“Oh dear! I suppose not.”
“No, Miss. We shan’t get nothing out of her; the old ——”
A ghostly B floated once more across Proggett’s lips. His mind a little more at rest now that he had delivered his fortnightly report upon the bells, he touched his cap and departed, while Dorothy rode on into the High Street, with the twin problems of the shop-debts and the Church Expenses pursuing one another through her mind like the twin refrains of a villanelle.
The still watery sun, now playing hide-and-seek, April-wise, among woolly islets of cloud, sent an oblique beam down the High Street, gilding the house-fronts of the northern side. It was one of those sleepy, old-fashioned streets that look so ideally peaceful on a casual visit and so very different when you live in them and have an enemy or a creditor behind every window. The only definitely offensive buildings were Ye Olde Tea Shoppe (plaster front with sham beams nailed on to it, bottle-glass windows and revolting curly roof like that of a Chinese joss-house), and the new, Doric-pillared post office. After about two hundred yards the High Street forked, forming a tiny market-place, adorned with a pump, now defunct, and a worm-eaten pair of stocks. On either side of the pump stood the Dog and Bottle, the principal inn of the town, and the Knype Hill Conservative Club. At the end, commanding the street, stood Cargill’s dreaded shop.
Dorothy came round the corner to a terrific din of cheering, mingled with the strains of “Rule Britannia” played on the trombone. The normally sleepy street was black with people, and more people were hurrying from all the side-streets. Evidently a sort of triumphal procession was taking place. Right across the street, from the roof of the Dog and Bottle to the roof of the Conservative Club, hung a line with innumerable blue streamers, and in the middle a vast banner inscribed “Blifil-Gordon and the Empire!” Towards this, between the lanes of people, the Blifil-Gordon car was moving at a foot-pace, with Mr. Blifil-Gordon smiling richly, first to one side, then to the other. In front of the car marched a detachment of the Buffaloes, headed by an earnest-looking little man playing the trombone, and carrying among them another banner inscribed:
“Who’ll save Britain from the Reds?
BLIFIL-GORDON!
Who’ll put the Beer back into your Pot?
BLIFIL-GORDON!
Blifil-Gordon for ever!”
From the window of the Conservative Club floated an enormous Union Jack, above which six scarlet faces were beaming enthusiastically.
Dorothy wheeled her bicycle slowly down the street, too much agitated by the prospect of passing Cargill’s shop (she had got to pass it, to get to Solepipe’s) to take much notice of the procession. The Blifil-Gordon car had halted for a moment outside Ye Olde Tea Shoppe. Forward, the coffee brigade! Half the ladies of the town seemed to be hurrying forth, with lapdogs or shopping baskets on their arms, to cluster about the car like Bacchantes about the car of the vine-god. After all, an election is practically the only time when you get a chance of exchanging smiles with the County. There were eager feminine cries of “Good luck, Mr. Blifil-Gordon! Dear Mr. Blifil-Gordon! We do hope you’ll get in, Mr. Blifil-Gordon!” Mr. Blifil-Gordon’s largesse of smiles was unceasing, but carefully graded. To the populace he gave a diffused, general smile, not resting on individuals; to the coffee-ladies and the six scarlet patriots of the Conservative Club he gave one smile each; to the most favoured of all, young Walph gave an occasional wave of the hand and a squeaky “Cheewio!”
Dorothy’s heart tightened. She had seen that Mr. Cargill, like the rest of the shopkeepers, was standing on his doorstep. He was a tall, evil-looking man, in blue-striped apron, with a lean, scraped face as purple as one of his own joints of meat that had lain a little too long in the window. So fascinated were Dorothy’s eyes by that ominous figure that she did not look where she was going, and bumped into a very large, stout man who was stepping off the pavement backwards.
The stout man turned round. “Good Heavens! It’s Dorothy!” he exclaimed.
“Why, Mr. Warburton! How extraordinary! Do you know, I had a feeling I was going to meet you to-day.”
“By the pricking of your thumbs, I presume?” said Mr. Warburton, beaming all over a large, pink, Micawberish face. “And how are you? But by Jove!” he added, “what need is there to ask? You look more bewitching than ever.”
He pinched Dorothy’s bare elbow—she had changed, after breakfast, into a sleeveless gingham frock. Dorothy stepped hurriedly backwards to get out of his reach—she hated being pinched or otherwise “mauled about”—and said rather severely:
“Please don’t pinch my elbow. I don’t like it.”
“My dear Dorothy, who could resist an elbow like yours? It’s the sort of elbow one pinches automatically. A reflex action, if you understand me.”
“When did you get back to Knype Hill?” said Dorothy, who had put her bicycle between Mr. Warburton and herself. “It’s over two months since I’ve seen you.”
“I got back the day before yesterday. But this is only a flying visit. I’m off again to-morrow. I’m taking the kids to Brittany. The bastards, you know.”
Mr. Warburton pronounced the word bastards, at which Dorothy looked away in discomfort, with a touch of naïve pride. He and his “bastards” (he had three of them) were one of the chief scandals of Knype Hill. He was a man of independent income, calling himself a painter—he produced about half a dozen mediocre landscapes every year—and he had come to Knype Hill two years earlier and bought one of the new villas behind the Rectory. There he had lived, or rather stayed periodically, in open concubinage with a woman whom he called his housekeeper. Four months ago this woman—she was a foreigner, a Spaniard it was said—had created a fresh and worse scandal by abruptly deserting him, and his three children were now parked with some long-suffering relative in London. In appearance he was a fine, imposing-looking man, though entirely bald (he was at great pains to conceal this), and he carried himself with such a rakish air as to give the impression that his fairly sizeable belly was merely a kind of annexe to his chest. His age was forty-eight, and he owned to forty-four. People in the town said that he was a “proper old rascal”; young girls were afraid of him, not without reason.
Mr. Warburton had laid his hand pseudo-paternally on Dorothy’s shoulder and was shepherding her through the crowd, talking all the while almost without a pause. The Blifil-Gordon car, having rounded the pump, was now wending its way back, still accompanied by its troupe of middle-aged Bacchantes. Mr. Warburton, his attention caught, paused to scrutinise it.
“What is the meaning of these disgusting antics?” he asked.
“Oh, they’re—what is it they call it?—electioneering. Trying to get us to vote for them, I suppose.”
“Trying to get us to vote for them! Good God!” murmured Mr. Warburton, as he eyed the triumphal cortège. He raised the large, silver-headed cane that he always carried, and pointed, rather expressively, first at one figure in the procession and then at another. “Look at it! Just look at it! Look at those fawning hags, and that half-witted oaf grinning at us like a monkey that sees a bag of nuts. Did you ever see such a disgusting spectacle?”
“Do be careful!” Dorothy murmured. “Somebody’s sure to hear you.”
“Good!” said Mr. Warburton, immedately raising his voice. “And to think that that low-born hound actually has the impertinence to think that he’s pleasing us with the sight of his false teeth! And that suit he’s wearing is an offence in itself. Is there a Socialist candidate? If so, I shall certainly vote for him.”
Several people on the pavement turned and stared. Dorothy saw little Mr. Twiss, the ironmonger, a weazened, leather-coloured old man, peering with veiled malevolence round the corner of the rush baskets that hung in his doorway. He had caught the word Socialist, and was mentally registering Mr. Warburton as a Socialist and Dorothy as the friend of Socialists.
“I