A Clergyman's Daughter Page 7

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 in the hands of Victor Stone--Victor, Dorothy

  called him--the Church schoolmaster. 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-looking children. On a long

  bench against the wall four more children were alternately

  practising 'noises 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 pins 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 mind 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 in 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.

  'Put a bit of life into it, can't you?' he cried, prodding an ox-

  faced boy of eleven in the belly. 'Don't drone! 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 in your inside like

  that? Stand up and shout at him. Take off that second murderer

  expression!'

  'Come here, Percy!' cried Dorothy through her pins. 'Quick!'

  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 in 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 din 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 in 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!

  CROMWELL: 'Alt! I 'old a pistol in my 'and!

  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: Halt! 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 din of

  galloping horses, was personating in 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 Twinked 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!' 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 tor />
  visualize patterns for brown paper jackboots. For the moment she

  had even forgotten the bill for twenty-one pounds seven and

  ninepence at Cargill's. She could think of nothing save that

  fearful mountain 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!' he said in 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! 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 in 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 in 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 in 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! 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.'

  '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!'

  '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 in the four-ale bar of the Dog

  and Bottle.

  'But dash it!' said Victor in 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 incense, 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

  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 see
m 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 in the Church Times last week?'

  'No, I'm afraid I didn't,' said Dorothy, holding another button in

  position with her thumb. 'What was it about?'

  'Oh, Modernist bishops and all that. I got in 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 in the thick of every

  controversy and in the forefront of every assault upon 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 in 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 in 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 place? 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!' 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 in the Anglo-