’t got a home of your own, have you? ’
‘No bloody fear' But Norman t’inks I have I kidded’m I was stayin’ in a
cottage near by Between you an’ me. I’m skipperin’ in a cow byre ’Tain’t so
bad except for de stmk o’ de muck, but you got to be out be five m de mornm’,
else de cowmen ’ud catch you ’
‘We ain’t got no experience of hopping,’ Nobby said ‘I wouldn’t know a
bloody hop if I saw one Best to let on you’re an old hand when you go up for a
job, eh? ’
‘Hell 1 Hops don’t need no experience Tear ’em off an’ flmg ’em into de bin
Dat’s all der is to it, wid hops ’
Dorothy was nearly asleep She heard the others talking desultorily, first
about hop-pickmg, then about some story m the newspapers of a girl who had
disappeared from home Flo and Charlie had been reading the posters on the
shop-front opposite, and this had revived them somewhat, because the posters
reminded them of London and its joys The missing girl, in whose fate they
seemed to be rather interested, was spoken of as ‘The Rector’s Daughter’
‘J’a see that one, Flo? ’ said Charlie, reading a poster aloud with intense
relish ‘“Secret Love Life of Rector’s Daughter Startling Revelations ” Coo'
Wish I ’ad a penny to ’ave a read of that! ’
‘Oh? What’s ’t all about, then? ’
‘What? Didn’t j’a read about it? Papers ’as bm full of it Rector’s Daughter
this and Rector’s Daughter that- wasn’t ’alf smutty, some of it, too ’
‘She’s bit of hot stuff, the ole Rector’s Daughter,’ said Nobby reflec-
tively, lying on his back ‘Wish she was here now' I’d know what to do
A Clergyman’s Daughter 31 5
with her, all right, I w ould ’
‘ ’T was a kid run away from home,’ put in Mrs McElhgot ‘She was carryin’
on wid a man twenty year older’n herself, an’ now she’s disappeared an’ dey’re
searchm’ for her high an’ low *
‘Jacked off m the middle of the night m a motor-car with no clo’es on ’cep’
’er nightdress,’ said Charlie appreciatively ‘The ’ole village sore ’em go ’
‘Dere’s some t’mk as he’s took her abroad an’ sold her to one o’ dem flash
cat-houses in Parrus,’ added Mrs McElhgot
‘No clo’es on ’cep’ ’er nightdress^ Dirty tart she must ’a been 1 ’
The conversation might have proceeded to further details, but at this
moment Dorothy interrupted it What they were saying had roused a faint
curiosity in her She realized that she did not know the meaning of the word
‘Rector’ She sat up and asked Nobby
‘What is a Rector^ 1 ’
‘Rector^ Why, a sky-pilot-parson bloke Bloke that preaches and gives out
the hymns and that in church We passed one of ’em yesterday-riding a green
bicycle and had his collar on back to front A priest-clergyman You know ’
‘Oh Yes, I think so ’
‘Priests 1 Bloody ole getsies dey are too, some o’ dem,’ said Mrs McElhgot
reminiscently
Dorothy was left not much the wiser What Nobby had said did enlighten
her a little, but only a very little The whole train of thought connected with
‘church’ and ‘clergyman’ was strangely vague and blurred in her mind It was
one of the gaps-there was a number of such gaps-m the mysterious
knowledge that she had brought with her out of the past
That was their third night on the road When it was dark they slipped into a
spinney as usual to ‘skipper’, and a little after midnight it began to pelt with
ram They spent a miserable hour stumbling to and fro in the darkness, trying
to find a place to shelter, and finally found a hay- stack, where they huddled
themselves on the lee side till it was light enough to see, Flo blubbered
throughout the night m the most intolerable manner, and by the morning she
was in a state of semi-collapse Her silly fat face, washed clean by rain and
tears, looked like a bladder of lard, if one can imagine a bladder of lard
contorted with self-pity Nobby rooted about under the hedge until he had
collected an armful of partially dry sticks, and then managed to get a fire going
and boil some tea as usual There was no weather so bad that Nobby could not
produce a can of tea He carried, among other things, some pieces of old
motor tyre that would make a flare when the wood was wet, and he even
possessed the art, known only to a few cognoscenti among tramps, of getting
water to boil over a candle
Everyone’s limbs had stiffened after the horrible night, and Flo declared
herself unable to walk a step farther Charlie backed her up So, as the other
two refused to move, Dorothy and Nobby went on to Chalmers’s farm,
arranging a rendezvous where they should meet when they had tried their luck
They got to Chalmers’s, five miles away, found their way through vast
orchards to the hop-fields, and were told that the overseer ‘would be along
316 A Clergyman's Daughter
presently’ So they waited four hours on the edge of the plantation, with the
sun drying their clothes on their backs, watching the hop-pickers at work It
was a scene somehow peaceful and alluring The hop bines, tall climbing
plants like runner beans enormously magnified, grew in green leafy lanes, with
the hops dangling from them m pale green bunches like gigantic grapes When
the wind stirred them they shook forth a fresh, bitter scent of sulphur and cool
beer In each lane of bines a family of sunburnt people were shredding the
hops into sacking bins, and singing as they worked, and presently a hooter
sounded and they knocked off to boil cans of tea over crackling fires of hop
bmes Dorothy envied them greatly How happy they looked, sitting round the
fires with their cans of tea and their hunks of bread and bacon, m the smell of
hops and wood smoke 1 She pined for such a job-however, for the present there
was nothing doing At about one o’clock the overseer arrived and told them
that he had no jobs for them, so they trailed back to the road, only avenging
themselves on Chalmers’s farm by stealing a dozen apples as they went
When they reached their rendezvous, Flo and Charlie had vanished Of
course they searched for them, but, equally of course, they knew very well
what had happened Indeed, it was perfectly obvious Flo had made eyes at
some passing lorry driver, who had given the two of them a lift back to London
for the chance of a good cuddle on the way Worse yet, they had stolen both
bundles Dorothy and Nobby had not a scrap of food left, not a crust of bread
nor a potato nor a pinch of tea, no bedding, and not even a snuff-tin in which to
cook anything they could cadge or steal-nothing, m fact, except the clothes
they stood up in
The next thirty-six hours were a bad time-a very bad time How they pined
for a job, in their hunger and exhaustion 1 But the chances of getting one
seemed to grow smaller and smaller as they got farther into the hop country
They made interminable marches from farm to farm, gettmg the same answer
everywhere-no pickers needed-and they were so busy marching to and fro
that they had not even time to beg, so that they had nothing to eat except stolen
apples and damsons that tormented their stomachs with their acid juice and yet
left them ravenously hungry It did not ram that night, but it was much colder
than before Dorothy did not even attempt to sleep, but spent the night in
crouching over the fire and keeping it alight They were hiding m a beech
wood, under a squat, ancient tree that kept the wind away but also wetted them
periodically with sprinklings of chilly dew Nobby, stretched on his back,
mouth open, one broad cheek faintly illumined by the feeble rays of the fire,
slept as peacefully as a child. All night long a vague wonder, born of
sleeplessness and intolerable discomfort, kept stirring m Dorothy’s mind Was
this the life to which she had been bred-this life of wandering empty-bellied
all day and shivermg at night under dripping trees? Had it been like this even
in the blank past? Where had she come from? Who was she? No answer came,
and they were on the road at dawn By the evening they had tried at eleven
farms m all, and Dorothy’s legs were giving out, and she was so dizzy with
fatigue that she found difficulty in walking straight
But late in the evening, quite unexpectedly, their luck turned They tried at
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 317
a farm named Cairns’s, in the village of Clintock, and were taken on
immediately, with no questions asked The overseer merely looked them up
and down, said briefly, ‘Right you are-you’ll do Start m the morning, bm
number 7, set 19,’ and did not even bother to ask their names Hop-pickmg, it
seemed, needed neither character nor experience
They found their way to the meadow where the pickers’ camp was situated
In a dreamlike state, between exhaustion and the joy of having got a job at last,
Dorothy found herself walking through a maze of tin-roofed huts and gypsies’
caravans with many-coloured washing hanging from the windows Hordes of
children swarmed m the narrow grass alleys between the huts, and ragged,
agreeable-looking people were cooking meals over innumerable faggot fires At
the bottom of the field there were some round tin huts, much inferior to the
others, set apart for unmarried people An old man who was toasting cheese at
a fire directed Dorothy to one of the women’s huts
Dorothy pushed open the door of the hut It was about twelve feet across,
with unglazed windows which had been boarded up, and it had no furniture
whatever There seemed to be nothing in it but an enormous pile of straw
reaching to the roof-m fact, the hut was almost entirely filled with straw To
Dorothy’s eyes, already sticky with sleep, the straw looked paradisically
comfortable She began to push her way into it, and was checked by a sharp
yelp from beneath her
‘’Ere' What yer doing’ of? Get off of it 1 ’Oo asked you to walk about on my
belly, stoopid? ’
Seemingly there were women down among the straw Dorothy burrowed
foward more circumspectly, tripped over something, sank into the straw and m
the same instant began to fall asleep A rough-looking woman, partially
undressed, popped up like a mermaid from the strawy sea
°Ullo, mate'’ she said ‘Jest about all m, ain’t you, mate? ’
‘Yes, I’m tired- very tired ’
‘Well, you’ll bloody freeze m this straw with no bed-clo’es on you Ain’t you
got a blanket? ’
‘No,’
°Alf a mo, then I got a poke ’ere ’
She dived down into the straw and re-emerged with a hop-poke seven feet
long Dorothy was asleep already She allowed herself to be woken up, and
inserted herself somehow into the sack, which was so long that she could get
into it head and all, and then she was half wriggling, half sinking down, deep
down, into a nest of straw warmer and drier than she had conceived possible.
The straw tickled her nostrils and got into her hair and pricked her even
through the sack, but at that moment no imaginable sleeping place-not
Cleopatra’s couch of swan’s-down nor the floating bed of Haroun al
Raschid-could have caressed her more voluptuously
3
It was remarkable how easily, once you had got a job, you settled down to the
routine of hop-picking After only a week of it you ranked as an expert picker,
and felt as though you had been picking hops all your life
It was exceedingly easy work Physically, no doubt, it was exhaustmg-it
kept you on your feet ten or twelve hours a day, and you were dropping with
sleep by six in the evening-but it needed no kind of skill Quite a third of the
pickers in the camp were as new to the job as Dorothy herself Some of them
had come down from London with not the dimmest idea of what hops were
like, or how you picked them, or why One man, it was said, on his first
morning on the way to the fields, had asked, ‘Where are the spades^’ He
imagined that hops were dug up out of the ground
Except for Sundays, one day at the hop camp was very like another At half
past five, at a tap on the wall of your hut, you crawled out of your sleeping nest
and began searching for your shoes, amid sleepy curses from the women (there
were six or seven or possibly even eight of them) who were buried here and
there m the straw In that vast pile of straw any clothes that you were so unwise
as to take off always lost themselves immediately You grabbed an armful of
straw and another of dried hop bmes, and a faggot from the pile outside, and
got the fire going for breakfast Dorothy always cooked Nobby’s breakfast as
well as her own, and tapped on the wall of his hut when it was ready, she being
better at waking up m the mormng than he It was very cold on those
September mornings, the eastern sky was fading slowly from black to cobalt,
and the grass was silvery white with dew Your breakfast was always the
same-bacon, tea, and bread fried in the grease of the bacon While you ate it
you cooked another exactly similar meal, to serve for dinner, and then,
carrying your dinner-pail, you set out for the fields, a mile-and-a-half walk
through the blue, windy dawn, with your nose running so m the cold that you
had to stop occasionally and wipe it on your sacking apron
The hops were divided up into plantations of about an acre, and each
set-forty pickers or thereabouts, under a foreman who was often a
gypsy-picked one plantation at a time The bines grew twelve feet high or
more, and they were trained up strings, and slung over horizontal wires, m
rows a yard or two apart, m each row there was a sacking bin like a very deep
hammock slung on a heavy wooden frame As soon as you arrived you swung
your bin into position, slit the strings from the next two bines, and tore them
down-huge, tapering strands of foliage, like the plaits of Rapunzel’s hair, that
A Clergyman’s Daughter 319
came tumbling down on top of you, showering you with dew You dragged
them into place over the bin, and then, starting at the thick end of the bine,
began tearing off the heavy bunches of hops At that hour of the morning you
could only pick slowly and awkwardly Your hands were still stiff and the
coldness of the dew numbed them, and the hops were wet and slippery The
great difficulty was to pick the hops without picking the leaves and stalks as
well, for the measurer was liable to refuse your hops if they had too many
leaves among them
The stems of the bines were covered with minute thorns which within two
or three days had torn the skm of your hands to pieces In the morning it was a
torment to begin picking when your fingers were almost too stiff to bend and
bleeding in a dozen places, but the pain wore off when the cuts had reopened
and the blood was flowing freely If the hops were good and you picked well,
you could strip a bine m ten minutes, and the best bines yielded half a bushel of
hops But the hops varied greatly from one plantation to another In some they
were as large as walnuts, and hung m great leafless bunches which you could
rip off with a single twist, in others they were miserable things no bigger than
peas, and grew so thmly that you had to pick them one at a time Some hops
were so bad that you could not pick a bushel of them in an hour
It was slow work m the early morning, before the hops were dry enough to
handle But presently the sun came out, and the lovely, bitter odour began to
stream from the warming hops, and people’s early-morning surliness wore off,
and the work got into its stride From eight till midday you were picking,
picking, picking, in a sort of passion of work-a passionate eagerness, which
grew stronger and stronger as the morning advanced, to get each bine done and
shift your bin a little farther along the row At the beginning of each plantation
all the bins started abreast, but by degrees the better pickers forged ahead, and
some of them had finished their lane of hops when the others were barely half-
way along, whereupon, if you were far behind, they were allowed to turn back
and finish your row for you* which was called ‘stealing your hops’ Dorothy
and Nobby were always among the last, there being only two of them-there
were four people at most of the bins And Nobby was a clumsy picker, with his
great coarse hands, on the whole, the women picked better than the men
It Was always a neck and neck race between the two bins on either side of
Dorothy and Nobby, bin number 6 and bin number 8 Bin number 6 was a
family of gypsies-a curly-headed, ear-ringed father, an old dried-up leather-
coloured mother, and two strapping sons- and bin number 8 was an old East
End costerwoman who wore a broad hat and long black cloak and took snuff
out of a papierm&chC box with a steamer painted on the lid She was always
helped by relays of daughters and granddaughters who came down from
London for two days at a time There was quite a troop of children working
with the set, following the bins with baskets and gathering up the fallen hops
while the adults picked And the old costerwoman’s tiny, pale granddaughter
Rose, and a little gypsy girl, dark as an Indian, were perpetually slipping off to
steal autumn raspberries and make swings out of hop bines; and the constant
singing round the bins was pierced by shrill cries from the costerwoman of.
220 A Clergyman’s Daughter
‘Go on, Rose, you lazy little cat’ Pick them ’ops up’ I’ll warm your a — for you 1 ’
etc , etc
Quite half the pickers m the set were gypsies-there were not less than two
hundred of them m the camp Diddykies, the other pickers called them They
were not a bad sort of people, friendly enough, and they flattered you grossly
when they wanted to get anything out of you, yet they were sly, with the
impenetrable slyness of savages In their oafish, Oriental faces there was a look
as of some wild but sluggish animal-a look of dense stupidity existing side by
side with untameable cunning Their talk consisted of about half a dozen
remarks which they repeated over and over again without ever growing tired of
them The two young gypsies at bm number 6 would ask Nobby and Dorothy
as many as a dozen times a day the same conundrum
‘What is it the cleverest man m England couldn’t do ? ’
‘I don’t know What>’
‘Tickle a gnat’s a — with a telegraph pole ’
At this, never-failing bellows of laughter They were all abysmally ignorant,
they informed you with pride that not one of them could read a single word
The old curly-headed father, who had conceived some dim notion that
Dorothy was a ‘scholard’, once seriously asked her whether he could drive his
caravan to New York
At twelve o’clock a hooter down at the farm signalled to the pickers to knock
off work for an hour, and it was generally a little before this that the measurer
came round to collect the hops At a warning shout from the foreman of ‘ ’Ops
ready, number nineteen 1 ’ everyone would hasten to pick up the fallen hops,
finish off the tendrils that had been left unpicked here and there, and clear the
leaves out of the bm There was an art in that It did not pay to pick too ‘clean’,
for leaves and hops alike all went to swell the tally The old hands, such as the
gypsies, were adepts at knowing just how ‘dirty’ it was safe to pick
The measurer would come round, carrying a wicker basket which held a
bushel, and accompanied by the ‘bookie,’ who entered the pickings of each bm
in a ledger The ‘bookies’ were young men, clerks and chartered accountants
and the like, who took this job as a paying holiday The measurer would scoop
the hops out of the bm a bushel at a time, intoning as he did so, ‘One 1 Two 1
Three’ Four! ’ and the pickers would enter the number in their tally books
Each bushel they picked earned them twopence, and naturally there were
endless quarrels and accusations of unfairness over the measuring. Hops are
spongy thmgs-you can crush a bushel of them into a quart pot if you choose,
so after each scoop one of the pickers would lean over into the bm and stir the
hops up to make them he looser, and then the measurer would hoist the end of
the bm and shake the hops together again Some mornings he had orders to
‘take them heavy’, and would shovel them in so that he got a couple of bushels
at each scoop, whereat there were angry yells of, ‘Look how the b— ’s ramming
them down’ Why don’t you bloody well stamp on thenP’ etc. ; and the old
hands would say darkly that they had known measurers to be ducked in
qowponds on the last day of picking From the bins the hops were put into
pokes which theoretically held a hundredweight; but it took two men to hoist a
A Clergyman’s Daughter 321
full poke when the measurer had been ‘taking them heavy’ You had an hour
for dinner, and you made a fire of hop bmes-this was forbidden, but everyone
did lt-and heated up your tea and ate your bacon sandwiches After dinner you
were picking again till five or six m the evening, when the measurer came* once
more to take your hops, after which you were free to go back to the camp
Looking back, afterwards, upon her interlude of hop-picking, it was always
the afternoons that Dorothy remembered Those long, laborious hours in the
strong sunlight, m the sound of forty voices singing, m the smell of hops and
wood smoke, had a quality peculiar and unforgettable As the afternoon wore
on you grew almost too tired to stand, and the small green hop lice got into
your hair and into your ears and worried you, and your hands, from the
sulphurous juice, were as black as a Negro’s except where they were bleeding
Yet you were happy, with an unreasonable happiness The work took hold of
you and absorbed you It was stupid work, mechanical, exhausting, and every
day more painful to the hands, and yet you never wearied of it, when the
weather was fine and the hops were good you had the feeling that you could go
on picking for ever and for ever It gave you a physical joy, a warm satisfied
feeling inside you, to stand there hour after hour, tearing off the heavy clusters
and watching the pale green pile grow higher and higher in your bin, every
bushel another twopence in your pocket The sun burned down upon you,
baking you brown, and the bitter, never-pallmg scent, like a wind from oceans
of cool beer, flowed into your nostrils and refreshed you When the sun was
shining everybody sang as they worked, the plantations rang with singing For
some reason all the songs were sad that autumn- songs about rejected love and
fidelity unrewarded, like gutter versions of Carmen and Manon Lescaut There
was
There they go~in their joy-
’Appy gul-lucky boy-
But ’ere am /-/-/-
Broken- Va-arted 1
And there was
But I’m dan-cmg with tears-in my eyes-
’Cos the girl-in my arms-isn’t you-o-ou 1
And
The bells-are nnging-for Sally-
But no-o-ot-for Sally-and me'
The little gypsy girl used to sing over and over again
We’re so misable, all so misable,
Down on Misable Farm'
And though everyone told her that the name of it was Misery Farm, she
322 A Clergyman's Daughter
persisted in calling it Misable Farm The old costerwoman and her
granddaughter Rose had a hop-pickmg song which went
‘Our lousy ’ops'
Our lousy ’ops 1
When the measurer ’e comes round.
Pick ’em up, pick ’em up off the ground 1
When ’e comes to measure,
’E never knows where to stop,
Ay, ay, get in the bin
And take the bloody lot 1 ’
‘There they go m their joy’, and ‘The bells are ringing for Sally’, were the
especial favourites The pickers never grew tired of singing them, they must
have sung both of them several hundred times over before the season came to
an end As much a part of the atmosphere of the hopfields as the bitter scent
and the blowsy sunlight were the tunes of those two songs, ringing through the
leafy lanes of the bines
When you got back to the camp, at half past six or thereabouts, you squatted
down by the stream that ran past the huts, and washed your face, probably for
the first time that day It took you twenty minutes or so to get the coal-black
filth off your hands Water and even soap made no impression on it, only two
things would remove lt-one of them was mud, and the other, curiously
enough, was hop juice Then you cooked your supper, which was usually
bread and tea and bacon again, unless Nobby had been along to the village and
bought two pennyworth of pieces from the butcher It was always Nobby who
did the shopping He was the sort of man who knows how to get four
pennyworth of meat from the butcher for twopence, and, besides, he was
expert in tiny economies For instance, he always bought a cottage loaf in
preference to any of the other shapes, because, as he used to point out, a cottage
loaf seems like two loaves when you tear it m half
Even before you had eaten your supper you were droppmg with sleep, but
the huge fires that people used to build between the huts were too agreeable to
leave The farm allowed two faggots a day for each hut, but the pickers
plundered as many more as they wanted, and also great lumps of elm root
which kept smouldering till morning On some nights the fires were so
enormous that twenty people could sit round them in comfort, and there was
singing far mto the night, and telling of stories and roasting of stolen apples
Youths and girls slipped off to the dark lanes together, and a few bold spirits
like Nobby set out with sacks and robbed the neighbouring orchards, and the
children played hide-and-seek in the dusk and harried the nightjars which
haunted the camp and which, m their cockney ignorance, they imagined to be
pheasants On Saturday nights fifty or sixty of the pickers used to get drunk m
the pub and then march down the village street roaring bawdy songs, to the
scandal of the inhabitants, who looked on the hopping season as decent
provincials in Roman Gaul might have looked on the yearly incursion of the
Goths,
When finally you managed to drag yourself away to your nest in the straw, it
A Clergyman’s Daughter 32 3
was none too warm or comfortable After that first blissful night, Dorothy
discovered that straw is wretched stuff to sleep m It is not only prickly, but,
unlike hay, it lets m the draught from every possible direction However, you
had the chance to steal an almost unlimited number of hop-pokes from the
fields, and by making herself a sort of cocoon of four hop-pokes, one on top of
the other, she managed to keep warm enough to sleep at any rate five hours a
night
4
As to what you earned by hop-picking, it was just enough to keep body and
soul together, and no more
The rate of pay at Cairns’s was twopence a bushel, and given good hops a
practised picker can average three bushels an hour In theory, therefore, it
would have been possible to earn thirty shillings by a sixty-hour week
Actually, no one in the camp came anywhere near this figure The best pickers
of all earned thirteen or fourteen shillings a week, and the worst hardly as
much as six shillings Nobby and Dorothy, pooling their hops and dividing the
proceeds, made round about ten shillings a week each
There were various reasons for this To begin with, there was the badness of
the hops in some of the fields Again, there were the delays which wasted an
hour or two of every day When one plantation was finished you had to carry
your bin to the next, which might be a mile distant, and then perhaps it would
turn out that there was some mistake, and the set, struggling under their bins
(they weighed a hundredweight), would have to waste another half-hour in
traipsing elsewhere Worst of all, there was the ram It was a bad September
that year, raining one day m three. Sometimes for a whole morning or
afternoon you shivered miserably m the shelter of the unstripped bmes, with a
dripping hop-poke round your shoulders, waiting for the ram to stop It was
impossible to pick when it was raining The hops were too slippery to handle,
and if you did pick them it was worse than useless, for when sodden with water
they shrank all to nothing in the bin Sometimes you were m the fields all day
to earn a shilling or less
This did not matter to the majority of the pickers, for quite half of them were
gypsies and accustomed to starvation wages, and most of the others were
respectable East Enders, costermongers and small shopkeepers and the like,
who came hop-pickmg for a holiday and were satisfied if they earned enough
for their fare both ways and a bit of fun on Saturday mghts The fanners knew
this and traded on it Indeed, were it not that hop-picking is regarded as a
holiday, the industry would collapse forthwith, for the price of hops is now so
low that no farmer could afford to pay his pickers a living wage.
324 A Clergyman’ s Daughter
Twice a week you could ‘sub’ up to the amount of half your earnings If you
left before the picking was finished (an inconvenient thing for the farmers)
they had the right to pay you off at the rate of a penny a bushel instead of
twopence-that is, to pocket half of what they owed you It was also common
knowledge that towards the end of the season, when all the pickers had a fair
sum owing to them and would not want to sacrifice it by throwing up their
jobs, the farmer would reduce the rate of payment from twopence a bushel to a
penny halfpenny Strikes were practically impossible The pickers had no
union, and the foremen of the sets, instead of being paid twopence a bushel like
the others, were paid a weekly wage which stopped automatically if there was a
strike, so naturally they would raise Heaven and earth to prevent one
Altogether, the farmers had the pickers in a cleft stick, but it was not the
farmers who were to blame-the low price of hops was the root of the trouble
Also as Dorothy observed later, very few of the pickers had more than a dim
idea of the amount they earned The system of piecework disguised the low
rate of payment
For the first few days, before they could ‘sub’, Dorothy and Nobby very
nearly starved, and would have starved altogether if the other pickers had not
fed them But everyone was extraordinarily kind There was a party of people
who shared one of the larger huts a little farther up the row, a flower-seller
named Jim Burrows and a man named Jim Turle who was vermin man at a
large London restaurant, who had married sisters and were close friends, and
these people had taken a liking to Dorothy They saw to it that she and Nobby
should not starve Every evening during the first few days May Turle, aged
fifteen, would arrive with a saucepan full of stew, which was presented with
studied casualness, lest there should be any hint of charity about it The
formula was always the same
‘Please, Ellen, mother says as she was just gomg to throw this stew away, and
then she thought as p’raps you might like it She ain’t got no use for it, she says,
and so you’d be doing her a kindness if you was to take it ’
It was extraordinary what a lot of things the Turles and the Burrowses were
‘just gomg to throw away’ during those first few days On one occasion they
even gave Nobby and Dorothy half a pig’s head ready stewed, and besides food
they gave them several cooking pots and a tin plate which could be used as a
frying-pan. Best of all, they asked no uncomfortable questions They knew
well enough that there was some mystery in Dorothy’s life-‘You could see,’
they said, ‘as Ellen had come down in the world ’- but they made it a point of
honour not to embarrass her by asking questions about it It was not until she
had been more than a fortnight at the camp that Dorothy was even obliged to
put herself to the trouble of inventing a surname
As soon as Dorothy and Nobby could ‘sub’, their money troubles were at an
end They lived with surprising ease at the rate of one and sixpence a day for
the two of them. Fourpence of this went on tobacco for Nobby, and fourpence-
halfpenny on a loaf of bread, and they spent about sevenpence a day on tea,
sugar, milk (you could get milk at the farm at a halfpenny a half-pmt), and
margarine and ‘pieces’ of bacon But, of course, you never got through the day
A Clergyman 3 s Daughter 323
without squandering another penny or two You were everlastingly hungry,
everlastingly doing sums in farthings to see whether you could afford a kipper
or a doughnut or a pennyworth of potato chips, and, wretched as the pickers’
earnings were, half the population of Kent seemed to be m conspiracy to tickle
their money out of their pockets The local shopkeepers, with four hundred
hop-pickers quartered upon them, made more during the hop season than all
the rest of the year put together, which did not prevent them from looking
down on the pickers as cockney dirt In the afternoon the farm hands would
come round the bins selling apples and pears at seven a penny, and London
hawkers would come with baskets of doughnuts or water ices or ‘halfpenny
lollies’ At night the camp was thronged by hawkers who drove down from
London with vans of horrifyingly cheap groceries, fish and chips, jellied eels,
shrimps, shop-soiled cakes, and gaunt, glassy-eyed rabbits which had lam two
years on the ice and were being sold off at mnepence a time
For the most part it was a filthy diet upon which the hop-pickers
lived-mevitably so, for even if you had the money to buy proper food, there
was no time to cook it except on Sundays Probably it was only the abundance
of stolen apples that prevented the camp from being ravaged by scurvy There
was constant, systematic thieving of apples, practically everyone in the camp
either stole them or shared them There were even parties of young men
(employed, so it was said, by London fruit-costers) who bicycled down from
London every week-end for the purpose of raiding the orchards As for
Nobby, he had reduced fruit-stealing to a science Within a week he had
collected a gang of youths who looked up to him as a hero because he was a real
burglar and had been m jail four times, and every night they would set out at
dusk with sacks and come back with as much as two hundredweight of fruit
There were vast orchards near the hopfields, and the apples, especially the
beautiful little Golden Russets, were lying m piles under the trees, rotting,
because the farmers could not sell them It was a sm not to take them. Nobby
said On two occasions he and his gang even stole a chicken How they
managed to do it without waking the neighbourhood was a mystery, but it
appeared that Nobby knew some dodge of slipping a sack over a chicken’s
head, so that it ‘ceas’d upon the midnight with no pam’-or at any rate, with no
noise
In this manner a week and then a fortnight went by, and Dorothy was no
nearer to solving the problem of her own identity Indeed, she was further
from it than ever, for except at odd moments the subject had almost vamshed
from her mind More and more she had come to take her curious situation for
granted, to abandon all thoughts of either yesterday or tomorrow. That was
the natural effect of life in the hopfields, it narrowed the range of your
consciousness to the passing minute You could not struggle with nebulous
mental problems when you were everlastingly sleepy and everlastingly
occupied- for when you were not at work m the fields you were either cooking,
or fetching things from the village, or coaxing a fire out of wet sticks, or
trudging to and fro with cans of water, (There was only one water tap m the
camp, and that was two hundred yards from Dorothy’s hut, and the
226 A Clergyman's Daughter
unspeakable earth latrine was at the same distance ) It was a life that wore you
out, used up every ounce of your energy, and kept you profoundly,
unquestionably happy In the literal sense of the word, it stupefied you The
long days m the fields, the coarse food and insufficient sleep, the smell of hops
and wood smoke, lulled you into an almost beastlike heaviness Your wits
seemed to thicken, just as your skin did, in the ram and sunshine and perpetual
fresh air
On Sundays, of course, there was no work in the fields, but Sunday morning
was a busy time, for it was then that people cooked their principal meal of the
week, and did their laundering and mending All over the camp, while the
jangle of bells from the village church came down the wind, mingling with the
thin strains of ‘O God our Help’ from the ill-attended open-air service held by
St Somebody’s Mission to Hop-pickers, huge faggot fires were blazing, and
water boiling in buckets and tin cans and saucepans and anything else that
people could lay their hands on, and ragged washing fluttering from the roofs
of all the huts On the first Sunday Dorothy borrowed a basin from the Turles
and washed first her hair, then her underclothes and Nobby’s shirt Her
underclothes were in a shocking state How long she had worn them she did
not know, but certainly not less than ten days, and they had been slept in all
that while Her stockings had hardly any feet left to them, and as for her shoes,
they only held together because of the mud that caked them
After she had set the washing to dry she cooked the dinner, and they dined
opulently off half a stewed chicken (stolen), boiled potatoes (stolen), stewed
apples (stolen), and tea out of real tea-cups with handles on them, borrowed
from Mrs Burrows And after dinner, the whole afternoon, Dorothy sat
against the sunny side of the hut, with a dry hop-poke across her knees to hold
her dress down, alternately dozing and reawakening Two-thirds of the people
in the camp were doing exactly the same thing, just dozing m the sun, and
waking to gaze at nothing, like cows It was all you felt equal to, after a week of
heavy work
About three o’clock, as she sat there on the verge of sleep. Nobby sauntered
by, bare to the waist-his shirt was drying- with a copy of a Sunday newspaper
that he had succeeded in borrowing It was Pippin's Weekly , the dirtiest of the
five dirty Sunday newspapers He dropped it m Dorothy’s lap as he passed
‘Have a read of that, kid,’ he said generously
Dorothy took Pippin's Weekly and laid it across her knees, feeling herself far
too sleepy to read A huge headline stared her in the face* ‘passion drama in
country rectory’ And then there were some more headlines, and something
m leaded type, and an mset photograph of a girl’s face For the space of five
seconds or thereabouts Dorothy was actually gazing at a blackish, smudgy, but
quite recognizable portrait of herself.
There was a column or so of print beneath the photograph As a matter of
fact, most of the newspapers had dropped the ‘Rector’s Daughter’ mystery by
this time, for it was more than a fortnight old and stale news But Pippin's
Weekly cared little whether its news was new so long as it was spicy, and that
week’s crop of rapes and murders had been a poor one. They were giving the
A Clergyman 3 s Daughter 327
‘Rector’s Daughter’ one final boost-giving her, m fact, the place of honour at
the top left-hand corner of the front page
Dorothy gazed inertly at the photograph A girl’s face, looking out at her
from beds of black unappetizing prmt-it conveyed absolutely nothing to her
mind She re-read mechanically the words, ‘passion drama in country
rectory’, without either understanding them or feeling the slightest interest
in them She was, she discovered, totally unequal to the effort of reading, even
the effort of looking at the photographs was too much for her Heavy sleep was
weighing down her head Her eyes, in the act of closing, flitted across the page
to a photograph that was either of Lord Snowden or of the man who wouldn’t
wear a truss, and then, in the same instant, she fell asleep, with Pippin's Weekly
across her knees
It was not uncomfortable against the corrugated iron wall of the hut, and she
hardly stirred till six o’clock, when Nobby woke her up to tell her that he had
got tea ready, whereat Dorothy put Pippin's Weekly thriftily away (it would
come in for lighting the fire), without looking at it again So for the moment the
chance of solving her problem passed by And the problem might have
remained unsolved even for months longer, had not a disagreeable accident, a
week later, frightened her out of the contented and unreflecting state m which
she was living
5
The following Sunday night two policemen suddenly descended upon the
camp and arrested Nobby and two others for theft
It happened all in a moment, and Nobby could not have escaped even if he
had been warned beforehand, for the countryside was pullulating with special
constables There are vast numbers of special constables m Kent They are
sworn m every autumn-a sort of militia to deal with the marauding tribes of
hop-pickers The farmers had been growing tired of the orchard-robbmg, and
had decided to make an examples in terrorem
Of course there was a tremendous uproar in the camp Dorothy came out of
her hut to discover what was the matter, and saw a firelit ring of people towards
which everyone was running She ran after them, and a horrid chill went
through her, because it seemed to her that she knew already what it was that
had happened She managed to wriggle her way to the front of the crowd, and
saw the very thing that she had been fearing
There stood Nobby, in the grip of an enormous policeman, and another
policeman was holding two frightened youths by the arms One of them, a
wretched child hardly sixteen years old, was crying bitterly Mr Cairns, a stiff-
built man with grey whiskers, and two farm hands, were keeping guard over
228 A Clergyman’s Daughter
the stolen property that had been dug out of the straw of Nobby’s hut Exhibit
A, a pile of apples, Exhibit B, some blood-stained chicken feathers Nobby
caught sight of Dorothy among the crowd, grinned at her with a flash of large
teeth, and winked There was a confused din of shouting
‘Look at the pore little b — crying' Let ’im go' Bloody shame, pore little kid
like that' Serve the young bastard right, getting us all into trouble' Let ’im go'
Always got to put the blame on us bloody hop-pickers' Can’t lose a bloody
apple without it’s us that’s took it Let ’im go' Shut up, can’t you 5 S’pose they
was your bloody apples 5 Wouldn’t you bloodiwell-’ etc , etc , etc And then
‘Stand back mate' ’Ere comes the kid’s mother ’
A huge Toby jug of a woman, with monstrous breasts and her hair coming
down her back, forced her way through the ring of people and began roaring
first at the policeman and Mr Cairns, then at Nobby, who had led her son
astray. Finally the farm hands managed to drag her away Through the
woman’s yells Dorothy could hear Mr Cairns gruffly interrogating Nobby
‘Now then, young man, just you own up and tell us who you shared them
apples with' We’re going to put a stop to this thieving game, once and for all
You own up, and I dessay we’ll take it into consideration ’
Nobby answered, as blithely as ever, ‘Consideration, your a — '*
‘Don’t you get giving me any of your lip, young man' Or else you’ll catch it
all the hotter when you go up before the magistrate ’
‘Catch it hotter, your a — '’
Nobby grinned His own wit filled him with delight He caught Dorothy’s
eye and winked at her once again before being led away And that was the last
she ever saw of him
There was further shouting, and when the prisoners were removed a few
dozen men followed them, booing at the policemen and Mr Cairns, but
nobody dared to interfere Dorothy meanwhile had crept away, she did not
even stop to find out whether there would be an opportunity of saying good-
bye to Nobby-she was too frightened, too anxious to escape Her knees were
trembling uncontrollably When she got back to the hut, the other women
were sitting up, talking excitedly about Nobby’s arrest She burrowed deep
into the straw and hid herself, to be out of the sound of their voices They
continued talking half the night, and of course, because Dorothy had
supposedly been Nobby’s ‘tart’, they kept condoling with her and plying her
with questions She did not answer them-pretended to be asleep. But there
would be, she knew well enough, no sleep for her that night
The whole thing had frightened and upset her-but it had frightened her
more than was reasonable or understandable For she was m no kind of danger
The farm hands did not know that she had shared the stolen apples-for that
matter, nearly everyone m the camp had shared them-and Nobby would never
betray her It was not even that she was greatly concerned for Nobby, who was
frankly not troubled by the prospect of a month in jail It was something that
was happening inside her-some change that was taking place in the
atmosphere of her mind
It seemed to her that she was no longer the same person that she had been an
A Clergyman 3 s Daughter 329
hour ago Within her and without, everything was changed It was as though a
bubble m her brain had burst, setting free thoughts, feelings, fears of which
she had forgotten the existence All the dreamlike apathy of the past three
weeks was shattered For it was precisely as in a dream that she had been
livmg-it is the especial condition of a dream that one accepts everything,
questions nothing Dirt, rags, vagabondage, begging, stealing-all had seemed
natural to her Even the loss of her memory had seemed natural, at least, she
had hardly given it a thought till this moment The question ‘Who am P' had
faded out of her mmd till sometimes she had forgotten it for hours together It
was only now that it returned with any real urgency
For nearly the whole of a miserable night that question went to and fro m her
brain But it was not so much the question itself that troubled her as the
knowledge that it was about to be answered Her memory was coming back to
her, that was certain, and some ugly shock was coming with it She actually
feared the moment when she should discover her own identity Something that
she did not want to face was waiting just below the surface of her
consciousness
At half past five she got up and groped for her shoes as usual She went
outside, got the fire going, and stuck the can of water among the hot embers to
boil Just as she did so a memory, seeming irrelevant, flashed across her mmd
It was of that halt on the village green at Wale, a fortnight ago-the time when
they had met the old Irishwoman, Mrs McElligot Very vividly she
remembered the scene. Herself lying exhausted on the grass, with her arm over
her face, and Nobby and Mrs McElligot talking across her supine body; and
Charlie, with succulent relish, reading out the poster, ‘Secret Love Life of
Rector’s Daughter’, and herself, mystified but not deeply interested, sitting up
and asking, ‘What is a Rector? ’
At that a deadly chill, like a hand of ice, fastened about her heart She got up
and hurried, almost ran back to the hut, then burrowed down to the place
where her sacks lay and felt in the straw beneath them In that vast mound of
straw all your loose possessions got lost and gradually worked their way to the
bottom But after searching for some minutes, and getting herself well cursed
by several women who were still half asleep, Dorothy found what she was
looking for It was the copy of Pippin x s Weekly which Nobby had given her a
week ago. She took it outside, knelt down, and spread it out m the light of the
fire
It was on the front page-a photograph, and three big headlines Yesl There
it was!
PASSION DRAMA IN COUNTRY RECTORY
PARSON S DAUGHTER AND ELDERLY SEDUCER
WHITE-HAIRED FATHER PROSTRATE WITH GRIEF
(Pippin's Weekly Special)
‘I would sooner have seen tier in her grave! ’ was the Jieartbroken cry of the Rev Charles Hare,
Rector qf Knype Hill, Suffolk, on learning of his twenty-eight-year-old daughter’s elopement
with an elderly bachelor reamed Warbntton, describedas an artist
5^0 A Clergyman’s Daughter
Miss Hare, who left the town on the night of the twenty-first of August, is still missing, and all
attempts to trace her have failed [In leaded type] Rumour, as yet unconfirmed, states that she was
recently seen with a male companion m a hotel of evil repute in Vienna
Readers of Pippin’s Weekly will recall that the elopement took place in dramatic circumstances
A little before midnight on the twenty-first of August, Mrs Evelina Sempnll, a widowed lady who
inhabits the house next door to Mr Warburton’s, happened by chance to look out of her bedroom
window and saw Mr Warburton standing at his front gate in conversation with a young woman As
it was a clear moonlight night, Mrs Semprill was able to distinguish this young woman as Miss
Hare, the Rector’s daughter The pair remained at the gate for several minutes, and before going
indoors they exchanged embraces which Mrs Semprill describes as being of a passionate nature
About half an hour later they reappeared in Mr Warburton’s car, which was backed out of the
front gate, and drove off m the direction of the Ipswich road Miss Hare was dressed m scanty
attire, and appeared to be under the influence of alcohol
It is now learned that for some time past Miss Hare had been in the habit of making clandestine
visits to Mr Warburton’s house Mrs Semprill, who could only with great difficulty be persuaded
to speak upon so painful a subject, has further revealed-
Dorothy crumpled Pippin’s Weekly violently between her hands and thrust
it into the fire, upsetting the can of water There was a cloud of ashes and
sulphurous smoke, and almost in the same instant Dorothy pulled the paper
out of the fire unburnt No use funking lt-better to learn the worst She read
on, with a horrible fascination It was not a nice kind of story to read about
yourself For it was strange, but she had no longer any shadow of doubt that
this girl of whom she was reading was herself She examined the photograph
It was a blurred, nebulous thing, but quite unmistakable Besides, she had no
need of the photograph to remind her She could remember everything- every
circumstance of her life, up to that evening when she had come home tired out
from Mr Warburton’s house, and, presumably, fallen asleep m the
conservatory It was all so clear in her mind that it was almost incredible that
she had ever forgotten it
She ate no breakfast that day, and did not think to prepare anything for the
midday meal; but when the time came, from force of habit, she set out for the
hopfields with the other pickers With difficulty, being alone, she dragged the
heavy bin into position, pulled the next bine down and began picking But
after a few minutes she found that it was quite impossible, even the mechanical
labour of picking was beyond her That horrible, lying story m Pippin’s
Weekly had so unstrung her that it was impossible even for an instant to focus
her mmd upon anything else Its lickerish phrases were going over and over m
her head ‘Embraces of a passionate nature’-‘m scanty attire’ -‘under the
influence of alcohol’-as each one came back into her memory it brought with it
such a pang that she wanted to cry out as though m physical pam
After a while she stopped even pretending to pick, let the bine fall across her
bin, and sat down against one of the posts that supported the wires The other
pickers observed her plight, and were sympathetic Ellen was a bit cut up, they
said What else could you expect, after her bloke had been knocked ofiP
(Everyone m the 'camp, Of course, had taken it for granted that Nobby was
Dorothy’s lover ) They advised her to go down to the farm *and report sick
A Clergyman's Daughter 331
And towards twelve o’clock, when the measurer was due, everyone in the set
came across with a hatful of hops and dropped it into her bin
When the measurer arrived he found Dorothy still sitting on the ground
Beneath her dirt and sunburn she was very pale, her face looked haggard, and
much older than before Her bin was twenty yards behind the rest of the set,
and there were less than three bushels of hops in it
‘What’s the game? ’ he demanded ‘You ilP’
‘No ’
‘Well, why ain’t you bin pickin’, then? What you think this is- toff s picnic?
You don’t come up ’ere to sit about on the ground, you know ’
‘You cheese it and don’t get nagging of ’er'’ shouted the old cockney
costerwoman suddenly ‘Can’t the pore girl ’ave a bit of rest and peace if she
wants it? Ain’t ’er bloke m the clink thanks to you and your bloody nosing pals
of coppers? She’s got enough to worry ’er ’thout being — about by every
bloody copper’s nark in Kent 1 ’
‘That’ll be enough from you, Ma 1 ’ said the measurer gruffly, but he looked
more sympathetic on hearing that it was Dorothy’s lover who had been arrested
on the previous night When the costerwoman had got her kettle boiling she
called Dorothy to her bin and gave her a cup of strong tea and a hunk of bread
and cheese, and after the dinner interval another picker who had no partner
was sent up to share Dorothy’s bin He was a small, weazened old tramp
named Deafie Dorothy felt somewhat better after the tea Encouraged by
Deafie’s example-for he was an excellent picker-she managed to do her fair
share of work during the afternoon
She had thought things over, and was less distracted than before The
phrases m Pippin’s Weekly still made her wmce with shame, but she was equal
now to facing the situation She understood well enough what had happened to
her, and what had led to Mrs Semprill’s libel Mrs Sempnll had seen them
together at the gate and had seen Mr Warburton kissing her, and after that,
when they were both missing from Knype Hill, it was only too natural- natural
for Mrs Sempnll, that ls-to infer that they had eloped together As for the
picturesque details, she had invented them later Or had she invented them?
That was the one thing you could never be certain of with Mrs
Sempnll-whether she told her lies consciously and deliberately as lies, or
whether, m her strange and disgusting mind, she somehow succeeded in
believing them
Well, anyway, the harm was done-no use worrying about it any longer.
Meanwhile, there was the question of getting back to Knype Hill She would
have to send for some clothes, and she would need two pounds for her tram
fare home Home 1 The word sent a pang through her heart Home, after weeks
of dirt and hunger 1 How she longed for it, now that she remembered it*
But-'
A chilly little doubt raised its head There was one aspect of the matter that
she had not thought of till this moment Could she, after all, go home? Dared
she?
Could she face Knype Hill after everything that had happened? That was
5 32 A Clergyman's D aught er
the question When you have figured on the front page of Pippin's Weekly- m
scanty attire’-‘under the influence of alcohol’-ah, don’t let’s think of it again'
But when you have been plastered all over with horrible, dishonouring libels,
can you go back to a town of two thousand inhabitants where everybody knows
everybody else’s private history and talks about it all day long’
She did not know-could not decide At one moment it seemed to her that
the story of her elopement was so palpably absurd that no one could possibly
have believed it Mr War burton, for instance, could contradict lt-most
certainly would contradict it, for every possible reason But the next moment
she remembered that Mr Warburton had gone abroad, and unless this affair
had got into the continental newspapers, he might not even have heard of it,
and then she quailed again She knew what it means to have to live down a
scandal in a small country town The glances and furtive nudges when you
passed' The prying eyes following you down the street from behind curtained
windows' The knots of youths on the corners round Blifil-Gordon’s factory,
lewdly discussing you'
‘George 1 Say, George' J’a see that bit of stuff over there’ With fair ’air’’
‘What, the skmny one’ Yes ’Oo’s she’’
‘Rector’s daughter, she is Miss ’Are But, say' What you think she done two
years ago’ Done a bunk with a bloke old enough to bin ’er father Regular
properly went on the razzle with ’im m Paris' Never think it to look at ’er,
would you’’
‘Go on 1 ’
‘She did' Straight, she did It was m the papers and all Only ’e give ’er the
chuck three weeks afterwards, and she come back ’ome again as bold as brass
Nerve, eh’’
Yes, it would take some living down For years, for a decade it might be, they
would be talking about her like that And the worst of it was that the story in
Pippin's Weekly was probably a mere bowdlerized vestige of what Mrs
Sempnll had been saying in the town Naturally, Pippin's Weekly had not
wanted to commit itself too far But was there anything that would ever
restrain Mrs Sempnll’ Only the limits of her imagmation-and they were
almost as wide as the sky
One thing, however, reassured Dorothy, and that was the thought that her
father, at any rate, would do his best to shield her Of course, there would be
others as well It was not as though she were friendless The church
congregation, at least, knew her and trusted her, and the Mothers’ Union and
the Girl Guides and the women on her visiting list would never believe such
stories about her But it was her father who mattered most Almost any
situation is bearable if you have a home to go back to and a family who will
stand by you. With courage, and her father’s support, she might face things
out By the evemng she had decided that it would be perfectly all right to go
back to Knype Hill, though no doubt it would be disagreeable at first, and
when work was over for the day she ‘subbed’ a shilling, and went down to the
general shop in the village and bought a penny packet of notepaper Back m the
camp, sitting on the grass by the fire-no tables or chairs in the camp, of
333
A Clergyman's Daughter
course- she began to write with a stump of pencil
Dearest Father,- 1 can’t tell you how glad I am, after everything that has happened, to be able to
write to you again And I do hope you ’have not been too anxious about me or too worried by those
horrible stories in the newspapers I don’t know what you must have thought when I suddenly
disappeared like that and you didn’t hear from me for nearly a month But you see-’
How strange the pencil felt m her torn and stiffened fingers' She could only
write a large, sprawling hand like that of a child But she wrote a long letter,
explaining everything, and asking him to send her some clothes and two
pounds for her fare home Also, she asked him to write to her under an
assumed name she gave him- Ellen Millborough, after Millborough m
Suffolk It seemed a queer thing to have to do, to use a false name,
dishonest-criminal, almost But she dared not risk its being known m the
village, and perhaps m the camp as well, that she was Dorothy Hare, the
notorious ‘Rector’s Daughter 5
6
Once her mind was made up, Dorothy was pining to escape from the hop
camp On the following day she could hardly bring herself to go on with the
stupid work of picking, and the discomforts and bad food were intolerable now
that she had memories to compare them with She would have taken to flight
immediately if only she had had enough money to get her home The instant
her father’s letter with the two pounds arrived, she would say good-bye to the
Turles and take the tram for home, and breathe a sigh of relief to get there, m
spite of the ugly scandals that had got to be faced.
On the third day after writing she went down the village post office and asked
for her letter The postmistress, a woman with the face of a dachshund and a
bitter contempt for all hop-pickers, told her frostily that no letter had come
Dorothy was disappointed A pity-it must have been held up in the post
However, it didn’t matter; tomorrow would be soon enough-only another day
to wait
The next evemng she went again, quite certain that it would have arrived
this time Still no letter This time a misgiving assailed her; and on the fifth
evening, when there was yet agam no letter, the misgiving changed into a
horrible panic She bought another packet of notepaper and wrote an
enormous letter, using up the whole four sheets, explaining over and over
again what had happened and imploring her father not to leave her in such
suspense. Having posted it, she made up her mind that she would let a whole
week go by before calling at the post office again
This was Saturday, By Wednesday her resolve had broken down When the
hooter sounded for the midday interval she left her bin and hurried down to
334 A Clergyman’s Daughter
the post office-it was a mile and a half away, and it meant missing her dinner
Having got there she went shame-facedly up to the counter, almost afraid to
speak The dog-faced postmistress was sitting m her brass-barred cage at the
end of the counter, ticking figures m a long shaped account book She gave
Dorothy a brief nosy glance and went on with her work, taking no notice of
her
Something painful was happening m Dorothy’s diaphragm She was finding
it difficult to breathe, ‘Are there any letters for me 5 ’ she managed to say at last
‘Name? ’ said the postmistress, ticking away
‘Ellen Millborough ’
The postmistress turned her long dachshund nose over her shoulder for an
instant and glanced at the M partition of the Poste Restante letter-box
‘No,’ she said, turning back to her account book
In some manner Dorothy got herself outside and began to walk back
towards the hopfields, then halted A deadly feeling of emptiness at the pit of
her stomach, caused partly by hunger, made her too weak to walk
Her father’s silence could mean only one thing He believed Mrs Semprill’s
story-believed that she, Dorothy, had run away from home m disgraceful
circumstances and then told lies to excuse herself He was too angry and too
disgusted to write to her All he wanted was to get rid of her, drop all
communication with her, get her out of sight and out of mind, as a mere
scandal to be covered up and forgotten
She could not go home after this She dared not Now that she had seen what
her father’s attitude was, it had opened her eyes to the rashness of the thing she
had been contemplating Of course she could not go home 1 To slink back in
disgrace, to bring shame on her father’s house by coming there-ah,
impossible, utterly impossible 1 How could she even have thought of it?
What then? There was nothing for it but to go right away-nght away to
some place that was big enough to hide m London, perhaps Somewhere
where nobody knew her and the mere sight of her face or mention of her name
would not drag into the light a string of dirty memories
As she stood there the sound of bells floated towards her, from the village
church round the bend of the road, where the ringers were amusing themselves
by ringing ‘Abide with Me’, as one picks out a tune with one finger on the
piano But presently ‘Abide with Me’ gave way to the familiar Sunday-
morning jangle ‘Oh do leave my wife alone' She is so drunk she can’t get
home'’-the same peal that the bells of St Athelstan’s had been used to ring
three years ago before they were unswung The sound planted a spear of
homesickness m Dorothy’s heart, bringing back to her with momentary
vividness a medley of remembered things-the smell of the glue-pot in the
conservatory when she was making costumes for the school play, and the
chatter of starlings outside her bedroom window, interrupting her prayers
before Holy Communion, and Mrs Pither’s doleful voice chronicling the pains
m the backs of her legs, and the worries of the collapsing belfry and the shop-
debts and the bindweed in the peas-all the multitudinous, urgent details of a
life that had alternated between work and prayer
A Clergyman’s Daughter 335
Prayer' For a very short time, a minute perhaps, the thought arrested her
Prayer-m those days it had been the very source and centre of her life In
trouble or m happiness, it was to prayer that she had turned And she
realized-the first time that it had crossed her mmd-that she had not uttered a
prayer since leaving home, not even since her memory had come back to her
Moreover, she was aware that she had no longer the smallest impulse to pray
Mechanically, she began a whispered prayer, and stopped almost instantly, the
words were empty and futile Prayer, which had been the mainstay of her life,
had no meaning for her any longer She recorded this fact as she walked slowly
up the road, and she recorded it briefly, almost casually, as though it had been
something seen m passmg-a flower m the ditch or a bird crossing the
road- something noticed and then dismissed She had not even the time to
reflect upon what it might mean It was shouldered out of her mind by more
momentous things
It was of the future that she had got to be thinking now She was already
fairly clear m her mind as to what she must do When the hop-picking was at an
end she must go up to London, write to her father for money and her
clothes-for however angry he might be, she could not believe that he intended
to leave her utterly in the lurch-and then start looking for a job It was the
measure of her ignorance that those dreaded words ‘looking for a job’ sounded
hardly at all dreadful in her ears She knew herself strong and willmg-knew
that there were plenty of jobs that she was capable of doing She could be a
nursery governess, for instance-no, better, a housemaid or a parlourmaid
There were not many things in a house that she could not do better than most
servants, besides, the more menial her job, the easier it would be to keep her
past history secret
At any rate, her father’s house was closed to her, that was certain From now
on she had got to fend for herself On this decision, with only a very dim idea of
what it meant, she quickened her pace and got back to the fields m time for the
afternoon shift
The hop-picking season had not much longer to run In a week or
thereabouts Cairns’s would be closing down, and the cockneys would take the
hoppers’ tram to London, and the gypsies would catch their horses, pack their
caravans, and march northward to Lincolnshire, to scramble for jobs in the
potato fields As for the cockneys, they had had their bellyful of hop-picking by
this time They were pining to be back m dear old London, with Woolworths
and the fried-fish shop round the corner, and no more sleeping m straw and
frymg bacon in tin lids with your eyes weeping from wood smoke Hoppmg
was a holiday, but the kind of holiday that you were glad to see the last of You
came down cheering, but you went home cheering louder still and swearing
that you would never go hopping again-until next August, when you had
forgotten the cold nights and the bad pay and the damage to your hands, and
remembered only the blowsy afternoons m the sun and the boozmg of stone
pots of beer round the red camp fires at night
The mornings were growing bleak and Novembensh, grey skies, the first
leaves falling, and finches and starlings already flocking for the winter-
3j 6 A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
Dorothy had written yet again to her father, asking for money and some
clothes, he had left her letter unanswered, nor had anybody else written to her
Indeed, there was no one except her father who knew her present address, but
somehow she had hoped that Mr Warburton might write Her courage almost
failed her now, especially at nights m the wretched straw, when she lay awake
thinking of the vague and menacing future She picked her hops with a sort of
desperation, a sort of frenzy of energy, more aware each day that every handful
of hops meant another fraction of a farthing between herself and starvation
Deafie, her bin-mate, like herself, was picking against time, for it was the last
money he would earn till next year’s hopping season came round The figure
they aimed at was five shillings a day- thirty bushels- between the two of them,
but there was no day when they quite attained it
Deafie was a queer old man and a poor companion after Nobby, but not a
bad sort He was a ship’s steward by profession, but a tramp of many years’
i standmg, as deaf as a post and therefore something of a Mr F ’s aunt m
conversation He was also an exhibitionist, but quite harmless For hours
together he used to sing a little song that went ‘With my willy vn\\y~with my
willy willy’, and though he could not hear what he was singing it seemed to
cause him some kind of pleasure He had the hairiest ears Dorothy had ever
seen There were tufts like miniature Dundreary whiskers growing out of each
of his ears Every year Deafie came hop-picking at Cairns’s farm, saved up a
pound, and then spent a paradisiac week m a lodging-house in Newington
Butts before going back to the road This was the only week in the year when
he slept in what could be called, except by courtesy, a bed
The picking came to an end on 28 September There were several fields still
unpicked, but they were poor hops and at the last moment Mr Cairns decided
to ‘let them blow’ Set number 19 finished their last field at two in the
afternoon, and the little gypsy foreman swarmed up the poles and retrieved the
derelict bunches, and the measurer carted the last hops away As he
disappeared there was a sudden shout of ‘Put ’em in the bins 1 ’ and Dorothy
saw six men bearing down upon her with a fiendish expression on their faces,
and all the women m the set scattermg and running Before she could collect
her wits to escape the men had seized her, laid her at full length in a bin and
swung her violently from side to side. Then she was dragged out and kissed by
a young gypsy smelling of onions She struggled at first, but she saw the same
thing being done to the other women m the set, so she submitted It appeared
that putting the women in the bms was an invariable custom on the last day of
picking There were great domgs in the camp that night, and not much sleep
for anybody Long after midnight Dorothy found herself moving with a ring of
people about a mighty fire, one hand clasped by a rosy butcher-boy and the
other by a very drunk old woman in a Scotch bonnet out of a cracker, to the
tune pf ‘Auld Lang Syne’,
In the morning they went up to the farm to draw their money, and Dorothy
drew one pound and fourpence, and earned another fivepence by adding up
their tally books for people who could not read or write The cockney pickers
paid you a penny for this job; the gypsies paid you only in flattery Then
A Clergyman's Daughter 3 37
Dorothy set out for West Ackworth station, four miles away, together with the
Turles, Mr Turle carrying the tin trunk, Mrs Turle carrying the baby, the
other children carrying various odds and ends, and Dorothy wheeling the
perambulator which held the Turles’ entire stock of crockery, and which had
two circular wheels and two elliptical
They got to the station about midday, the hoppers’ train was due to start at
one, and it arrived at two and started at a quarter past three After a journey of
incredible slowness, zigzagging all over Kent to pick up a dozen hop-pickers
here and half a dozen there, going back on its tracks over and over again and
backing into sidings to let other trains pass-taking, in fact, six hours to do
thirty-five miles-it landed them m London a little after nine at night
7
Dorothy slept that night with the Turles They had grown so fond of her that
they would have given her shelter for a week or a fortnight if she had been
willing to impose on their hospitality Their two rooms (they lived in a
tenement house not far from Tower Bridge Road) were a tight fit for seven
people including children, but they made her a bed of sorts on the floor out of
two rag mats, an old cushion and an overcoat
In the morning she said good-bye to the Turles and thanked them for all
their kindness towards her, and then went straight to Bermondsey public baths
and washed off the accumulated dirt of five weeks After that she set out to look
for a lodging, having m her possession sixteen and eightpence m cash, and the
clothes she stood up in She had darned and cleaned her clothes as best she
could, and being black they did not show the dirt quite as badly as they might
have done From the knees down she was now passably respectable On the last
day of picking a ‘home picker’ m the next set, named Mrs Killfrew, had
presented her with a good pair of shoes that had been her daughter’s, and a pair
of woollen stockings
It was not until the evemng that Dorothy managed to find herself a room
For something like ten hours she was wandering up and down, from
Bermondsey into Southwark, from Southwark into Lambeth, through
labyrinthine streets where snotty-nosed children played at hop-scotch on
pavements homble with banana skins and decaying cabbage leaves. At every
house she tried it was the same story-the landlady refused point-blank to take
her in One after another a succession of hostile women, standing in then
doorways as defensively as though she had been a motor bandit or a
government inspector, looked her up and down, said briefly, ‘We don’t take
single girls,’ and shut the door m her face. She did not know it, of course, but
the very took of her was enough to rouse any respectable landlady’s suspicions
3j8 A Clergyman's Daughter
Her stained and ragged clothes they might possibly have put up with, but the
fact that she had no luggage damned her from the start A single girl with no
luggage is invariably a bad lot-this is the first and greatest of the apophthegms
of the London landlady
At about seven o’clock, too tired to stand on her feet any longer, she
ventured into a filthy, flyblown little caf i near the Old Vic theatre and asked
for a cup of tea The proprietress, getting into conversation with her and
learning that she wanted a room, advised her to ‘try at Mary’s, in Wellmgs
Court, jest orff the Cut’ ‘Mary’, it appeared, was not particular and would let a
room to anybody who could pay Her proper name was Mrs Sawyer, but the
boys all called her Mary
Dorothy found Wellmgs Court with some difficulty You went along
Lambeth Cut till you got to a Jew clothes-shop called Knockout Trousers Ltd,
then you turned up a narrow alley, and then turned to your left again up
another alley so narrow that its grimy plaster walls almost brushed you as you
went In the plaster, persevering boys had cut the word — innumerable times
and too deeply to be erased At the far end of the alley you found yourself m a
small court where four tall narrow houses with iron staircases stood facing one
another
Dorothy made inquiries and found ‘Mary’ in a subterranean den beneath
one of the houses She was a drabby old creature with remarkably thm hair and
face so emaciated that it looked like a rouged and powdered skull Her voice
was cracked, shrewish, and nevertheless ineffably dreary She asked Dorothy
no questions, and indeed scarcely even looked at her, but simply demanded ten
shillings and then said m her ugly voice
‘Twenty-nine Third floor Go up be the back stairs ’
Apparently the back stairs were those inside the house Dorothy went up the
dark, spiral staircase, between sweating walls, in a smell of old overcoats,
dishwater and slops As she reached the second floor there was a loud squeal of
laughter, and two rowdy-looking girls came out of one of the rooms and stared
at her for a moment They looked young, their faces being quite hidden under
rouge and pink powder, and their lips painted scarlet as geranium petals But
amid the pink powder their china-blue eyes were tired and old; and that was
somehow horrible, because it reminded you of a girl’s mask with an old
woman’s face behind it The taller of the two greeted Dorothy
‘’Ullo, dearie 1 ’
‘Hullo 1 ’
‘You new ’ere? Which room you kipping in? ’
‘Number twenty-nine ’
‘God, ain’t that a bloody dungeon to put you in' You going out tonight? ’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Dorothy, privately a little astomshed at the
question, ‘I’m too tired ’
‘Thought you wasn’t, when I saw you ’adn’t dolled up But, say 1 dearie, you
ain’t on the beach, are you? Not spoiling the ship for a ’aporth of tar? Because
fnnstance if you Want the lend of a lipstick, you only got to say the word
We’re all chums ’ere, you know ’
A Clergyman’ s Daughter 339
‘Oh No, thank you/ said Dorothy, taken aback
‘Oh, well 1 Time Dons and me was moving Got a ’portant business
engagement m Leicester Square 5 Here she nudged the other girl with her hip,
and both of them sniggered m a silly mirthless manner ‘But, say ! ’ added the
taller girl confidentially, ‘ain’t it a bloody treat to ’ave a good night’s kip all
alone once m a way^ Wish I could All on your Jack Jones with no bloody great
man’s feet shoving you about ’S all right when you can afford it, eh^’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy, feeling that this answer was expected of her, and with
only a very vague notion of what the other was talking about
‘Well, ta ta, dearie 1 Sleep tight And jes’ look out for the smash and grab
raiders ’bout ’ar-parse onei’
When the two girls had skipped downstairs with another of their
meaningless squeals of laughter, Dorothy found her way to room number 29
and opened the door A cold, evil smell met her The room measured about
eight feet each way, and was very dark The furmture was simple. In the
middle of the room, a narrow iron bedstead with a ragged coverlet and greyish
sheets, agamst the wall, a packing case with a tin basin and an empty whisky
bottle intended for water, tacked over the bed, a photograph of Bebe Daniels
torn out of Film Fun
The sheets were not only dirty, but damp Dorothy got into the bed, but she
had only undressed to her chemise, or what was left of her chemise, her
underclothes by this time being almost entirely in rums, she could not bring
herself to lay her bare body between those nauseous sheets And once m bed,
though she was aching from head to foot with fatigue, she could not sleep She
was unnerved and full of forebodings The atmosphere of this vile place
brought home to her more vividly than before the fact that she was helpless
and friendless and had only six shillings between herself and the streets
Moreover, as the night wore on the house grew noisier and noisier The walls
were so thin that you could hear everything that was happening There were
bursts of shrill idiotic laughter, hoarse male voices singing, a gramophone
drawling out limericks, noisy kisses, strange deathlike groans, and once or
twice the violent rattling of an iron bed T owards midnight the noises began to
form themselves into a rhythm m Dorothy’s bram, and she fell lightly and
unrestfully asleep She was woken about a minute later, as it seemed, by her
door being flung open, and two dimly seen female shapes rushed in, tore every
scrap of clothing from her bed except the sheets, and rushed out again. There
was a chronic shortage of blankets at ‘Mary’s’, and the only way of getting
enough of them was to rob somebody else’s bed Hence the term ’smash and
grab raiders’
In the morning, half an hour before opening time, Dorothy went to the
nearest public library to look at the advertisements in the newspapers Already
a score of vaguely mangy-lookmg people were prowling up and down, and the
number swelled by ones and twos till there were no less than sixty Presently
the doors of the library opened, and in they all surged, racing for a board at the
other end of the reading-room where the ‘Situations Vacant’ columns from
various newspapers had been cut out . and pinned up A*|d in the wake of the
A Clergyman's Daughter
job-hunters came poor old bundles of rags, men and women both. , who had
spent the night in the streets and came to the library to sleep They came
shambling m behind the others, flopped down with grunts of relief at the
nearest table, and pulled the nearest periodical towards them, it might be the
Free Church Messenger , it might be the Vegetarian Sentmel-it didn’t matter
what it was, but you couldn’t stay m the library unless you pretended to be
reading They opened their papers, and m the same instant fell asleep, with
their chins on their breasts And the attendant walked round prodding them m
turn like a stoker poking a succession of fires, and they grunted and woke up as
he prodded them, and then fell asleep again the instant he had passed
Meanwhile a battle was raging round the advertisement board, everybody
struggling to get to the front Two young men in blue overalls came running
up behmd the others, and one of them put his head down and fought his way
through the crowd as though it had been a football scrum In a moment he was
at the board He turned to his companion £ ’Ere we are, Joe- 1 got it'
“Mechanics wanted-Locke’s Garage, Camden Town ” C’m on out of it 1 ’ He
fought his way out again, and both of them scooted for the door They were
going to Camden Town as fast as their legs would carry them And at this
moment, m every public library in London, mechanics out of work were
reading that identical notice and starting on the race for the job, which in all
probability had already been given to someone who could afford to buy a paper
for himself and had seen the notice at six in the morning
Dorothy managed to get to the board at last, and made a note of some of the
addresses where ‘cook generals’ were wanted There were plenty to choose
from-indeed, half the ladies m London seemed to be crying out for strong
capable general servants With a list of twenty addresses m her pocket, and
having had a breakfast of bread and margarine and tea which cost her
threepence, Dorothy set out to look for a job, not unhopefully
She was too ignorant as yet to know that her chances of finding work
unaided were practically ml, but the next four days gradually enlightened her
During those four days she applied for eighteen jobs, and sent written
applications for four others She trudged enormous distances all through the
southern suburbs: Clapham, Brixton, Dulwich, Penge, Sydenham, Becken-
ham, Norwood-even as far as Croydon on one occasion She was haled into
neat suburban drawing-rooms and interviewed by women of every
conceivable type-large, chubby, bullying women, thm, acid, catty women,
alert frigid women m gold pince-nez , vague rambling women who looked as
though they practised vegetarianism or attended spiritualist stances And one
and all, fat or thm, chilly or motherly, they reacted to her m precisely the same
way They simply looked her over, heard her speak, stared inquisitively, asked
her a dozen embarrassing and impertinent questions, and then turned her
down.
Any experienced person could have told her how it would be In her
circumstances it was not to be expected that anyone would take the risk of
employing her. Her ragged clothes and her lack of references were against her,
and her educated accent, which she did not know how to disguise, wrecked
A Clergyman's Daughter 341
whatever chances she might have had The tramps and cockney hop-pickers
had not noticed hei accent, but the suburban housewives noticed it quickly
enough, and it scared them in just the same way as the fact that she had no
luggage had scared the landladies The moment they had heard her speak, and
spotted her for a gentlewoman, the game was up She grew quite used to the
startled, mystified look that came over their faces as soon as she opened her
mouth-the prying, feminine glance from her face to her damaged hands, and
from those to the darns m her skirt Some of the women asked her outright
what a girl of her class was doing seeking work as a servant They sniffed, no
doubt, that she had ‘been m trouble 5 -that is, had an illegitimate baby-and
after probing her with their questions they got rid of her as quickly as possible
As soon as she had an address to give Dorothy had written to her father, and
when on the third day no answer came, she wrote again, despairingly this
time-it was her fifth letter, and four had gone unanswered-telling him that
she must starve if he did not send her money at once There was just time for
her to get an answer before her week at ‘Mary’s 9 was up and she was thrown
out for not paying her rent
Meanwhile, she continued the useless search for work, while her money
dwindled at the rate of a shilling a day-a sum just sufficient to keep her alive
while leaving her chronically hungry She had almost given up the hope that
her father would do anything to help her And strangely enough her first panic
had died down, as she grew hungrier and the chances of getting a job grew
remoter, into a species of miserable apathy She suffered, but she was not
greatly afraid The sub-world into which she was descending seemed less
terrible now that it was nearer
The autumn weather, though fine, was growing colder Each day the sun,
fighting his losing battle against the winter, struggled a little later through the
mist to dye the house-fronts with pale aquarelle colours Dorothy was m the
streets all day, or in the public library, only going back to ‘Mary’s’ to sleep, and
then taking the precaution of dragging her bed across the door She had
grasped by this time that ‘Mary’s’ was-not actually a brothel, for there is
hardly such a thing m London, but a well-known refuge of prostitutes It was
for that reason that you paid ten shillings a week for a kennel not worth five
Old ‘Mary’ (she was not the proprietress of the house, merely the manageress)
had been a prostitute herself m her day, and looked it Living in such a place
damned you even m the eyes of Lambeth Cut Women sniffed when you
passed them, men took an offensive interest m you The Jew on the comer, the
owner of Knockout Trousers Ltd, was the worst of all He was a solid young
man of about thirty, with bulging red cheeks and curly black hair like
astrakhan For twelve hours a day he stood on the pavement roaring with
brazen lungs that you couldn’t get a cheaper pair of trousers in London, and
obstructing the passers-by You had only to halt for a fraction of a second, and
he seized you by the arm and bundled you inside the shop by mam force. Once
he got you there his manner became positively threatening If you said
anything disparaging about his trousers he offered to fight, and weak-minded
people bought pairs of trousers m sheer physical terror But busy though he
342 A Clergyman 3 s Daughter
was, he kept a sharp eye open for the ‘birds’, as he called them, and Dorothy
appeared to fascinate him beyond all other ‘birds’ He had grasped that she was
not a prostitute, but living at ‘Mary’s’, she must-so he reasoned-be on the
very verge of becoming one The thought made his mouth water When he saw
her coming down the alley he would post himself at the corner, with his
massive chest well displayed and one black lecherous eye turned inquiringly
upon her (‘Are you ready to begin yet 5 ’ his eye seemed to be saying), and, as
she passed, give her a discreet pinch on the backside
On the last morning of her week at ‘Mary’s’, Dorothy went downstairs and
looked, with only a faint flicker of hope, at the slate m the hallway where the
names of people for whom there were letters were chalked up There was no
letter for ‘Ellen Millborough’ That settled it, there was nothing left to do
except to walk out into the street It did not occur to her to do as every other
woman in the house would have done-that is, pitch a hard-up tale and try to
cadge another mght’s lodging rent free She simply walked out of the house,
and had not even the nerve to tell ‘Mary’ that she was going
She had no plan, absolutely no plan whatever Except for half an hour at
noon when she went out to spend threepence out of her last fourpence on bread
and margarine and tea, she passed the entire day m the public library, reading
weekly papers In the morning she read the Barber’s Record , and in the
afternoon Cage Birds They were the only papers she could get hold of, for
there were always so many idlers in the library that you had to scramble to get
hold of a paper at all She read them from cover to cover, even the
advertisements She pored for hours together over such technicalities as How
to strop French Razors, Why the Electric Hairbrush is Unhygienic, Do
Budgies thrive on Rapeseed 5 It was the only occupation that she felt equal to
She was in a strange lethargic state in which it was easier to interest herself in
How to strop French Razors than m her own desperate plight All fear had left
her Of the future she was utterly unable to thmk, even so far ahead as tonight
she could barely see There was a night m the streets ahead of her, that was all
she knew, and even about that she only vaguely cared Meanwhile there were
Cage Birds and the Barber’s Record , and they were, strangely, absorbingly
interestmg
At nine o’clock the attendant came round with a long hooked pole and
turned out the gaslights, the library was closed Dorothy turned to the left, up
the Waterloo Road, towards the river On the iron footbridge she halted for a
moment The mght wind was blowing Deep banks of mist, like dunes, were
rising from the river, and, as the wind caught them, swirling north-eastward
across the town A swirl of mist enveloped Dorothy, penetrating her thm
clothes and making her shudder with a sudden foretaste of the night’s cold
She walked on and arrived, by the process of gravitation that draws all roofless
people to the same spot, at Trafalgar Square
CHAPTER 3
I
[scene Trafalgar Square Dimly visible through the mist , a dozen people,
Dorothy among them, are grouped about one of the benches near the north
parapet ]
Charlie [singing] ’Ail Mary, ’ail Mary, ’a-i 1 Ma-ary - [Big Ben strikes ten ]
snouter [mimicking the noise ] Ding dong, dmg dong' Shut your — noise, can’t
you? Seven more hours of it on this — square before we get the chance of a
setdown and a bit of sleep 1 Gripes'
MR tallboys [to himself] Non sum quahs eram bom sub regno Edwardi In the
days of my innocence, before the Devil earned me up into a high place and
dropped me into the Sunday newspapers- that is to say when I was Rector of
Little Fawley-cum-Dewsbury
deafie [singing] With my willy willy, with my willy willy —
mrs wayne Ah, dearie, as soon as I set eyes on you I knew as you was a lady
born and bred You and me’ve known what it is to come down m the world,
haven’t we, dearie? It ain’t the same for us as what it is for some of these
others here
Charlie [singing]. ’Ail Mary, ’ail Mary, ’a-il Ma-ary, full of grace'
mrs bendigo Calls himself a bloody husband, does he? Four pound a week m
Covent Garden and ’is wife doing a starry m the bloody Square' Husband!
mr tallboys [to himself] Happy days, happy days' My ivied church under the
sheltering hillside-my red-tiled Rectory slumbering among Elizabethan
yews' My library, my vinery, my cook, house-parlourmaid and groom-
gardener' My cash in the bank, my name in Crockford' My black suit of
irreproachable cut, my collar back to front, my watered silk cassock m the
church precincts
mrs wayne Of course the one thing I do thank God for, dearie, is that my poor
dear mother never lived to see this day Because if she ever had of lived to see
the day when her eldest daughter-as was brought up, mind you, with no
expense spared and milk straight from the cow .
mrs bendigo Husband ’
ginger Come on, less ’ave a drum of tea while we got the chance Last we’ll
get tonight-coffee shop shuts at ’ar-parse ten
the kike Oh Jesus' This bloody cold’s gonna kill me' I ain’t got nothing on
under my trousers Oh Je-e-e-eese'
Charlie [singing] ’Ail Mary, ’ail Mary-
snouter* Fourpence!
