Flora pointed silently to the note pinned upon the kitchen door. Seth signed to Adam to open the gate of the yard, which Adam did.
‘Who let th’ bull out?’ screamed Judith, putting her head out from an upper window. The question was repeated by Amos, who burst from the chicken-run where he had been collecting eggs.
Flora hoped that they would all see the note and have their curiosity satisfied, or else they would all go blaming each other, and when she came home there would be a shocking atmosphere of rows and uncomfortableness.
But now they were off. Seth struck Viper on the flanks, and they shot forward. Flora repressed an inclination to raise her hat and bow from side to side as they passed through the gate. She felt that someone should have shouted loyally: ‘God bless the young squire!’
CHAPTER XIII
They passed a pleasant day in London.
Flora first took Elfine to Maison Viol, of Brass Street, in Lambeth, to have her hair cut. Short hair was just coming back into fashion, yet it was still new enough to be distinguished. M. Viol himself cut Elfine’s hair, and dressed it in a careless, simple, fiendishly expensive way that showed the tips of her ears.
Flora then took Elfine to Maison Solide. M. Solide had dressed Flora for the last two years and did not despise her as much as he despised most of the women whom he dressed. His eyes widened when he saw Elfine. He looked at her broad shoulders and slim waist and long legs. His fingers made the gestures of a pair of scissors, and he groped blindly towards a roll of snow-coloured satin which a well-trained assistant put into his arms.
‘White?’ ventured Flora.
‘But what else?’ screamed M. Solide, ripping the scissors across the satin. ‘It is to wear white that God, once in a hundred years, makes such a young girl.’
Flora sat and watched for an hour while M. Solide worried the satin like a terrier, tore it into breadths, swathed and caped and draped it. Flora was pleased to see that Elfine did not seem nervous or bored. She seemed to take naturally to the atmosphere of a world-famous dressmaker’s establishment. She bathed delightedly in white satin, like a swan in foam. She twisted her neck this way and that, and peered down the length of her body, as though down a snow slope, to watch the assistants like busy black ants pinning and rearranging the hem a thousand feet below.
Flora opened a new romance, and became absorbed in it, until Julia arrived at one o’clock to take them to lunch.
M. Solide, pale and cross after his orgy, assured Flora that the dress would be ready by tomorrow morning. Flora said that they would call for it. No, he must not send it. It was too rare. Would he post a picture by Gauguin to Australia? A thousand evils might befall it on the way.
But, secretly, she wished to protect the dress from Urk. She was sure that he would destroy it if he got a glimmer of a chance.
‘Well, do you like your dress?’ she asked Elfine, as they sat at lunch in the New River Club.
‘It’s heavenly,’ said Elfine, solemnly. She, like M. Solide, was pale with exhaustion. ‘It’s better than poetry, Flora.’
‘It is not at all like the sort of thing St Francis of Assisi wore,’ pointed out Julia, who considered Flora was doing a lot for Elfine and should be appreciated.
Elfine blushed, and bent her head over her cutlet. Flora looked at her benignly. The dress had cost fifty guineas, but Flora did not grudge the sum. She felt at this moment that any sum would have been sacrificed by her to score off the Starkadders.
This feeling was increased by the pleasure she felt in the casual yet delicate appointments of the New River Club. It was the most haughty club in London. No one with an income of more than seven hundred and forty pounds a year might join. Its members were limited to a hundred and twenty. Each member must be nominated by a family with sixteen quarterings. No member might be divorced; if he or she were, membership was forfeited. The Selection Committee was composed of seven of the wildest, proudest, most talented men and women in Europe. The club combined the austerities of a monastic order with the tender peace of a home.
Flora had engaged rooms for Elfine and herself at the club; it was necessary for them to spend the night in Town as they had to call for Elfine’s dress the next morning. Flora welcomed the opportunity to indulge herself in some civilized pleasures, from which she had long been absent, and, accordingly, went in the afternoon to hear a concert of Mozart’s music at the State Concert Hall in Bloomsbury, leaving Julia to take Elfine to buy a petticoat, some shoes and stockings and a plain evening coat of white velvet. In the evening, she proposed that the three of them should visit the Pit Theatre, in Stench Street, Seven Dials, to see a new play by Brandt Slurb called ‘Manallalive-O!’, a Neo-Expressionist attempt to give dramatic form to the mental reactions of a man employed as a waiter in a restaurant who dreams that he is the double of another man who is employed as a steward on a liner, and who, on awakening and realizing that he is still a waiter employed in a restaurant and not a steward employed on a liner, goes mad and shoots his reflection in a mirror and dies. It had seventeen scenes and only one character. A pest-house, a laundry, a lavatory, a court of law, a room in a leper’s settlement and the middle of Piccadilly Circus were included in the scenes.
‘Why,’ asked Julia, ‘do you want to see a play like that?’
‘I don’t, but I think it would be so good for Elfine, so that she will know what to avoid when she is married.’
But Julia thought it would be a much better idea if they went to see Mr Dan Langham in ‘On Your Toes!’ at the New Hippodrome, so they went there instead and had a nice time instead of a nasty one.
In that entranced pause when the lights of the theatre fade, and upon the crimson of the yet unraised curtain the footlights throw up their soft glow, Flora glanced at Elfine, unobserved, and was pleased with what she saw.
A noble yet soft profile was lifted seriously towards the stage. The light wings of gold hair blew back from either cheek towards the ears; this gave the head a classic look like that of a Greek charioteer pressing his team forward to victory in the face of a strong wind. The beautiful bones, the youth, of the face were now revealed.
Flora was satisfied.
She had done what she had hoped to do. She had made Elfine look groomed and normal, yet had preserved in her personality a suggestion of cool, smoothly-blowing winds and of pine-trees and the smell of wild flowers. She had conceived just such a change, and M. Viol and M. Solide, her instruments, had carried it out.
An artist in living flesh could ask for no more, and the auguries for the evening of the dance were good.
She leaned back in her seat with a contented sigh as the curtains parted.
*
The cousins reached the farm about five o’clock on the evening of the next day. Much to Flora’s surprise, Seth had been at the station to meet their train with the buggy, and he drove them back. They stopped at a large garage in the town on the way home to arrange for a car to call at the farm on the following evening to take them to Godmere. It was to be at Cold Comfort at half-past seven, but first it was to meet the six-thirty train and pick up a Mr Hart-Harris, who was arriving at that time.
Having made these arrangements, Flora hopped cheerfully back into the buggy and settled herself into her own black-and-green plaid rug at Seth’s side. Elfine tucked her in. (By this time Elfine was quite devoted to her, and divided the time between devising schemes for Flora’s comfort and looking with delight at the picture of her own altered head in the shop windows which they passed.)
‘Are you looking forward to it, Seth?’ asked Flora.
‘Ay,’ he drawled softly, in his warm voice, ‘’twill be th’ first time I’ve ever been to a dance wheer all the women wasn’t after me. Happen I can enjoy meself a bit, fer a change.’
Flora doubted whether he really would, for the county would probably fall for Seth as inevitably as did the villages. But there was no point in alarming him beforehand.
‘But I thought you liked having girls after you
?’
‘Nay. I only likes the talkies. I don’t mind takin’ a girl out if she will let me be, but many’s the girl I’ve niver seen again because she worrited me in the middle of a talkie. Ay, they’re all the same. They must have yer blood and yer breath and ivery bit of yer time and yer thoughts. But I’m not like that. I just likes the talkies.’
Flora reflected, as they drove home through the lanes, that Seth’s problem was the next one to tackle. She thought of a letter in her handbag. It was from Mr Earl P. Neck, and it said that he would be motoring down within the next few days to see some friends who lived at Brighton, and he proposed to motor over and see her, too. She was going to introduce Seth to him.
*
It was five o’clock on the afternoon of the next day. The weather had favoured the cousins. Flora had pessimistically presumed that it would be pelting with rain, but it was not. It was a mild, rosy spring evening in which blackbirds sang on the budding boughs of the elms and the air smelled of leaves and freshness.
The cousins were having a fiendish business getting themselves dressed.
The intelligent and sensitive reader will doubtless have wondered at intervals throughout this narrative as to how Flora managed about a bathroom. The answer is simple. At Cold Comfort there was no bathroom. And when Flora had asked Adam how the family themselves managed for baths, he had replied, coldly: ‘We manages wi’out’, and the vision of dabbings and chillinesses and inadequacies thus conjured had so repelled Flora that she had pursued her enquiries no further.
She had discovered, however, that that refreshing woman, Mrs Beetle, owned a hip-bath, in which she would permit Flora to bathe every other evening at eight o’clock for a small weekly sum, and this Flora did, and the curtailment of her seven weekly baths to four was by far the most unpleasant experience she had so far had to endure at the farm.
But this evening, just when baths were needed, baths were impossible. So Flora put two enormous noggins of water on the stove in the kitchen to get hot, and hoped for the best.
Her absence from the farm with Elfine had not been commented upon. She doubted if they had noticed it. What with the bull getting out, and Meriam, the hired girl, having so far got through the spring without entering upon her annual interesting condition, and the beginning of the carrot harvest which was even longer and more difficult to do than the swede harvest, the Starkadders had enough to absorb them without noticing where a couple of girls had got to. Besides, it was their habit to avoid seeing each other for days at a time, and the absence of Flora and Elfine seemed fortunately to have coincided with one of these hibernations on the part of the family.
But Aunt Ada – did she know? Elfine said she knew everything. She shuddered as she spoke. If Aunt Ada found out that they were going to the ball …
‘She had best not pull any Cinderella stuff on me,’ said Flora, coldly, peering into the nearest noggin to see if the water were done.
‘It is just possible that she may come downstairs one of these evenings,’ said Elfine, timidly. ‘She sometimes does, in the spring.’
Flora said that she hoped it kept fine for her.
But she did rather wonder why the kitchen was decorated with a wreath of deadly nightshade round the mantelpiece and large bunches of the evil-smelling pussy’s dinner arranged in jam-jars on the mantelpiece. And round the dim, ancient portrait of Fig Starkadder, which hung above the fireplace, was a wreath of a flower which was unfamiliar to Flora. It had dark green leaves and long, pink, tightly-closed buds. She asked Elfine what it was.
‘That’s the sukebind,’ said Elfine, fearfully. ‘Oh, Flora, is the water done?’
‘Just on, my dove. Here, you take one,’ and she handed it to Elfine. ‘So that’s sukebind, is it? I suppose when it opens all the trouble begins?’
But Elfine was already away with the hot water to Flora’s room, where her dress lay upon the bed, and Flora must follow her.
CHAPTER XIV
Perhaps something, some pregnant quality, in the mildly restless air of the spring evening, had infused itself into the room where old Mrs Starkadder sat before the huge bed of glowing cinders in the grate. For she struck suddenly, fiercely, upon the little bell that stood ever at her elbow (at least, it was at her elbow whenever she sat in that particular chair).
A plan which she had been pondering for days, and had even hinted at to Seth, had suddenly matured. The shrill sound leapt through the tepid air of the room. It roused Judith, who was standing at the window looking with sodden eyes at the inexorable fecundity of the advancing spring.
‘I mun go downstairs,’ said the old woman.
‘Mother … you’re mistaken. ’Tes not the first o’ May nor the seventeenth o’ October. You’d better bide here,’ protested her daughter.
‘I tell you I mun go downstairs. I mun feel you all about me – all of you: Micah, Urk, Ezra, Harkaway, Caraway, Amos, Reuben and Seth. Ay, and Mark and Luke. None of you mun ever leave me. Give me my liberty bodice, girl.’
Silently Judith gave it her.
The old house was silent. The dying light lay quietly upon its walls, and the sound of the blackbird’s song came into the still, empty rooms. Aunt Ada’s thoughts spun like Catherine wheels as she laboriously dressed herself.
Once … when you were a little girl … you had seen something nasty in the woodshed. Now you were old, and could not move easily. You leaned heavily on Judith’s shoulder as she pressed her foot into the small of your back to lace your corsets.
Flora drew the curtains and lit the lamp. Elfine’s dress lay on the bed, a lovely miracle, and Elfine must be dressed before Flora could begin to think of her own toilet.
It took an hour to dress Elfine. Flora washed her young cheeks with scalding water until they burned with angry roses, and brushed back the wings of hair, slipped the foam of the petticoat over her head and brushed again, stood on a chair to drop the dress over her head, and then brushed again. Then she put on the stockings and shoes, and wrapped Elfine in the white coat, put the fan and bag into her waiting hands, and made her sit on the bed, out of dust and danger.
‘Oh, Flora … do I look nice?’
‘You look extremely beautiful,’ returned Flora, solemnly, looking up at her. ‘Mind you behave properly.’
But to herself she was thinking, in the words of the Abbé Fausse-Maigre, ‘Condole with the Ugly Duckling’s mother. She has fathomed the pit of amazement.’
Flora’s own dress was in harmonious tones of pale and dark green. She wore no jewels, and her long coat was of viridian velvet. She would not permit Elfine to wear jewels, either, though Elfine begged for at least her little string of pearls.
Now they were ready. It was only half-past six. There was a whole hour to wait before they could creep down to the waiting car. In order to calm their nerves, Flora seated herself upon the bed and read aloud from the Pensées:
‘Never arrive at a house at a quarter past three. It is a dreadful hour; too early for tea and too late for luncheon …’
‘Can we be sure that an elephant’s real name is elephant? Only mankind presumes to name God’s creatures; God Himself is silent upon the matter.’
Yet the Pensées failed to have their usual calming effect. Flora was a little agitated. Would the car arrive safely? Would Claud Hart-Harris miss the train? (He usually did!) How would Seth look in a dinner-jacket? Above all, would Richard Hawk-Monitor propose to Elfine? Even Flora did not dare to imagine what would happen if they returned from the ball and he had not spoken. He must speak! She conjured the god of love by the spring evening, by the blackbird’s song, by the triumphant beauty of Elfine.
(Now you were putting on your elastic-sided boots. You had not worn them since Fig died. Fig … a prickly beard, a smell of flannel, a fumbling, urgent voice in the larder. Your boots smelled nasty. Where was the lavender water? You made Judith sprinkle some, inside and out. So. Now your first petticoat.)
‘Flora,’ said Elfine, ‘I am afraid I feel sick.’
Flora looked sternly at her and read aloud: ‘Vanity can rule the queasiest stomach.’
Suddenly there was a tap at the door. Elfine looked at Flora in terror, and Flora noted how her eyes became dark blue when she was moved. It was a good line.
‘Shall I open it?’ whispered Elfine.
‘I expect it’s only Seth.’
Flora got off the bed and tiptoed to the door, which she opened an eighth of an inch. Indeed, it was Seth in a ready-made dinner-jacket which in no way destroyed his animal grace; he merely looked like a panther in evening dress. He whispered to Flora that a car was coming up the hill, and that perhaps they had best come downstairs.
‘Is Urk anywhere about?’ asked Flora, for she knew that if he could mess things up he would.
‘I saw ’un hanging over th’ well up at Ticklepenny’s, talkin’ to th’ water-voles an hour ago,’ replied Seth.
‘Oh, then he is safe for another half-hour at least,’ said Flora. ‘I think we might go down, then. Elfine, are you ready? Now, not a sound! Come along.’
By the light of a candle which Seth carried they made their way safely down into the kitchen, which was deserted. The door leading into the yard was open, and they saw a big car, just visible in the twilight, drawn up outside the gate at the other end of the yard. The chauffeur was just getting down to open the gate, and Flora saw, much to her relief, that another person, who must be Claud, was peering out of the car window. She waved reassuringly to him, and caught the words ‘toobarbarous’ floating across the still evening air. She motioned frantically to him not to make a noise.
‘I’ll carry Elfine. She mustn’t spoil them shoes,’ whispered Seth, with unexpected thoughtfulness, and picked his sister up and strode off with her across the yard. He made a second journey for Flora, and she hardly had time to decide whether or not he was holding her unnecessarily tightly when she found herself safely popped into the car, and squeezing the outstretched hands of Claud, with Elfine smiling prettily in the corner.