“I don’t know what we can do,” said Dorothy finally; “I really don’t. We’ve simply no money at all. And even if we do make anything out of the school-children’s play, it’s all got to go to the organ fund. The organ people are really getting quite nasty about their bill. Have you spoken to my father?”
“Yes, Miss. He don’t make nothing of it. ‘Belfry’s held up five hundred years,’ he says; ‘we can trust it to hold up a few years longer.’ ”
This was quite according to precedent. The fact that the church was visibly collapsing over his head made no impression on the Rector; he simply ignored it, as he ignored anything else that he did not wish to be worried about.
“Well, I don’t know what we can do,” Dorothy repeated. “Of course there’s the jumble sale coming off the week after next. I’m counting on Miss Mayfill to give us something really nice for the jumble sale. I know she could afford to. She’s got such lots of furniture and things that she never uses. I was in her house the other day, and I saw a most beautiful Lowestoft china tea service which was put away in a cupboard, and she told me it hadn’t been used for over twenty years. Just suppose she gave us that tea service! It would fetch pounds and pounds. We must just pray that the jumble sale will be a success Proggett. Pray that it’ll bring us five pounds at least. I’m sure we shall get the money somehow if we really and truly pray for it.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Proggett respectfully, and shifted his gaze to the far distance.
At this moment a horn hooted and a vast, gleaming blue car came very slowly down the road, making for the High Street. Out of one window Mr. Blifil-Gordon, the proprietor of the sugar-beet refinery, was thrusting a sleek black head which went remarkably ill with his suit of sandy-coloured Harris tweed. As he passed, instead of ignoring Dorothy as usual, he flashed upon her a smile so warm that it was almost amorous. With him were his eldest son Ralph—or, as he and the rest of the family pronounced it, Walph—an epicene youth of twenty, given to the writing of sub-Eliot vers libre poems, and Lord Pockthorne’s two daughters. They were all smiling, even Lord Pockthorne’s daughters. Dorothy was astonished, for it was several years since any of these people had deigned to recognise her in the street.
“Mr. Blifil-Gordon is very friendly this morning,” she said.
“Aye, Miss. I’ll be bound he is. It’s the election coming on next week, that’s what ’tis. All honey and butter they are till they’ve made sure as you’ll vote for them; and then they’ve forgot your very face the day afterwards.”
“Oh, the election!” said Dorothy vaguely. So remote were such things as parliamentary elections from the daily round of parish work that she was virtually unaware of them—hardly, indeed, even knowing the difference between Liberal and Conservative or Socialist and Communist. “Well, Proggett,” she said, immediately forgetting the election in favour of something more important, “I’ll speak to Father and tell him how serious it is about the bells. I think perhaps the best thing we can do will be to get up a special subscription, just for the bells alone. There’s no knowing, we might make five pounds. We might even make ten pounds! Don’t you think if I went to Miss Mayfill and asked her to start the subscription with five pounds, she might give it to us?”
“You take my word, Miss, and don’t you let Miss Mayfill hear nothing about it. It’d scare the life out of her. If she thought as that tower wasn’t safe; we’d never get her inside that church again.”
“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