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.'
'You mean that I could go on being a schoolmistress? Perhaps
that's what I ought to do, really. I shall come back to it in the
end, in any case.'
'No. I don't think that's what I should advise.'
All this time Mr Warburton, unwilling as ever to expose his
baldness, had been wearing his rakish, rather broad-brimmed grey
felt hat. Now, however, he took it off and laid it carefully on
the empty seat beside him. His naked cranium, with only a wisp or
two of golden hair lingering in the neighbourhood of the ears,
looked like some monstrous pink pearl. Dorothy watched him with a
slight surprise.
'I am taking my hat off,' he said, 'in order to let you see me at
my very worst. You will understand why in a moment. Now, let me
offer you another alternative besides going back to your Girl
Guides and your Mothers' Union, or imprisoning yourself in some
dungeo
n of a girls' school.'
'What do you mean?' said Dorothy.
'I mean, will you--think well before you answer; I admit there are
some very obvious objections, but--will you marry me?'
Dorothy's lips parted with surprise. Perhaps she turned a little
paler. With a hasty, almost unconscious recoil she moved as far
away from him as the back of the seat would allow. But he had made
no movement towards her. He said with complete equanimity:
'You know, of course, that Dolores [Dolores was Mr Warburton's ex-
mistress] left me a year ago?'
'But I can't, I can't!' exclaimed Dorothy. 'You know I can't! I'm
not--like that. I thought you always knew. I shan't ever marry.'
Mr Warburton ignored this remark.
'I grant you,' he said, still with exemplary calmness, 'that I
don't exactly come under the heading of eligible young men. I am
somewhat older than you. We both seem to be putting our cards on
the table today, so I'll let you into a great secret and tell you
that my age is forty-nine. And then I've three children and a bad
reputation. It's a marriage that your father would--well, regard
with disfavour. And my income is only seven hundred a year. But
still, don't you think it's worth considering!'
'I can't, you know why I can't!' repeated Dorothy.
She took it for granted that he 'knew why she couldn't', though she
had never explained to him, or to anyone else, why it was impossible
for her to marry. Very probably, even if she had explained, he
would not have understood her. He went on speaking, not appearing
to notice what she had said.
'Let me put it to you', he said, 'in the form of a bargain. Of
course, I needn't tell you that it's a great deal more than that.
I'm not a marrying kind of man, as the saying goes, and I shouldn't
ask you to marry me if you hadn't a rather special attraction for
me. But let me put the business side of it first. You need a home
and a livelihood; I need a wife to keep me in order. I'm sick of
these disgusting women I've spent my life with, if you'll forgive
my mentioning them, and I'm rather anxious to settle down. A bit
late in the day, perhaps, but better late than never. Besides, I
need somebody to look after the children; the BASTARDS, you know.
I don't expect you to find me overwhelmingly attractive,' he added,
running a hand reflectively over his bald crown, 'but on the other
hand I am very easy to get on with. Immoral people usually are, as
a matter of fact. And from your own point of view the scheme would
have certain advantages. Why should you spend your life delivering
parish magazines and rubbing nasty old women's legs with Elliman's
embrocation? You would be happier married, even to a husband with
a bald head and a clouded past. You've had a hard, dull life for a
girl of your age, and your future isn't exactly rosy. Have you
really considered what your future will be like if you don't
marry?'
'I don't know. I have to some extent,' she said.
As he had not attempted to lay hands on her or to offer any
endearments, she answered his question without repeating her
previous refusal. He looked out of the window, and went on in a
musing voice, much quieter than his normal tone, so that at first
she could barely hear him above the rattle of the train; but
presently his voice rose, and took on a note of seriousness that
she had never heard in it before, or even imagined that it could
hold.
'Consider what your future would be like,' he repeated. 'It's the
same future that lies before any woman of your class with no
husband and no money. Let us say your father will live another ten
years. By the end of that time the last penny of his money will
have gone down the sink. The desire to squander it will keep him
alive just as long as it lasts, and probably no longer. All that
time he will be growing more senile, more tiresome, more impossible
to live with; he will tyrannize over you more and more, keep you
shorter and shorter of money, make more and more trouble for you
with the neighbours and the tradesmen. And you will go on with
that slavish, worrying life that you have lived, struggling to make
both ends meet, drilling the Girl Guides, reading novels to the
Mothers' Union, polishing the altar brasses, cadging money for the
organ fund, making brown paper jackboots for the schoolchildren's
plays, keeping your end up in the vile little feuds and scandals of
the church hen-coop. Year after year, winter and summer, you will
bicycle from one reeking cottage to another, to dole out pennies
from the poor box and repeat prayers that you don't even believe in
any longer. You will sit through interminable church services
which in the end will make you physically sick with their sameness
and futility. Every year your life will be a little bleaker, a
little fuller of those deadly little jobs that are shoved off on to
lonely women. And remember that you won't always be twenty-eight.
All the while you will be fading, withering, until one morning you
will look in the glass and realize that you aren't a girl any
longer, only a skinny old maid. You'll fight against it, of
course. You'll keep your physical energy and your girlish
mannerisms--you'll keep them just a little bit too long. Do you
know that type of bright--too bright--spinster who says "topping"
and "ripping" and "right-ho", and prides herself on being such a
good sport, and she's such a good sport that she makes everyone
feel a little unwell? And she's so splendidly hearty at tennis and
so handy at amateur theatricals, and she throws herself with a kind
of desperation into her Girl Guide work and her parish visiting,
and she's the life and soul of Church socials, and always, year
after year, she thinks of herself as a young girl still and never
realizes that behind her back everyone laughs at her for a poor,
disappointed old maid? That's what you'll become, what you must
become, however much you foresee it and try to avoid it. There's
no other future possible to you unless you marry. Women who don't
marry wither up--they wither up like aspidistras in back-parlour
windows; and the devilish thing is that they don't even know that
they're withering.'
Dorothy sat silent and listening with intent and horrified
fascination. She did not even notice that he had stood up, with
one hand on the door to steady him against the swaying of the
train. She was as though hypnotized, not so much by his voice as
by the visions that his words had evoked in her. He had described
her life, as it must inevitably be, with such dreadful fidelity
that he seemed actually to have carried her ten years onward into
the menacing future, and she felt herself no longer a girl full of
youth and energy, but a desperate, worn virgin of thirty-eight. As
he went on he took her hand, which was lying idle on the arm of the
seat; and even that she scarcely noticed.
'After ten years,' he continue
d, 'your father will die, and he will
leave you with not a penny, only debts. You will be nearly forty,
with no money, no profession, no chance of marrying; just a
derelict parson's daughter like the ten thousand others in England.
And after that, what do you suppose will become of you? You will
have to find yourself a job--the sort of job that parsons'
daughters get. A nursery governess, for instance, or companion to
some diseased hag who will occupy herself in thinking of ways to
humiliate you. Or you will go back to school-teaching; English
mistress in some grisly girls' school, seventy-five pounds a year
and your keep, and a fortnight in a seaside boarding-house every
August. And all the time withering, drying up, growing more sour
and more angular and more friendless. And therefore--'
As he said 'therefore' he pulled Dorothy to her feet. She made no
resistance. His voice had put her under a spell. As her mind took
in the prospect of that forbidding future, whose emptiness she was
far more able to appreciate than he, such a despair had grown in
her that if she had spoken at all it would have been to say, 'Yes,
I will marry you.' He put his arm very gently about her and drew
her a little towards him, and even now she did not attempt to
resist. Her eyes, half hypnotized, were fixed upon his. When he
put his arm about her it was as though he were protecting her,
sheltering her, drawing her away from the brink of grey, deadly
poverty and back to the world of friendly and desirable things--to
security and ease, to comely houses and good clothes, to books and
friends and flowers, to summer days and distant lands. So for
nearly a minute the fat, debauched bachelor and the thin,
spinsterish girl stood face to face, their eyes meeting, their
bodies all but touching, while the train swayed them in its motion,
and clouds and telegraph poles and bud-misted hedges and fields
green with young wheat raced past unseen.
Mr Warburton tightened his grip and pulled her against him. It
broke the spell. The visions that had held her helpless--visions
of poverty and of escape from poverty--suddenly vanished and left
only a shocked realization of what was happening to her. She was
in the arms of a man--a fattish, oldish man! A wave of disgust and
deadly fear went through her, and her entrails seemed to shrink and
freeze. His thick male body was pressing her backwards and
downwards, his large, pink face, smooth, but to her eyes old, was
bearing down upon her own. The harsh odour of maleness forced
itself into her nostrils. She recoiled. Furry thighs of satyrs!
She began to struggle furiously, though indeed he made hardly any
effort to retain her, and in a moment she had wrenched herself free
and fallen back into her seat, white and trembling. She looked up
at him with eyes which, from fear and aversion, were for a moment
those of a stranger.
Mr Warburton remained on his feet, regarding her with an expression
of resigned, almost amused disappointment. He did not seem in the
least distressed. As her calmness returned to her she perceived
that all he had said had been no more than a trick to play upon her
feelings and cajole her into saying that she would marry him; and
what was stranger yet, that he had said it without seriously caring
whether she married him or not. He had, in fact, merely been
amusing himself. Very probably the whole thing was only another of
his periodical attempts to seduce her.
He sat down, but more deliberately than she, taking care of the
creases of his trousers as he did so.
'If you want to pull the communication cord,' he said mildly, 'you
had better let me make sure that I have five pounds in my pocket-
book.'
After that he was quite himself again, or as nearly himself as
anyone could possibly be after such a scene, and he went on talking
without the smallest symptom of embarrassment. His sense of shame,