‘You’re absolutely certain you can’t let me have any money, Father?’ she said for the last time, at the door, with the tray in her arms.
The Rector, gazing into the middle distance, amid comfortable wreaths of smoke, did not hear her. He was thinking, perhaps, of his golden Oxford days. Dorothy went out of the room distressed almost to the point of tears. The miserable question of the debts was once more shelved, as it had been shelved a thousand times before, with no prospect of final solution.
3
On her elderly bicycle with the basketwork carrier on the handle-bars, Dorothy free-wheeled down the hill, doing mental arithmetic with three pounds nineteen and fourpence–her entire stock of money until next quarter-day.
She had been through the list of things that were needed in the kitchen. But indeed, was there anything that was not needed in the kitchen? Tea, coffee, soap, matches, candles, sugar, lentils, firewood, soda, lamp oil, boot polish, margarine, baking powder–there seemed to be practically nothing that they were not running short of. And at every moment some fresh item that she had forgotten popped up and dismayed her. The laundry bill, for example, and the fact that the coal was running short, and the question of the fish for Friday. The Rector was ‘difficult’ about fish. Roughly speaking, he would only eat the more expensive kinds; cod, whiting, sprats, skate, herrings, and kippers he refused.
Meanwhile, she had got to settle about the meat for today’s dinner–luncheon. (Dorothy was careful to obey her father and call it luncheon, when she remembered it. On the other hand, you could not in honesty call the evening meal anything but ‘supper’; so there was no such meal as ‘dinner’ at the Rectory.) Better make an omelette for luncheon today, Dorothy decided. She dared not go to Cargill again. Though, of course, if they had an omelette for luncheon and then scrambled eggs for supper, her father would probably be sarcastic about it. Last time they had eggs twice in one day, he had inquired coldly, ‘Have you started a chicken farm, Dorothy?’ And perhaps tomorrow she would get two pounds of sausages at the International, and that staved off the meat-question for one day more.
Thirty-nine further days, with only three pounds nineteen and fourpence to provide for them, loomed up in Dorothy’s imagination, sending through her a wave of self-pity which she checked almost instantly. Now then, Dorothy! No snivelling, please! It all comes right somehow if you trust in God. Matthew vi, 25. The Lord will provide. Will He? Dorothy removed her right hand from the handle-bars and felt for the glass-headed pin, but the blasphemous thought faded. At this moment she became aware of the gloomy red face of Proggett, who was hailing her respectfully but urgently from the side of the road.
Dorothy stopped and got off her bicycle.
‘Beg pardon, Miss,’ said Proggett. ‘I been wanting to speak to you, Miss–partic’lar.’
Dorothy sighed inwardly. When Proggett wanted to speak to you partic’lar, you could be perfectly certain what was coming; it was some piece of alarming news about the condition of the church. Proggett was a pessimistic, conscientious man, and very loyal churchman, after his fashion. Too dim of intellect to have any definite religious beliefs, he showed his piety by an intense solicitude about the state of the church buildings. He had decided long ago that the Church of Christ meant the actual walls, roof, and tower of St Athelstan’s, Knype Hill, and he would poke round the church at all hours of the day, gloomily noting a cracked stone here, a worm-eaten beam there–and afterwards, of course, coming to harass Dorothy with demands for repairs which would cost impossible sums of money.
‘What is it, Proggett?’ said Dorothy.
‘Well, Miss, it’s they–’–here a peculiar, imperfect sound, not a word exactly, but the ghost of a word, all but formed itself on Proggett’s lips. It seemed to begin with a B. Proggett was one of those men who are for ever on the verge of swearing, but who always recapture the oath as it is escaping between their teeth. ‘It’s they bells, Miss,’ he said, getting rid of the B sound with an effort. ‘They bells up in the church tower. They’re a-splintering through that there belfry floor in a way as it makes you fair shudder to look at ’em. We’ll have ’em down atop of us before we know where we are. I was up the belfry ’smorning, and I tell you I come down faster’n I went up, when I saw how that there floor’s a-busting underneath ’em.
Proggett came to complain about the condition of the bells not less than once a fortnight. It was now three years that they had been lying on the floor of the belfry, because the cost of either reswinging or removing them was estimated at twenty-five pounds, which might as well have been twenty-five thousand for all the chance there was of paying for it. They were really almost as dangerous as Proggett made out. It was quite certain that, if not this year or next year, at any rate at some time in the near future, they would fall through the belfry floor into the church porch. And, as Proggett was fond of pointing out, it would probably happen on a Sunday morning just as the congregation were coming into church.
Dorothy sighed again. Those wretched bells were never out of mind for long; there were times when the thought of their falling even got into her dreams. There was always some trouble or other at the church. If it was not the belfry, then it was the roof or the walls; or it was a broken pew which the carpenter wanted ten shillings to mend; or it was seven hymn-books needed at one and sixpence each, or the flue of the stove choked up–and the sweep’s fee was half a crown–or a smashed window-pane or the choir-boys’ cassocks in rags. There was never enough money for anything. The new organ which the Rector had insisted on buying five years earlier–the old one, he said, reminded him of a cow with the asthma–was a burden under which the Church Expenses fund had been staggering ever since.
‘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 recognize 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 today.’
‘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 tomorrow. 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 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 longsuffering 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 scrutinize 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 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.’
The Complete Novels Page 42
