A Clergyman's Daughter Page 14

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 goodbye 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 in no

  kind of danger. The farm hands did not know that she had shared

  the stolen apples--for that matter, nearly everyone in 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 hour ago. Within her and without, everything was

  changed. It was as though a bubble in 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

  living--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 I?' had faded out

  of her mind 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 in 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 mind. 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's Weekly which

  Nobby had given her a week ago. She took it outside, knelt down,

  and spread it out in the light of the fire.

  It was on the front page--a photograph, and three big headlines.

  Yes! 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 her in her grave!' was the heartbroken

  cry of the Rev. Charles Hare, Rector of Knype Hill, Suffolk, on

  learning of his twenty-eight-year-old daughter's elopement with an

  elderly bachelor named Warburton, described as an artist.

  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 in 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 Semprill, 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 in the direction of the Ipswich road. Miss Hare was dressed in

  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

  it--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 in 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 in

  Pippin's Weekly had so unstrung her that it was impossible even for

  an instant to focus her mind upon anything else. Its lickerish

  phrases were going over and over in her head. 'Embraces of a

  passionate nature'--'in 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 in physical pain.

  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 off? (Everyone

  in 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. 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 ill?'

  '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 in 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!'

  'That'll be enough from you, Ma!' 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 in Pippin's Weekly still made her wince 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 Semprill 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

  Semprill, that is--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 Semprill--whether she told her lies consciously and

  deliberately AS lies, or whether, in 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 train fare home. Home! The word sent a pang

  through her heart. Home, after weeks of dirt and hunger! 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 the question. When you have figured on the front page of

  Pippin's Weekly--'in 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 Warburton, for instance, could

  contradict it--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! Say, George! J'a see that bit of stuff over there? With

  fair 'air?'

  'What, the skinny 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 in Paris!

  Never think it to look at 'er, would you?'

  'GO on!'

  'She did! Straight, she did. It was in 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 Semprill 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

  Semprill? Only the limits of her imagination--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 evening 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 in the

  camp, sitting on the grass by the fire--no tables or chairs in the

  camp, of course--she began to write with a stump of pencil:

  Dearest Father,--I 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 in 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 in 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 in the village, and perhaps

  in the camp as well, that she was Dorothy Hare, the notorious

  'Rector's Daughter'.

  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 train for home, and breathe a sigh of relief to get

  there, in 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 evening 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 again 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