“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, immediately 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 really must be getting on,” said Dorothy hastily, feeling that she had better escape before Mr. Warburton said something even more tactless. “I’ve got ever such a lot of shopping to do. I’ll say good-bye for the present, then.”
“Oh, no, you won’t!” said Mr. Warburton cheerfully. “Not a bit of it! I’ll come with you.”
As she wheeled her bicycle down the street he marched at her side, still talking, with his large chest well forward and his stick tucked under his arm. He was a difficult man to shake off, and though Dorothy counted him as a friend, she did sometimes wish, he being the town scandal and she the Rector’s daughter, that he would not always choose the most public places to talk to her in. At this moment, however, she was rather grateful for his company, which made it appreciably easier to pass Cargill’s shop—for Cargill was still on his doorstep and was regarding her with a sidelong, meaning gaze.
“It was a bit of luck my meeting you this morning,” Mr. Warburton went on. “In fact, I was looking for you. Who do you think I’ve got coming to dinner with me to-night? Bewley—Ronald Bewley. You’ve heard of him, of course?”
“Ronald Bewley? No, I don’t think so. Who is he?”
“Why, dash it! Ronald Bewley, the novelist. Author of Fishpools and Concubines. Surely you’ve read Fishpools and Concubines?”
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t. In fact, I’d never even heard of it.”
“My dear Dorothy! You have been neglecting yourself. You certainly ought to read Fishpools and Concubines. It’s hot stuff, I assure you—real high-class pornography. Just the kind of thing you need to take the taste of the Girl Guides out of your mouth.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t say such things!” said Dorothy, looking away uncomfortably, and then immediately looking back again because she had all but caught Cargill’s eye. “Where does this Mr. Bewley live?” she added. “Not here, surely, does he?”
“No. He’s coming over from Ipswich for dinner, and perhaps to stay the night. That’s why I was looking for you. I thought you might like to meet him. How about your coming to dinner to-night?”
“I can’t possibly come to dinner,” said Dorothy. “I’ve got Father’s supper to see to, and thousands of other things. I shan’t be free till eight o’clock or after.”
“Well, come along after dinner, then. I’d like you to know Bewley. He’s an interesting fellow—very au fait with all the Bloomsbury scandal, and all that. You’ll enjoy meeting him. It’ll do you good to escape from the church hen-coop for a few hours.”
Dorothy hesitated. She was tempted. To tell the truth, she enjoyed her occasional visits to Mr. Warburton’s house extremely. But of course they were very occasional—once in three or four months at the oftenest; it so obviously didn’t do to associate too freely with such a man. And even when she did go to his house she was careful to make sure beforehand that there was going to be at least one other visitor.
Two years earlier, when Mr. Warburton had first come to Knype Hill (at that time he was posing as a widower with two children; a little later, however, the housekeeper suddenly gave birth to a third child in the middle of the night), Dorothy had met him at a tea-party and afterwards called on him. Mr. Warburton had given her a delightful tea, talked amusingly about books, and then, immediately after tea, sat down beside her on the sofa and begun making love to her, violently, outrageously, even brutally. It was practically an assault. Dorothy was horrified almost out of her wits, though not too horrified to resist. She escaped from him and took refuge on the other side of the sofa, white, shaking and almost in tears. Mr. Warburton, on the other hand, was quite unashamed and even seemed rather amused.
“Oh, how could you, how could you?” she sobbed.
“But it appears that I couldn’t,” said Mr. Warburton.
“Oh, but how could you be such a brute?”
“Oh, that? Easily, my child, easily. You will understand that when you get to my age.”
In spite of this bad beginning, a sort of friendship had grown up between the two, even to the extent of Dorothy being “talked about” in connection with Mr. Warburton. It did not take much to get you “talked about” in Knype Hill. She only saw him at long intervals and took the greatest care never to be alone with him, but even so he found opportunities of making casual love to her. But it was done in a gentlemanly fashion; the previous disagreeable incident was not repeated. Afterwards, when he was forgiven, Mr. Warburton had explained that he “always tried it on” with every presentable woman he met.
“Don’t you get rather a lot of snubs?” Dorothy could not help asking him.
“Oh,