'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-1'11 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 paper 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.'
'And do you think that's really the end of it? Do you think they 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.'
'Meaning?' said Mr Warburton.
'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 put; 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 horrible things like getting up at five in the morning to go to Holy Communion on an empty belly? Surely you're not homesick for that kind of thing?'
'I don't believe in it any longer, if that's what you mean. And I see now that a lot of it was rather silly. But that doesn't help. The point is that all the beliefs I had are gone, and I've nothing to put in their place.'
'But good God! why do you want to put anything in their place? You've got rid of a load of superstitious rubbish, and you ought to be glad of it. Surely it doesn't make you any happier to go about quaking in fear of Hell fire?'
'But don't you see-you must see-how different everything is when all of a sudden the whole world is empty?'
'Empty?' exclaimed Mr Warburton. 'What do you mean by saying it's empty? I call that perfectly scandalous in a girl of your age. It's not empty at all, it's a deuced sight too full, that's the trouble with it. We're here today and gone tomorrow, and we've no time to enjoy what we've got.'
'But how can one enjoy anything when all the meaning's been taken out of it?'
'Good gracious! What do you want with a meaning? When I eat my dinner I don't do it to the greater glory of God; I do it because I enjoy it. The world's full of amusing things-books, pictures, wine, travel, friends-everything. I've never seen any meaning in it all, and I don't want to see one. Why not take life as you find it?'
'But-'
She broke off, for she saw already that she was wasting words in trying to make herself clear to him. He was quite incapable of understanding her difficulty-incapable of realizing how a mind naturally pious must recoil from a world discovered to be meaningless. Even the loathsome platitudes of the pantheists would be beyond his understanding. Probably the idea that life was essentially futile, if he thought of it at all, struck him as rather amusing than otherwise. And yet with all this he was sufficiently acute. He could see the difficulty of her own particular position, and he adverted to it a moment later.
'Of course,' he said, 'I can see that things are going to be a little awkward for you when you get home. You're going to be, so to speak, a wolf in sheep's clothing. Parish work-Mothers' Meetings, prayers with the dying, and all that-I suppose it might be a little distasteful at times. Are you afraid you won't be able to keep it up-is that the trouble?'
'Oh, no. I wasn't thinking of that. I shall go on with it, just the same as before. It's what I'm most used to. Besides, Father needs my help. He can't afford a curate, and the work's got to be done.'
'Then what's the matter? Is it the hypocrisy that's worrying you? Afraid that the consecrated bread might stick in your throat, and so forth? I shouldn't trouble. Half the parsons' daughters in England are probably in the same difficulty. And quite nine-tenths of the parsons, I should say.'
'It's partly that. I shall have to be always pretending-oh, you can't imagine in what ways! But that's not the worst. Perhaps that part of it doesn't matter, really. Perhaps it's better to be a hypocrite-that kind of hypocrite-than some things.'
'Why do you say that kind of hypocrite? I hope you don't mean that pretending to believe is the next best thing to believing?'
'Yes... I suppose that's what I do mean. Perhaps it's better-less selfish-to pretend one believes even when one doesn't, than to say openly that one's an unbeliever and perhaps help turn other people into unbelievers too.'
'My dear Dorothy,' said Mr Warburton, 'your mind, if you'll excuse my saying so, is in a morbid condition. No, dash it! it's worse than morbid; it's downright septic. You've a sort of mental gangrene hanging over from your Christian upbringing. You tell me that you've got rid of these ridiculous beliefs that were stuffed into you from your cradle upwards, and yet you're taking an attitude to life which is simply meaningless without those beliefs. Do you call that reasonable?'
'I don't know. No perhaps it's not. But I suppose it's what comes naturally to me.'
'What you're trying to do, apparently,' pursued Mr Warburton, 'is to make the worst of both worlds. You stick to the Christian scheme of things, but you leave Paradise out of it. And I suppose, if the truth were known, there are quite a lot of your kind wandering about among the ruins of C. of E. You're practically a sect in yourselves,' he added reflectively: 'the Anglican Atheists. Not a sect I should care to belong to, I must say.'
They talked for a little while longer, but not to much purpose. In reality the whole subject of religious belief and religious doubt was boring and incomprehensible to Mr Warburton. Its only appeal to him was as a pretext for blasphemy. Presently he changed the subject, as though giving up the attempt to understand Dorothy's outlook.
'This is nonsense that we're talking,' he said. 'You've got hold of some very depressing ideas, but you'll grow out of them later on, you know. Christianity isn't really an incurable disease. However, there was something quite different that I was going to say to you. I want you to listen to me for a moment. You're coming home, after being away eight months, to what I expect you realize is a rather uncomfortable situation. You had a hard enough life before-at least, what I should call a hard life-and now that you aren't quite such a good Girl Guide as you used to be, it's going to be a great deal harder. Now, do you think it's absolutely necessary to go back to it?'
'But I don't see what else I can do, unless I could get another job. I've really no alternative.'
Mr Warburton, with his head cocked a little on one side, gave Dorothy a rather curious look.
'As a matter of fact,' he said, in a more serious tone than usual, 'there's at least one other alternative that I could suggest to you.'