A Clergyman's Daughter Read online

household by doing so. Next day, however, the question became more

  urgent, because Mrs Semprill was now publishing the story of the

  elopement far and wide. Of course, the Rector denied it violently,

  but in his heart he had a sneaking suspicion that it might be true.

  It was the kind of thing, he now decided, that Dorothy WOULD do. A

  girl who would suddenly walk out of the house without even taking

  thought for her father's breakfast was capable of anything.

  Two days later the newspapers got hold of the story, and a nosy

  young reporter came down to Knype Hill and began asking questions.

  The Rector made matters worse by angrily refusing to interview the

  reporter, so that Mrs Semprill's version was the only one that got

  into print. For about a week, until the papers got tired of

  Dorothy's case and dropped her in favour of a plesiosaurus that had

  been seen at the mouth of the Thames, the Rector enjoyed a horrible

  notoriety. He could hardly open a newspaper without seeing some

  flaming headline about 'Rector's Daughter. Further Revelations',

  or 'Rector's Daughter. Is she in Vienna? Reported seen in Low-

  class Cabaret'. Finally there came an article in the Sunday

  Spyhole, which began, 'Down in a Suffolk Rectory a broken old man

  sits staring at the wall', and which was so absolutely unbearable

  that the Rector consulted his solicitor about an action for libel.

  However, the solicitor was against it; it might lead to a verdict,

  he said, but it would certainly lead to further publicity. So the

  Rector did nothing, and his anger against Dorothy, who had brought

  this disgrace upon him, hardened beyond possibility of forgiveness.

  After this there came three letters from Dorothy, explaining what

  had happened. Of course the Rector never really believed that

  Dorothy had lost her memory. It was too thin a story altogether.

  He believed that she either HAD eloped with Mr Warburton, or had

  gone off on some similar escapade and had landed herself penniless

  in Kent; at any rate--this he had settled once and for all, and no

  argument would ever move him from it--whatever had happened to her

  was entirely her own fault. The first letter he wrote was not to

  Dorothy herself but to his cousin Tom, the baronet. For a man of

  the Rector's upbringing it was second nature, in any serious

  trouble, to turn to a rich relative for help. He had not exchanged

  a word with his cousin for the last fifteen years, since they had

  quarrelled over a little matter of a borrowed fifty pounds; still,

  he wrote fairly confidently, asking Sir Thomas to get in touch with

  Dorothy if it could be done, and to find her some kind of job in

  London. For of course, after what had happened, there could be no

  question of letting her come back to Knype Hill.

  Shortly after this there came two despairing letters from Dorothy,

  telling him that she was in danger of starvation and imploring him

  to send her some money. The Rector was disturbed. It occurred to

  him--it was the first time in his life that he had seriously

  considered such a thing--that it IS possible to starve if you have

  no money. So, after thinking it over for the best part of a week,

  he sold out ten pounds' worth of shares and sent a cheque for ten

  pounds to his cousin, to be kept for Dorothy till she appeared. At

  the same time he sent a cold letter to Dorothy herself, telling her

  that she had better apply to Sir Thomas Hare. But several more

  days passed before this letter was posted, because the Rector had

  qualms about addressing a letter to 'Ellen Millborough'--he dimly

  imagined that it was against the law to use false names--and, of

  course, he had delayed far too long. Dorothy was already in the

  streets when the letter reached 'Mary's'.

  Sir Thomas Hare was a widower, a good-hearted, chuckle-headed man

  of about sixty-five, with an obtuse rosy face and curling

  moustaches. He dressed by preference in checked overcoats and

  curly brimmed bowler hats that were at once dashingly smart and

  four decades out of date. At a first glance he gave the impression

  of having carefully disguised himself as a cavalry major of the

  'nineties, so that you could hardly look at him without thinking of

  devilled bones with a b and s, and the tinkle of hansom bells, and

  the Pink 'Un in its great 'Pitcher' days, and Lottie Collins and

  'Tarara-BOOM-deay'. But his chief characteristic was an abysmal

  mental vagueness. He was one of those people who say 'Don't you

  know?' and 'What! What!' and lose themselves in the middle of their

  sentences. When he was puzzled or in difficulties, his moustaches

  seemed to bristle forward, giving him the appearance of a well-

  meaning but exceptionally brainless prawn.

  So far as his own inclinations went Sir Thomas was not in the least

  anxious to help his cousins, for Dorothy herself he had never seen,

  and the Rector he looked on as a cadging poor relation of the worst

  possible type. But the fact was that he had had just about as much

  of this 'Rector's Daughter' business as he could stand. The

  accursed chance that Dorothy's surname was the same as his own had

  made his life a misery for the past fortnight, and he foresaw

  further and worse scandals if she were left at large any longer.

  So, just before leaving London for the pheasant shooting, he sent

  for his butler, who was also his confidant and intellectual guide,

  and held a council of war.

  'Look here, Blyth, dammit,' said Sir Thomas prawnishly (Blyth was

  the butler's name), 'I suppose you've seen all this damn' stuff in

  the newspapers, hey? This "Rector's Daughter" stuff? About this

  damned niece of mine.'

  Blyth was a small sharp-featured man with a voice that never rose

  above a whisper. It was as nearly silent as a voice can be while

  still remaining a voice. Only by watching his lips as well as

  listening closely could you catch the whole of what he said. In

  this case his lips signalled something to the effect that Dorothy

  was Sir Thomas's cousin, not his niece.

  'What, my cousin, is she?' said Sir Thomas. 'So she is, by Jove!

  Well, look here, Blyth, what I mean to say--it's about time we got

  hold of the damn' girl and locked her up somewhere. See what I

  mean? Get hold of her before there's any MORE trouble. She's

  knocking about somewhere in London, I believe. What's the best way

  of getting on her track? Police? Private detectives and all that?

  D'you think we could manage it?'

  Blyth's lips registered disapproval. It would, he seemed to be

  saying, be possible to trace Dorothy without calling in the police

  and having a lot of disagreeable publicity.

  'Good man!' said Sir Thomas. 'Get to it, then. Never mind what it

  costs. I'd give fifty quid not to have that "Rector's Daughter"

  business over again. And for God's sake, Blyth,' he added

  confidentially, 'once you've got hold of the damn' girl, don't let

  her out of your sight. Bring her back to the house and damn' well

  keep her here. See what I mean? Keep her under lock and key till<
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  I get back. Or else God knows what she'll be up to next.'

  Sir Thomas, of course, had never seen Dorothy, and it was therefore

  excusable that he should have formed his conception of her from the

  newspaper reports.

  It took Blyth about a week to track Dorothy down. On the morning

  after she came out of the police-court cells (they had fined her

  six shillings, and, in default of payment, detained her for twelve

  hours: Mrs McElligot, as an old offender, got seven days), Blyth

  came up to her, lifted his bowler hat a quarter of an inch from his

  head, and inquired noiselessly whether she were not Miss Dorothy

  Hare. At the second attempt Dorothy understood what he was saying,

  and admitted that she WAS Miss Dorothy Hare; whereupon Blyth

  explained that he was sent by her cousin, who was anxious to help

  her, and that she was to come home with him immediately.

  Dorothy followed him without more words said. It seemed queer that

  her cousin should take this sudden interest in her, but it was no

  queerer than the other things that had been happening lately. They

  took the bus to Hyde Park Corner, Blyth paying the fares, and then

  walked to a large, expensive-looking house with shuttered windows,

  on the borderland between Knightsbridge and Mayfair. They went

  down some steps, and Blyth produced a key and they went in. So,

  after an absence of something over six weeks, Dorothy returned to

  respectable society, by the area door.

  She spent three days in the empty house before her cousin came

  home. It was a queer, lonely time. There were several servants in

  the house, but she saw nobody except Blyth, who brought her her

  meals and talked to her, noiselessly, with a mixture of deference

  and disapproval. He could not quite make up his mind whether she

  was a young lady of family or a rescued Magdalen, and so treated

  her as something between the two. The house had that hushed,

  corpselike air peculiar to houses whose master is away, so that you

  instinctively went about on tiptoe and kept the blinds over the

  windows. Dorothy did not even dare to enter any of the main rooms.

  She spent all the daytime lurking in a dusty, forlorn room at the

  top of the house which was a sort of museum of bric-a-brac dating

  from 1880 onwards. Lady Hare, dead these five years, had been an

  industrious collector of rubbish, and most of it had been stowed

  away in this room when she died. It was a doubtful point whether

  the queerest object in the room was a yellowed photograph of

  Dorothy's father, aged eighteen but with respectable side-whiskers,

  standing self-consciously beside an 'ordinary' bicycle--this was in

  1888; or whether it was a little sandalwood box labelled 'Piece of

  Bread touched by Cecil Rhodes at the City and South Africa Banquet,

  June 1897'. The sole books in the room were some grisly school

  prizes that had been won by Sir Thomas's children--he had three,

  the youngest being the same age as Dorothy.

  It was obvious that the servants had orders not to let her go out

  of doors. However, her father's cheque for ten pounds had arrived,

  and with some difficulty she induced Blyth to get it cashed, and,

  on the third day, went out and bought herself some clothes. She

  bought herself a ready-made tweed coat and skirt and a jersey to go

  with them, a hat, and a very cheap frock of artificial printed

  silk; also a pair of passable brown shoes, three pairs of lisle

  stockings, a nasty, cheap little handbag, and a pair of grey cotton

  gloves that would pass for suede at a little distance. That came

  to eight pounds ten, and she dared not spend more. As for

  underclothes, nightdresses, and handkerchiefs, they would have to

  wait. After all, it is the clothes that show that matter.

  Sir Thomas arrived on the following day, and never really got over

  the surprise that Dorothy's appearance gave him. He had been

  expecting to see some rouged and powdered siren who would plague

  him with temptations to which alas! he was no longer capable of

  succumbing; and this countrified, spinsterish girl upset all his

  calculations. Certain vague ideas that had been floating about his

  mind, of finding her a job as a manicurist or perhaps as a private

  secretary to a bookie, floated out of it again. From time to time

  Dorothy caught him studying her with a puzzled, prawnish eye,

  obviously wondering how on earth such a girl could ever have

  figured in an elopement. It was very little use, of course,

  telling him that she had NOT eloped. She had given him her version

  of the story, and he had accepted it with a chivalrous 'Of course,

  m'dear, of course!' and thereafter, in every other sentence,

  betrayed the fact that he disbelieved her.

  So for a couple of days nothing definite was done. Dorothy

  continued her solitary life in the room upstairs, and Sir Thomas

  went to his club for most of his meals, and in the evening there

  were discussions of the most unutterable vagueness. Sir Thomas was

  genuinely anxious to find Dorothy a job, but he had great

  difficulty in remembering what he was talking about for more than a

  few minutes at a time. 'Well, m'dear,' he would start off, 'you'll

  understand, of course, that I'm very keen to do what I can for you.

  Naturally, being your uncle and all that--what? What's that? Not

  your uncle? No, I suppose I'm not, by Jove! Cousin--that's it;

  cousin. Well, now, m'dear, being your cousin--now, what was I

  saying?' Then, when Dorothy had guided him back to the subject, he

  would throw out some such suggestion as, 'Well, now, for instance,

  m'dear, how would you like to be companion to an old lady? Some

  dear old girl, don't you know--black mittens and rheumatoid

  arthritis. Die and leave you ten thousand quid and care of the

  parrot. What, what?' which did not get them very much further.

  Dorothy repeated a number of times that she would rather be a

  housemaid or a parlourmaid, but Sir Thomas would not hear of it.

  The very idea awakened in him a class-instinct which he was usually

  too vague-minded to remember. 'What!' he would say. 'A dashed

  skivvy? Girl of your upbringing? No, m'dear--no, no! Can't do

  THAT kind of thing, dash it!'

  But in the end everything was arranged, and with surprising ease;

  not by Sir Thomas, who was incapable of arranging anything, but by

  his solicitor, whom he had suddenly thought of consulting. And the

  solicitor, without even seeing Dorothy, was able to suggest a job

  for her. She could, he said, almost certainly find a job as a

  schoolmistress. Of all jobs, that was the easiest to get.

  Sir Thomas came home very pleased with this suggestion, which

  struck him as highly suitable. (Privately, he thought that Dorothy

  had just the kind of face that a schoolmistress ought to have.)

  But Dorothy was momentarily aghast when she heard of it.

  'A schoolmistress!' she said. 'But I couldn't possibly! I'm sure

  no school would give me a job. There isn't a single subject I can

  teach.'

  'What? What's that? Can
't teach? Oh, dash it! Of course you

  can! Where's the difficulty?'

  'But I don't know enough! I've never taught anybody anything,

  except cooking to the Girl Guides. You have to be properly

  qualified to be a teacher.'

  'Oh, nonsense! Teaching's the easiest job in the world. Good

  thick ruler--rap 'em over the knuckles. They'll be glad enough

  to get hold of a decently brought up young woman to teach the

  youngsters their ABC. That's the line for you, m'dear--

  schoolmistress. You're just cut out for it.'

  And sure enough, a schoolmistress Dorothy became. The invisible

  solicitor had made all the arrangements in less than three days.

  It appeared that a certain Mrs Creevy, who kept a girls' day school

  in the suburb of Southbridge, was in need of an assistant, and was

  quite willing to give Dorothy the job. How it had all been settled

  so quickly, and what kind of school it could be that would take on

  a total stranger, and unqualified at that, in the middle of the

  term, Dorothy could hardly imagine. She did not know, of course,

  that a bribe of five pounds, miscalled a premium, had changed

  hands.

  So, just ten days after her arrest for begging, Dorothy set out for

  Ringwood House Academy, Brough Road, Southbridge, with a small

  trunk decently full of clothes and four pounds ten in her purse--

  for Sir Thomas had made her a present of ten pounds. When she

  thought of the ease with which this job had been found for her, and

  then of the miserable struggles of three weeks ago, the contrast

  amazed her. It brought home to her, as never before, the

  mysterious power of money. In fact, it reminded her of a favourite

  saying of Mr Warburton's, that if you took 1 Corinthians, chapter

  thirteen, and in every verse wrote 'money' instead of 'charity',

  the chapter had ten times as much meaning as before.

  2

  Southbridge was a repellent suburb ten or a dozen miles from

  London. Brough Road lay somewhere at the heart of it, amid

  labyrinths of meanly decent streets, all so indistinguishably

  alike, with their ranks of semi-detached houses, their privet and

  laurel hedges and plots of ailing shrubs at the crossroads, that

  you could lose yourself there almost as easily as in a Brazilian

  forest. Not only the houses themselves, but even their names were

  the same over and over again. Reading the names on the gates as

  you came up Brough Road, you were conscious of being haunted by

  some half-remembered passage of poetry; and when you paused to

  identify it, you realized that it was the first two lines of

  Lycidas.

  Ringwood House was a dark-looking, semi-detached house of yellow

  brick, three storeys high, and its lower windows were hidden from

  the road by ragged and dusty laurels. Above the laurels, on the

  front of the house, was a board inscribed in faded gold letters:

  RINGWOOD HOUSE ACADEMY FOR GIRLS

  Ages 5 to 18

  Music and Dancing Taught

  Apply within for Prospectus

  Edge to edge with this board, on the other half of the house, was

  another board which read:

  RUSHINGTON GRANGE HIGH SCHOOL FOR BOYS

  Ages 6 to 16

  Book-keeping and Commercial Arithmetic a Speciality

  Apply within for Prospectus

  The district pullulated with small private schools; there were four

  of them in Brough Road alone. Mrs Creevy, the Principal of

  Ringwood House, and Mr Boulger, the Principal of Rushington Grange,

  were in a state of warfare, though their interests in no way

  clashed with one another. Nobody knew what the feud was about, not

  even Mrs Creevy or Mr Boulger themselves; it was a feud that they

  had inherited from earlier proprietors of the two schools. In the

  mornings after breakfast they would stalk up and down their

  respective back gardens, beside the very low wall that separated

  them, pretending not to see one another and grinning with hatred.