Collected Works. George Orwell
the minced beef for supper; also there was her “memo list” to be written out for to-morrow. 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 realised 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 à 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 to-morrow. To-morrow 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 to-morrow’s dinner—luncheon? We simply must pay Cargill something! she thought. And to-morrow 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 gluepot.
THE END
Animal Farm
George Orwell
CHAPTER I
Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring.
As soon as the light in the bedroom went out there was a stirring and a fluttering all through the farm buildings. Word had gone round during the day that old Major, the prize Middle White boar, had had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals. It had been agreed that they should all meet in the big barn as soon as Mr. Jones was safely out of the way. Old Major (so he was always called, though the name under which he had been exhibited was Willingdon Beauty) was so highly regarded on the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose an hour's sleep in order to hear what he had to say.
At one end of the big barn, on a sort of raised platform, Major was already ensconced on his bed of straw, under a lantern which hung from a beam. He was twelve years old and had lately grown rather stout, but he was still a majestic-looking pig, with a wise and benevolent appearance in spite of the fact that his tushes had never been cut. Before long the other animals began to arrive and make themselves comfortable after their different fashions. First came the three dogs, Bluebell, Jessie, and Pincher, and then the pigs, who settled down in the straw immediately in front of the platform. The hens perched themselves on the window-sills, the pigeons fluttered up to the rafters, the sheep and cows lay down behind the pigs and began to chew the cud. The two cart-horses, Boxer and Clover, came in together, walking very slowly and setting down their vast hairy hoofs with great care lest there should be some small animal concealed in the straw. Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal. Boxer was an enormous beast, nearly eighteen hands high, and as strong as any two ordinary horses put together. A white stripe down his nose gave him a somewhat stupid appearance, and in fact