Conqueror to be thought of. More armour! And presently she must

  go along to the kitchen and remind Ellen to boil some potatoes to

  go with the minced beef for supper; also there was her 'memo list'

  to be written out for tomorrow. She shaped the two halves of the

  breastplate, cut out the armholes and neckholes, and then stopped

  again.

  Where had she got to? She had been saying that if death ends all,

  then there is no hope and no meaning in anything. Well, what then?

  The action of going to the scullery and refilling the saucepan had

  changed the tenor of her thoughts. She perceived, for a moment at

  least, that she had allowed herself to fall into exaggeration and

  self-pity. What a fuss about nothing, after all! As though in

  reality there were not people beyond number in the same case as

  herself! All over the world, thousands, millions of them; people

  who had lost their faith without losing their need of faith. 'Half

  the parsons' daughters in England,' Mr Warburton had said. He was

  probably right. And not only parsons' daughters; people of every

  description--people in illness and loneliness and failure, people

  leading thwarted, discouraging lives--people who needed faith to

  support them, and who hadn't got it. Perhaps even nuns in

  convents, scrubbing floors and singing Ave Marias, secretly

  unbelieving.

  And how cowardly, after all, to regret a superstition that you had

  got rid of--to want to believe something that you knew in your

  bones to be untrue!

  And yet--!

  Dorothy had put down her scissors. Almost from force of habit, as

  though her return home, which had not restored her faith, had

  restored the outward habits of piety, she knelt down beside her

  chair. She buried her face in her hands. She began to pray.

  'Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief. Lord, I believe, I

  believe; help Thou my unbelief.'

  It was useless, absolutely useless. Even as she spoke the words

  she was aware of their uselessness, and was half ashamed of her

  action. She raised her head. And at that moment there stole into

  her nostrils a warm, evil smell, forgotten these eight months but

  unutterably familiar--the smell of glue. The water in the saucepan

  was bubbling noisily. Dorothy jumped to her feet and felt the

  handle of the glue-brush. The glue was softening--would be liquid

  in another five minutes.

  The grandfather clock in her father's study struck six. Dorothy

  started. She realized that she had wasted twenty minutes, and her

  conscience stabbed her so hard that all the questions that had been

  worrying her fled out of her mind. What on earth have I been doing

  all this time? she thought; and at that moment it really seemed to

  her that she did not know what she had been doing. She admonished

  herself. Come on, Dorothy! No slacking, please! You've got to

  get that breastplate done before supper. She sat down, filled her

  mouth with pins and began pinning the two halves of the breastplate

  together, to get it into shape before the glue should be ready.

  The smell of glue was the answer to her prayer. She did not know

  this. She did not reflect, consciously, that the solution to her

  difficulty lay in accepting the fact that there was no solution;

  that if one gets on with the job that lies to hand, the ultimate

  purpose of the job fades into insignificance; that faith and no

  faith are very much the same provided that one is doing what is

  customary, useful, and acceptable. She could not formulate these

  thoughts as yet, she could only live them. Much later, perhaps,

  she would formulate them and draw comfort from them.

  There was still a minute or two before the glue would be ready to

  use. Dorothy finished pinning the breastplate together, and in the

  same instant began mentally sketching the innumerable costumes that

  were yet to be made. After William the Conqueror--was it chain

  mail in William the Conqueror's day?--there were Robin Hood--

  Lincoln Green and a bow and arrow--and Thomas a Becket in his cope

  and mitre, and Queen Elizabeth's ruff, and a cocked hat for the

  Duke of Wellington. And I must go and see about those potatoes at

  half past six, she thought. And there was her 'memo list' to be

  written out for tomorrow. Tomorrow was Wednesday--mustn't forget

  to set the alarm clock for half past five. She took a slip of

  paper and began writing out the 'memo list':

  7 oc. H.C.

  Mrs J. baby next month go and see her.

  BREAKFAST. Bacon.

  She paused to think of fresh items. Mrs J. was Mrs Jowett, the

  blacksmith's wife; she came sometimes to be churched after her

  babies were born, but only if you coaxed her tactfully beforehand.

  And I must take old Mrs Frew some paregoric lozenges, Dorothy

  thought, and then perhaps she'll speak to Georgie and stop him

  eating those biscuits during the sermon. She added Mrs Frew to her

  list. And then what about tomorrow's dinner--luncheon? We simply

  MUST pay Cargill something! she thought. And tomorrow was the day

  of the Mothers' Union tea, and they had finished the novel that

  Miss Foote had been reading to them. The question was, what to get

  for them next? There didn't seem to be any more books by Gene

  Stratton Porter, their favourite. What about Warwick Deeping? Too

  highbrow, perhaps? And I must ask Proggett to get us some young

  cauliflowers to plant out, she thought finally.

  The glue had liquefied. Dorothy took two fresh sheets of brown

  paper, sliced them into narrow strips, and--rather awkwardly,

  because of the difficulty of keeping the breastplate convex--pasted

  the strips horizontally across it, back and front. By degrees it

  stiffened under her hands. When she had reinforced it all over she

  set it on end to look at it. It really wasn't half bad! One more

  coating of paper and it would be almost like real armour. We MUST

  make that pageant a success! she thought. What a pity we can't

  borrow a horse from somebody and have Boadicea in her chariot! We

  might make five pounds if we had a really good chariot, with

  scythes on the wheels. And what about Hengist and Horsa? Cross-

  gartering and winged helmets. Dorothy sliced two more sheets of

  brown paper into strips, and took up the breastplate to give it its

  final coating. The problem of faith and no faith had vanished

  utterly from her mind. It was beginning to get dark, but, too busy

  to stop and light the lamp, she worked on, pasting strip after

  strip of paper into place, with absorbed, with pious concentration,

  in the penetrating smell of the glue-pot.

 


 

  George Orwell, A Clergyman's Daughter

  (Series: # )

 

 


 

 
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