her lips moved, but there was neither heart nor meaning in her
prayers. She could hear Proggett's boots shuffling and her
father'Beasts of England's clear low voice murmuring 'Take and eat', she could see
the worn strip of red carpet beneath her knees, she could smell
dust and eau-de-Cologne and mothballs; but of the Body and Blood of
Christ, of the purpose for which she had come here, she was as
though deprived of the power to think. A deadly blankness had
descended upon her mind. It seemed to her that actually she COULD
not pray. She struggled, collected her thoughts, uttered
mechanically the opening phrases of a prayer; but they were
useless, meaningless--nothing but the dead shells of words. Her
father was holding the wafer before her in his shapely, aged hand.
He held it between finger and thumb, fastidiously, somehow
distastefully, as though it had been a spoon of medicine. His eye
was upon Miss Mayfill, who was doubling herself up like a geometrid
caterpillar, with many creakings and crossing herself so
elaborately that one might have imagined that she was sketching a
series of braid frogs on the front of her coat. For several
seconds Dorothy hesitated and did not take the wafer. She dared
not take it. Better, far better to step down from the altar than
to accept the sacrament with such chaos in her heart!
Then it happened that she glanced sidelong, through the open south
door. A momentary spear of sunlight had pierced the clouds. It
struck downwards through the leaves of the limes, and a spray of
leaves in the doorway gleamed with a transient, matchless green,
greener than jade or emerald or Atlantic waters. It was as though
some jewel of unimaginable splendour had flashed for an instant,
filling the doorway with green light, and then faded. A flood of
joy ran through Dorothy'Beasts of England's heart. The flash of living colour had
brought back to her, by a process deeper than reason, her peace of
mind, her love of God, her power to worship. Somehow, because of
the greenness of the leaves, it was again possible to pray. O all
ye green things upon the earth, praise ye the Lord! She began to
pray, ardently, joyfully, thankfully. The wafer melted upon her
tongue. She took the chalice from her father, and tasted with
repulsion, even with an added joy in this small act of self-
abasement, the wet imprint of Miss Mayfill's lips on its silver
rim.
2
St Athelstan's Church stood at the highest point of Knype Hill, and
if you chose to climb the tower you could see ten miles or so
across the surrounding country. Not that there was anything worth
looking at--only the low, barely undulating East Anglian landscape,
intolerably dull in summer, but redeemed in winter by the recurring
patterns of the elms, naked and fanshaped against leaden skies.
Immediately below you lay the town, with the High Street running
east and west and dividing unequally. The southern section of the
town was the ancient, agricultural, and respectable section. On
the northern side were the buildings of the Blifil-Gordon sugar-
beet refinery, and all round and leading up to them were higgledy-
piggledly rows of vile yellow brick cottages, mostly inhabited by
the employees of the factory. The factory employees, who made up
more than half of the town's two thousand inhabitants, were
newcomers, townfolk, and godless almost to a man.
The two pivots, or foci, about which the social life of the town
moved were Knype Hill Conservative Club (fully licensed), from
whose bow window, any time after the bar was open, the large, rosy-
gilled faces of the town's elite were to be seen gazing like chubby
goldfish from an aquarium pane; and Ye Olde Tea Shoppe, a little
farther down the High Street, the principal rendezvous of the Knype
Hill ladies. Not to be present at Ye Olde Tea Shoppe between ten
and eleven every morning, to drink your 'morning coffee' and spend
your half-hour or so in that agreeable twitter of upper-middle-
class voices ('My dear, he had NINE spades to the ace-queen and he
went one no trump, if you please. What, my dear, you don't mean to
say you're paying for my coffee AGAIN? Oh, but my dear, it is
simply TOO sweet of you! Now tomorrow I shall SIMPLY INSIST upon
paying for yours. And just LOOK at dear little Toto sitting up and
looking such a CLEVER little man with his little black nose
wiggling, and he would, would he, the darling duck, he would, he
would, and his mother would give him a lump of sugar, she would,
she would. THERE, Toto!'), was to be definitely out of Knype Hill
society. The Rector in his acid way nicknamed these ladies 'the
coffee brigade'. Close to the colony of sham-picturesque villas
inhabited by the coffee brigade, but cut off from them by its
larger grounds, was The Grange, Miss Mayfill's house. It was a
curious, machicolated, imitation castle of dark red brick--
somebody's Folly, built about 1870--and fortunately almost hidden
among dense shrubberies.
The Rectory stood half way up the hill, with its face to the church
and its back to the High Street. It was a house of the wrong age,
inconveniently large, and faced with chronically peeling yellow
plaster. Some earlier Rector had added, at one side, a large
greenhouse which Dorothy used as a workroom, but which was
constantly out of repair. The front garden was choked with ragged
fir-trees and a great spreading ash which shadowed the front rooms
and made it impossible to grow any flowers. There was a large
vegetable garden at the back. Proggett did the heavy digging of
the garden in the spring and autumn, and Dorothy did the sowing,
planting, and weeding in such spare time as she could command; in
spite of which the vegetable garden was usually an impenetrable
jungle of weeds.
Dorothy jumped off her bicycle at the front gate, upon which some
officious person had stuck a poster inscribed 'Vote for Blifil-
Gordon and Higher Wages!' (There was a by-election going on, and
Mr Blifil-Gordon was standing in the Conservative interest.) As
Dorothy opened the front door she saw two letters lying on the worn
coconut mat. One was from the Rural Dean, and the other was a
nasty, thin-looking letter from Catkin & Palm, her father's
clerical tailors. It was a bill undoubtedly. The Rector had
followed his usual practice of collecting the letters that
interested him and leaving the others. Dorothy was just bending
down to pick up the letters, when she saw, with a horrid shock of
dismay, an unstamped envelope sticking to the letter flap.
It was a bill--for certain it was a bill! Moreover, as soon as she
set eyes on it she 'knew' that it was that horrible bill from
Cargill's, the butcher's. A sinking feeling passed through her
entrails. For a moment she actually began to pray that it might
not be Cargill's bill--that it might only be the bill for three
and nine from Solepipe's, the draper's, or the bill from the
; International or the baker's or the dairy--anything except
Cargill's bill! Then, mastering her panic, she took the envelope
from the letter-flap and tore it open with a convulsive movement.
'To account rendered: L21 7S. 9d.'
This was written in the innocuous handwriting of Mr Cargill's
accountant. But underneath, in thick, accusing-looking letters,
was added and heavily underlined: 'Shd. like to bring to your
notice that this bill has been owing a VERY LONG TIME. The
EARLIEST POSSIBLE settlement will oblige, S. Cargill.'
Dorothy had turned a shade paler, and was conscious of not wanting
any breakfast. She thrust the bill into her pocket and went into
the dining-room. It was a smallish, dark room, badly in need of
repapering, and, like every other room in the Rectory, it had the
air of having been furnished from the sweepings of an antique shop.
The furniture was 'good', but battered beyond repair, and the
chairs were so worm-eaten that you could only sit on them in safety
if you knew their individual foibles. There were old, dark,
defaced steel engravings hanging on the walls, one of them--an
engraving of Van Dyck's portrait of Charles I--probably of some
value if it had not been ruined by damp.
The Rector was standing before the empty grate, warming himself at
an imaginary fire and reading a letter that came from a long blue
envelope. He was still wearing his cassock of black watered silk,
which set off to perfection his thick white hair and his pale,
fine, none too amiable face. As Dorothy came in he laid the letter
aside, drew out his gold watch and scrutinized it significantly.
'I'm afraid I'm a bit late, Father.'
'Yes, Dorothy, you are A BIT LATE,' said the Rector, repeating her
words with delicate but marked emphasis. 'You are twelve minutes
late, to be exact. Don't you think, Dorothy, that when I have to
get up at a quarter past six to celebrate Holy Communion, and come
home exceedingly tired and hungry, it would be better if you could
manage to come to breakfast without being A BIT LATE?'
It was clear that the Rector was in what Dorothy called,
euphemistically, his 'uncomfortable mood'. He had one of those
weary, cultivated voices which are never definitely angry and never
anywhere near good humour--one of those voices which seem all the
while to be saying, 'I really CANNOT see what you are making all
this fuss about!' The impression he gave was of suffering
perpetually from other people's stupidity and tiresomeness.
'I'm so sorry, Father! I simply had to go and ask after Mrs
Tawney.' (Mrs Tawney was the 'Mrs T' of the 'memo list'.) 'Her
baby was born last night, and you know she promised me she'd come
and be churched after it was born. But of course she won't if she
thinks we aren't taking any interest in her. You know what these
women are--they seem so to hate being churched. They'll never come
unless I coax them into it.'
The Rector did not actually grunt, but he uttered a small
dissatisfied sound as he moved towards the breakfast table. It was
intended to mean, first, that it was Mrs Tawney's duty to come and
be churched without Dorothy's coaxing; secondly, that Dorothy had
no business to waste her time visiting all the riffraff of the
town, especially before breakfast. Mrs Tawney was a labourer's
wife and lived in partibus infidelium, north of the High Street.
The Rector laid his hand on the back of his chair, and, without
speaking, cast Dorothy a glance which meant: 'Are we ready NOW?
Or are there to be any MORE delays?'
'I think everything's here, Father,' said Dorothy. 'Perhaps if
you'd just say grace--'
'Benedictus benedicat,' said the Rector, lifting the worn silver
coverlet off the breakfast dish. The silver coverlet, like the
silver-gilt marmalade spoon, was a family heirloom; the knives and
forks, and most of the crockery, came from Woolworths. 'Bacon
again, I see,' the Rector added, eyeing the three minute rashers
that lay curled up on squares of fried bread.
'It's all we've got in the house, I'm afraid,' Dorothy said.
The Rector picked up his fork between finger and thumb, and with a
very delicate movement, as though playing at spillikins, turned one
of the rashers over.
'I know, of course,' he said, 'that bacon for breakfast is an
English institution almost as old as parliamentary government. But
still, don't you think we might OCCASIONALLY have a change,
Dorothy?'
'Bacon's so cheap now,' said Dorothy regretfully. 'It seems a sin
not to buy it. This was only fivepence a pound, and I saw some
quite decent-looking bacon as low as threepence.'
'Ah, Danish, I suppose? What a variety of Danish invasions we have
had in this country! First with fire and sword, and now with their
abominable cheap bacon. Which has been responsible for the more
deaths, I wonder?'
Feeling a little better after this witticism, the Rector settled
himself in his chair and made a fairly good breakfast off the
despised bacon, while Dorothy (she was not having any bacon this
morning--a penance she had set herself yesterday for saying 'Damn'
and idling for half an hour after lunch) meditated upon a good
conversational opening.
There was an unspeakably hateful job in front of her--a demand for
money. At the very best of times getting money out of her father
was next door to impossible, and it was obvious that this morning
he was going to be even more 'difficult' than usual. 'Difficult'
was another of her euphemisms. He's had bad news, I suppose, she
thought despondently, looking at the blue envelope.
Probably no one who had ever spoken to the Rector for as long as
ten minutes would have denied that he was a 'difficult' kind of
man. The secret of his almost unfailing ill humour really lay in
the fact that he was an anachronism. He ought never to have been
born into the modern world; its whole atmosphere disgusted and
infuriated him. A couple of centuries earlier, a happy pluralist
writing poems or collecting fossils while curates at 40 pounds a
year administered his parishes, he would have been perfectly at
home. Even now, if he had been a richer man, he might have consoled
himself by shutting the twentieth century out of his consciousness.
But to live in past ages is very expensive; you can't do it on less
than two thousand a year. The Rector, tethered by his poverty to
the age of Lenin and the Daily Mail, was kept in a state of chronic
exasperation which it was only natural that he should work off on
the person nearest to him--usually, that is, on Dorothy.
He had been born in 1871, the younger son of the younger son of a
baronet, and had gone into the Church for the outmoded reason that
the Church is the traditional profession for younger sons. His
first cure had been in a large, slummy parish in East London--a
nasty, hooliganish place it had been, and he looked back on it with
loathing. Even in those days the l
ower class (as he made a point
of calling them) were getting decidedly out of hand. It was a
little better when he was curate-in-charge at some remote place in
Kent (Dorothy had been born in Kent), where the decently down-
trodden villagers still touched their hats to 'parson'. But by
that time he had married, and his marriage had been diabolically
unhappy; moreover, because clergymen must not quarrel with their
wives, its unhappiness had been secret and therefore ten times
worse. He had come to Knype Hill in 1908, aged thirty-seven and
with a temper incurably soured--a temper which had ended by
alienating every man, woman, and child in the parish.
It was not that he was a bad priest, merely AS a priest. In his
purely clerical duties he was scrupulously correct--perhaps a
little too correct for a Low Church East Anglian parish. He
conducted his services with perfect taste, preached admirable
sermons, and got up at uncomfortable hours of the morning to
celebrate Holy Communion every Wednesday and Friday. But that a
clergyman has any duties outside the four walls of the church was a
thing that had never seriously occurred to him. Unable to afford a
curate, he left the dirty work of the parish entirely to his wife,
and after her death (she died in 1921) to Dorothy. People used to
say, spitefully and untruly, that he would have let Dorothy preach
his sermons for him if it had been possible. The 'lower classes'
had grasped from the first what was his attitude towards them, and
if he had been a rich man they would probably have licked his
boots, according to their custom; as it was, they merely hated him.
Not that he cared whether they hated him or not, for he was largely
unaware of their existence. But even with the upper classes he had
got on no better. With the County he had quarrelled one by one,
and as for the petty gentry of the town, as the grandson of a
baronet he despised them, and was at no pains to hide it. In
twenty-three years he had succeeded in reducing the congregation of
St Athelstan's from six hundred to something under two hundred.
This was not solely due to personal reasons. It was also because
the old-fashioned High Anglicanism to which the Rector obstinately
clung was of a kind to annoy all parties in the parish about
equally. Nowadays, a clergyman who wants to keep his congregation
has only two courses open to him. Either it must be Anglo-
Catholicism pure and simple--or rather, pure and not simple; or he
must be daringly modern and broad-minded and preach comforting
sermons proving that there is no Hell and all good religions are
the same. The Rector did neither. On the one hand, he had the
deepest contempt for the Anglo-Catholic movement. It had passed
over his head, leaving him absolutely untouched; 'Roman Fever' was
his name for it. On the other hand, he was too 'high' for the
older members of his congregation. From time to time he scared
them almost out of their wits by the use of the fatal word
'Catholic', not only in its sanctified place in the Creeds, but
also from the pulpit. Naturally the congregation dwindled year by
year, and it was the Best People who were the first to go. Lord
Pockthorne of Pockthorne Court, who owned a fifth of the county, Mr
Leavis, the retired leather merchant, Sir Edward Huson of Crabtree
Hall, and such of the petty gentry as owned motor-cars, had all
deserted St Athelstan's. Most of them drove over on Sunday
mornings to Millborough, five miles away. Millborough was a town
of five thousand inhabitants, and you had your choice of two
churches, St Edmund's and St Wedekind's. St Edmund's was
Modernist--text from Blake's 'Jerusalem' blazoned over the altar,
and communion wine out of liqueur glasses--and St Wedekind's was
Anglo-Catholic and in a state of perpetual guerrilla warfare with
the Bishop. But Mr Cameron, the secretary of the Knype Hill
Conservative Club, was a Roman Catholic convert, and his children