At that a deadly chill, like a hand of ice, fastened about her heart. She got up and hurried, almost ran back to the hut, then burrowed down to the place where her sacks lay and felt in the straw beneath them. In that vast mound of straw all your loose possessions got lost and gradually worked their way to the bottom. But after searching for some minutes, and getting herself well cursed by several women who were still half asleep, Dorothy found what she was looking for. It was the copy of Pippin’s Weekly which Nobby had given her a week ago. She took it outside, knelt down, and spread it out in the light of the fire.
It was on the front page–a photograph, and three big headlines. Yes! There it was!
PASSION DRAMA IN COUNTRY RECTORY
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PARSON’S DAUGHTER AND ELDERLY SEDUCER
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WHITE-HAIRED FATHER PROSTRATE WITH GRIEF
(Pippin’s Weekly Special)
‘I would sooner have seen her in her grave!’ was the heartbroken cry of the Rev. Charles Hare, Rector of Knype Hill, Suffolk, on learning of his twenty-eight-year-old daughter’s elopement with an elderly bachelor named Warburton, described as an artist.
Miss Hare, who left the town on the night of the twenty-first of August, is still missing, and all attempts to trace her have failed. [In leaded type] Rumour, as yet unconfirmed, states that she was recently seen with a male companion in a hotel of evil repute in Vienna.
Readers of Pippin’s Weekly will recall that the elopement took place in dramatic circumstances. A little before midnight on the twenty-first of August, Mrs Evelina Semprill, a widowed lady who inhabits the house next door to Mr Warburton’s, happened by chance to look out of her bedroom window and saw Mr Warburton standing at his front gate in conversation with a young woman. As it was a clear moonlight night, Mrs Semprill was able to distinguish this young woman as Miss Hare, the Rector’s daughter. The pair remained at the gate for several minutes, and before going indoors they exchanged embraces which Mrs Semprill describes as being of a passionate nature. About half an hour later they reappeared in Mr Warburton’s car, which was backed out of the front gate, and drove off in the direction of the Ipswich road. Miss Hare was dressed in scanty attire, and appeared to be under the influence of alcohol.
It is now learned that for some time past Miss Hare had been in the habit of making clandestine visits to Mr Warburton’s house. Mrs Semprill, who could only with great difficulty be persuaded to speak upon so painful a subject, has further revealed–
Dorothy crumpled Pippin’s Weekly violently between her hands and thrust it into the fire, upsetting the can of water. There was a cloud of ashes and sulphurous smoke, and almost in the same instant Dorothy pulled the paper out of the fire unburnt. No use funking it–better to learn the worst. She read on, with a horrible fascination. It was not a nice kind of story to read about yourself. For it was strange, but she had no longer any shadow of doubt that this girl of whom she was reading was herself. She examined the photograph. It was a blurred, nebulous thing, but quite unmistakable. Besides, she had no need of the photograph to remind her. She could remember everything–every circumstance of her life, up to that evening when she had come home tired out from Mr Warburton’s house, and, presumably, fallen asleep in the conservatory. It was all so clear in her mind that it was almost incredible that she had ever forgotten it.
She ate no breakfast that day, and did not think to prepare anything for the midday meal; but when the time came, from force of habit, she set out for the hopfields with the other pickers. With difficulty, being alone, she dragged the heavy bin into position, pulled the next bine down and began picking. But after a few minutes she found that it was quite impossible; even the mechanical labour of picking was beyond her. That horrible, lying story in Pippin’s Weekly had so unstrung her that it was impossible even for an instant to focus her mind upon anything else. Its lickerish phrases were going over and over in her head. ’Embraces of a passionate nature’–‘in scanty attire’–‘under the influence of alcohol’–as each one came back into her memory it brought with it such a pang that she wanted to cry out as though in physical pain.
After a while she stopped even pretending to pick, let the bine fall across her bin, and sat down against one of the posts that supported the wires. The other pickers observed her plight, and were sympathetic. Ellen was a bit cut up, they said. What else could you expect, after her bloke had been knocked off? (Everyone in the camp, of course, had taken it for granted that Nobby was Dorothy’s lover.) They advised her to go down to the farm and report sick. And towards twelve o’clock, when the measurer was due, everyone in the set came across with a hatful of hops and dropped it into her bin.
When the measurer arrived he found Dorothy still sitting on the ground. Beneath her dirt and sunburn she was very pale; her face looked haggard, and much older than before. Her bin was twenty yards behind the rest of the set, and there were less than three bushels of hops in it.
‘What’s the game?’ he demanded. ‘You ill?’
‘No.’
‘Well, why ain’t you bin pickin’, then? What you think this is–toff’s picnic? You don’t come up ’ere to sit about on the ground, you know.’
‘You cheese it and don’t get nagging of ’er!’ shouted the old cockney costerwoman suddenly. ‘Can’t the pore girl ’ave a bit of rest and peace if she wants it? Ain’t ’er bloke in the clink thanks to you and your bloody nosing pals of coppers? She’s got enough to worry ’er ’thout being — about by every bloody copper’s nark in Kent!’
‘That’ll be enough from you, Ma!’ said the measurer gruffly, but he looked more sympathetic on hearing that it was Dorothy’s lover who had been arrested on the previous night. When the costerwoman had got her kettle boiling she called Dorothy to her bin and gave her a cup of strong tea and a hunk of bread and cheese; and after the dinner interval another picker who had no partner was sent up to share Dorothy’s bin. He was a small, weazened old tramp named Deafie. Dorothy felt somewhat better after the tea. Encouraged by Deafie’s example–for he was an excellent picker–she managed to do her fair share of work during the afternoon.
She had thought things over, and was less distracted than before. The phrases in Pippin’s Weekly still made her wince with shame, but she was equal now to facing the situation. She understood well enough what had happened to her, and what had led to Mrs Semprill’s libel. Mrs Semprill had seen them together at the gate and had seen Mr Warburton kissing her; and after that, when they were both missing from Knype Hill, it was only too natural–natural for Mrs Semprill, that is–to infer that they had eloped together. As for the picturesque details, she had invented them later. Or had she invented them? That was the one thing you could never be certain of with Mrs Semprill–whether she told her lies consciously and deliberately as lies, or whether, in her strange and disgusting mind, she somehow succeeded in believing them.
Well, anyway, the harm was done–no use worrying about it any longer. Meanwhile, there was the question of getting back to Knype Hill. She would have to send for some clothes, and she would need two pounds for her train fare home. Home! The word sent a pang through her heart. Home, after weeks of dirt and hunger! How she longed for it, now that she remembered it!
But–!
A chilly little doubt raised its head. There was one aspect of the matter that she had not thought of till this moment. Could she, after all, go home? Dared she?
Could she face Knype Hill after everything that had happened? That was the question. When you have figured on the front page of Pippin’s Weekly–in scanty attire’–‘under the influence of alcohol’–ah, don’t let’s think of it again! But when you have been plastered all over with horrible, dishonouring libels, can you go back to a town of two thousand inhabitants where everybody knows everybody else’s private history and talks about it all day long?
She did not know–could not decide. At one moment it seemed to her that the story of her elopement was so palpably absurd that no one could possibly have believed it. Mr Warburton, for instance, could contradict it–most certainly would contradict it, for every possible reason. But the next moment she remembered that Mr Warburton had gone abroad, and unless this affair had got into the continental newspapers, he might not even have heard of it; and then she quailed again. She knew what it means to have to live down a scandal in a small country town. The glances and furtive nudges when you passed! The prying eyes following you down the street from behind curtained windows!
