shillings for the carriage. So Dorothy had five pounds fifteen in
hand, which might keep her for three weeks with careful economy.
What she was going to do, except that she must start by going to
London and finding a suitable lodging, she had very little idea.
But her first panic had worn off, and she realized that the
situation was not altogether desperate. No doubt her father would
help her, at any rate for a while, and at the worst, though she
hated even the thought of doing it, she could ask her cousin's help
a second time. Besides, her chances of finding a job were probably
fairly good. She was young, she spoke with a genteel accent, and
she was willing to drudge for a servant's wages--qualities that are
much sought after by the proprietors of fourth-rate schools. Very
likely all would be well. But that there was an evil time ahead of
her, a time of job-hunting, of uncertainty and possibly of hunger--
that, at any rate, was certain.
CHAPTER 5
1
However, it turned out quite otherwise. For Dorothy had not gone
five yards from the gate when a telegraph boy came riding up the
street in the opposite direction, whistling and looking at the
names of the houses. He saw the name Ringwood House, wheeled his
bicycle round, propped it against the kerb, and accosted Dorothy.
'Miss Mill-BURROW live 'ere?' he said, jerking his head in the
direction of Ringwood House.
'Yes. I am Miss Millborough.'
'Gotter wait case there's a answer,' said the boy, taking an
orange-coloured envelope from his belt.
Dorothy put down her bag. She had once more begun trembling
violently. And whether this was from joy or fear she was not
certain, for two conflicting thoughts had sprung almost
simultaneously into her brain. One, 'This is some kind of good
news!' The other, 'Father is seriously ill!' She managed to tear
the envelope open, and found a telegram which occupied two pages,
and which she had the greatest difficulty in understanding. It
ran:
Rejoice in the lord o ye righteous note of exclamation great news
note of exclamation your reputation absolutely reestablished stop
mrs semprill fallen into the pit that she hath digged stop action
for libel stop no one believes her any longer stop your father
wishes you return home immediately stop am coming up to town myself
comma will pick you up if you like stop arriving shortly after this
stop wait for me stop praise him with the loud cymbals note of
exclamation much love stop.
No need to look at the signature. It was from Mr Warburton, of
course. Dorothy felt weaker and more tremulous than ever. She was
dimly aware the telegraph boy was asking her something.
'Any answer?' he said for the third or fourth time.
'Not today, thank you,' said Dorothy vaguely.
The boy remounted his bicycle and rode off, whistling with extra
loudness to show Dorothy how much he despised her for not tipping
him. But Dorothy was unaware of the telegraph's boy's scorn. The
only phrase of the telegram that she had fully understood was 'your
father wishes you return home immediately', and the surprise of it
had left her in a semi-dazed condition. For some indefinite time
she stood on the pavement, until presently a taxi rolled up the
street, with Mr Warburton inside it. He saw Dorothy, stopped the
taxi, jumped out and came across to meet her, beaming. He seized
her both hands.
'Hullo!' he cried, and at once threw his arm pseudo-paternally
about her and drew her against him, heedless of who might be
looking. 'How are you? But by Jove, how thin you've got! I can
feel all your ribs. Where is this school of yours?'
Dorothy, who had not yet managed to get free of his arm, turned
partly round and cast a glance towards the dark windows of Ringwood
House.
'What! That place? Good God, what a hole! What have you done
with your luggage?'
'It's inside. I've left them the money to send it on. I think
it'll be all right.'
'Oh, nonsense! Why pay? We'll take it with us. It can go on top
of the taxi.'
'No, no! Let them send it. I daren't go back. Mrs Creevy would
be horribly angry.'
'Mrs Creevy? Who's Mrs Creevy?'
'The headmistress--at least, she owns the school.'
'What, a dragon, is she? Leave her to me--I'll deal with her.
Perseus and the Gorgon, what? You are Andromeda. Hi!' he called
to the taxi-driver.
The two of them went up to the front door and Mr Warburton knocked.
Somehow, Dorothy never believed that they would succeed in getting
her box from Mrs Creevy. In fact, she half expected to see them
come out flying for their lives, and Mrs Creevy after them with her
broom. However, in a couple of minutes they reappeared, the taxi-
driver carrying the box on his shoulder. Mr Warburton handed
Dorothy into the taxi and, as they sat down, dropped half a crown
into her hand.
'What a woman! What a woman!' he said comprehensively as the taxi
bore them away. 'How the devil have you put up with it all this
time?'
'What is this?' said Dorothy, looking at the coin.
'Your half-crown that you left to pay for the luggage. Rather a
feat getting it out of the old girl, wasn't it?'
'But I left five shillings!' said Dorothy.
'What! The woman told me you only left half a crown. By God, what
impudence! We'll go back and have the half-crown out of her. Just
to spite her!' He tapped on the glass.
'No, no!' said Dorothy, laying her hand on his arm. 'It doesn't
matter in the least. Let's get away from here--right away. I
couldn't bear to go back to that place again--EVER!'
It was quite true. She felt that she would sacrifice not merely
half a crown, but all the money in her possession, sooner than set
eyes on Ringwood House again. So they drove on, leaving Mrs Creevy
victorious. It would be interesting to know whether this was
another of the occasions when Mrs Creevy laughed.
Mr Warburton insisted on taking the taxi the whole way into London,
and talked so voluminously in the quieter patches of the traffic
that Dorothy could hardly get a word in edgeways. It was not till
they had reached the inner suburbs that she got from him an
explanation of the sudden change in her fortunes.
'Tell me,' she said, 'what is it that's happened? I don't
understand. Why is it all right for me to go home all of a sudden?
Why don't people believe Mrs Semprill any longer? Surely she
hasn't confessed?'
'Confessed? Not she! But her sins have found her out, all the
same. It was the kind of thing that you pious people would ascribe
to the finger of Providence. Cast thy bread upon the waters, and
all that. She got herself into a nasty mess--an action for libel.
We've talked of nothing else in Knype Hill for the last fortnight.
I though you would have seen something about it in the newspapers.'
'I've hardly looked at a p
aper for ages. Who brought an action for
libel? Not my father, surely?'
'Good gracious, no! Clergymen can't bring actions for libel. It
was the bank manager. Do you remember her favourite story about
him--how he was keeping a woman on the bank's money, and so forth?'
'Yes, I think so.'
'A few months ago she was foolish enough to put some of it in
writing. Some kind friend--some female friend, I presume--took the
letter round to the bank manager. He brought an action--Mrs
Semprill was ordered to pay a hundred and fifty pounds damages.
I don't suppose she paid a halfpenny, but still, that's the end of
her career as a scandalmonger. You can go on blackening people's
reputations for years, and everyone will believe you, more or less,
even when it's perfectly obvious that you're lying. But once
you've been proved a liar in open court, you're disqualified, so to
speak. Mrs Semprill's done for, so far as Knype Hill goes. She
left the town between days--practically did a moonlight flit, in
fact. I believe she's inflicting herself on Bury St Edmunds at
present.'
'But what has all that got to do with the things she said about you
and me?'
'Nothing--nothing whatever. But why worry? The point is that
you're reinstated; and all the hags who've been smacking their
chops over you for months past are saying, "Poor, poor Dorothy, how
SHOCKINGLY that dreadful woman has treated her!"'
'You mean they think that because Mrs Semprill was telling lies in
one case she must have been telling lies in another?'
'No doubt that's what they'd say if they were capable of reasoning
it out. At any rate, Mrs Semprill's in disgrace, and so all the
people she's slandered must be martyrs. Even MY reputation is
practically spotless for the time being.'
honestly believe that it was all an accident--that I only lost my
memory and didn't elope with anybody?'
'Oh, well, I wouldn't go as far as that. In these country places
there's always a certain amount of suspicion knocking about. Not
suspicion of anything in particular, you know; just generalized
suspicion. A sort of instinctive rustic dirty-mindedness. I can
imagine its being vaguely rumoured in the bar parlour of the Dog
and Bottle in ten years' time that you've got some nasty secret in
your past, only nobody can remember what. Still, your troubles are
over. If I were you I wouldn't give any explanations till you're
asked for them. The official theory is that you had a bad attack
of flu and went away to recuperate. I should stick to that.
You'll find they'll accept it all right. Officially, there's
nothing against you.
Presently they got to London, and Mr Warburton took Dorothy to
lunch at a restaurant in Coventry Street, where they had a young
chicken, roasted, with asparagus and tiny, pearly-white potatoes
that had been ripped untimely from their mother earth, and also
treacle tart and a nice warm bottle of Burgundy; but what gave
Dorothy the most pleasure of all, after Mrs Creevy's lukewarm water
tea, was the black coffee they had afterwards. After lunch they
took another taxi to Liverpool Street Station and caught the 2.45.
It was a four-hour journey to Knype Hill.
Mr Warburton insisted on travelling first-class, and would not hear
of Dorothy paying her own fare; he also, when Dorothy was not
looking, tipped the guard to let them have a carriage to themselves.
It was one of those bright cold days which are spring or winter
according as you are indoors or out. From behind the shut windows
of the carriage the too-blue sky looked warm and kind, and all the
slummy wilderness through which the train was rattling--the
labyrinths of little dingy-coloured houses, the great chaotic
factories, the miry canals, and derelict building lots littered with
rusty boilers and overgrown by smoke-blackened weeds--all were
redeemed and gilded by the sun. Dorothy hardly spoke for the first
half-hour of the journey. For the moment she was too happy to talk.
She did not even think of anything in particular, but merely sat
there luxuriating in the glass-filtered sunlight, in the comfort of
the padded seat and the feeling of having escaped from Mrs Creevy's
clutches. But she was aware that this mood could not last very much
longer. Her contentment, like the warmth of the wine that she had
drunk at lunch, was ebbing away, and thoughts either painful or
difficult to express were taking shape in her mind. Mr Warburton
had been watching her face, more observantly than was usual for him,
as though trying to gauge the changes that the past eight months had
worked in her.
'You look older,' he said finally.
'I am older,' said Dorothy.
'Yes; but you look--well, more completely grown up. Tougher.
Something has changed in your face. You look--if you'll forgive
the expression--as though the Girl Guide had been exorcized from
you for good and all. I hope seven devils haven't entered into you
instead?' Dorothy did not answer, and he added: 'I suppose, as a
matter of fact, you must have had the very devil of a time?'
'Oh, beastly! Sometimes too beastly for words. Do you know that
sometimes--'
She paused. She had been about to tell him how she had had to beg
for her food; how she had slept in the streets; how she had been
arrested for begging and spent a night in the police cells; how Mrs
Creevy had nagged at her and starved her. But she stopped, because
she had suddenly realized that these were not the things that she
wanted to talk about. Such things as these, she perceived, are of
no real importance; they are mere irrelevant accidents, not
essentially different from catching a cold in the head or having to
wait two hours at a railway junction. They are disagreeable, but
they do not matter. The truism that all real happenings are in the
mind struck her more forcibly than ever before, and she said:
'Those things don't really matter. I mean, things like having no
money and not having enough to eat. Even when you're practically
starving--it doesn't CHANGE anything inside you.'
'Doesn't it? I'll take your word for it. I should be very sorry
to try.'
'Oh, well, it's beastly while it's happening, of course; but it
doesn't make any real difference; it's the things that happen
inside you that matter.'
'Oh--things change in your mind. And then the whole world changes,
because you look at it differently.'
She was still looking out of the window. The train had drawn clear
of the eastern slums and was running at gathering speed past
willow-bordered streams and low-lying meadows upon whose hedges the
first buds made a faint soft greenness, like a cloud. In a field
near the line a month-old calf, flat as a Noah's Ark animal, was
bounding stiff-legged after its mother, and in a cottage garden an
old labourer, with slow, rheumatic movements, was turning over the
soil beneath a pear tree covered with ghostly bloom. His spade
flashed in the sun as the train passed. The depressing hymn-line
'Change and decay in all around I see' moved through Dorothy's
mind. It was true what she had said just now. Something had
happened in her heart, and the world was a little emptier, a little
poorer from that minute. On such a day as this, last spring or any
earlier spring, how joyfully, and how unthinkingly, she would have
thanked God for the first blue skies and the first flowers of the
reviving year! And now, seemingly, there was no God to thank, and
nothing--not a flower or a stone or a blade of grass--nothing in
the universe would ever be the same again.
'Things change in your mind,' she repeated. 'I've lost my faith,'
she added, somewhat abruptly, because she found herself half
ashamed to utter the words.
'You've lost your WHAT?' said Mr Warburton, less accustomed than
she to this kind of phraseology.
'My faith. Oh, you know what I mean! A few months ago, all of a
sudden, it seemed as if my whole mind had changed. Everything that
I'd believed in till then--everything--seemed suddenly meaningless
and almost silly. God--what I'd meant by God--immortal life,
Heaven and Hell--everything. It had all gone. And it wasn't that
I'd reasoned it out; it just happened to me. It was like when
you're a child, and one day, for no particular reason, you stop
believing in fairies. I just couldn't go on believing in it any
longer.'
'You never did believe in it,' said Mr Warburton unconcernedly.
'But I did, really I did! I know you always thought I didn't--you
thought I was just pretending because I was ashamed to own up. But
it wasn't that at all. I believed it just as I believe that I'm
sitting in this carriage.'
'Of course you didn't, my poor child! How could you, at your age?
You were far too intelligent for that. But you'd been brought up
in these absurd beliefs, and you'd allowed yourself to go on
thinking, in a sort of way, that you could still swallow them.
You'd built yourself a life-pattern--if you'll excuse a bit of
psychological jargon--that was only possible for a believer, and
naturally it was beginning to be a strain on you. In fact, it was
obvious all the time what was the matter with you. I should say
that in all probability that was why you lost your memory.'
'What do you mean?' she said, rather puzzled by this remark.
He saw that she did not understand, and explained to her that loss
of memory is only a device, unconsciously used, to escape from an
impossible situation. The mind, he said, will play curious tricks
when it is in a tight corner. Dorothy had never heard of anything
of this kind before, and she could not at first accept his
explanation. Nevertheless she considered it for a moment, and
perceived that, even if it were true, it did not alter the
fundamental fact.
'I don't see that it makes any difference,' she said finally.
'Doesn't it? I should have said it made a considerable
difference.'
'But don't you see, if my faith is gone, what does it matter
whether I've only lost it now or whether I'd really lost it years
ago? All that matters is that it's gone, and I've got to begin my
life all over again.'
'Surely I don't take you to mean,' said Mr Warburton, 'that you
actually REGRET losing your faith, as you call it? One might as
well regret losing a goitre. Mind you, I'm speaking, as it were,
without the book--as a man who never had very much faith to lose.
The little I had passed away quite painlessly at the age of nine.
But it's hardly the kind of thing I should have thought anyone
would REGRET losing. Used you not, if I remember rightly, to do