Cold Comfort Farm (21 page)

She was much disconcerted. It could not have been worse.

‘Turns you up, don’t it, seein’ ter-day’s dinner come in ’anging round someone’s neck like that?’ observed Mrs Beetle, who was loading a tray with food to take up to Mrs Doom. ‘Ter-morrer’s, too, for all I know, and the day after’s. Give me cold storage, any day.’

Urk opened the door of the kitchen and came slowly into the room.

He had been shooting rabbits. His narrow nostrils were
slightly distended to inhale the blood-odour from the seventeen which hung round his neck. Their cold fur brushed his hands lightly and imploringly like little pleas for mercy, and his buttocks were softly brushed by the draggled tail-feathers of five pheasants which hung from the pheasant-belt encircling his waist. He felt the weight of the twenty-five dead animals he bore (for there was a shrew or two in his breast-pocket) pulling him down, like heavy, dark-blooded roots into the dumb soil. He was drowsy with killing, in the mood of a lion lying on a hippopotamus with its mouth full.

He held the letters in front of him, looking down at them with a sleepy stare. Flora saw, with a start of indignation, that his thumb had left a red mark upon an envelope addressed in Charles’s neat hand.

This was quite intolerable. She rose quickly to her feet, holding out her hand:

‘My letters, please,’ she said, crisply.

Urk pushed them across the table to her, but he kept one in his hand, turning it over curiously to look at a crest upon the back of the envelope. (‘Oh, Lord!’ thought Flora.)

‘I think that one is for me, too,’ she said.

Urk did not answer. He looked up at her, then down at the letter, then across at Flora again. When his voice came, it was a throaty snarl:

‘Who’s writing to you from Howchiker?’

‘Mary, Queen of Scots. Thanks,’ said Flora, with deplorable pertness, and twitched it out of his hand. She slipped it into the pocket of her coat, and sat down to finish her breakfast. But the low, throaty snarl cut once more across the silence:

‘Ye’re smart, aren’t yer? Think I don’t know what’s going on … wi’ books from London and all that rot. Now you listen to me. She’s mine, I tell you … mine. She’s my woman, same as a hen belongs to a cock, and no one don’t have her except me, ye see? She were promised to me the day she were born, by her Grandmother. I put a cross in water-vole’s blood on her feedin’-bottle when she was an hour old, to mark her for mine, and held her up so’s she might see it and know she was mine … And every year since then, on her birthday, I’ve taken her
up to Ticklepenny’s Corner and we’ve hung over th’ old well until we see a water-vole, and I’ve said to her, I’ve said, “Remember.” And all she would saywas: “What, Cousin Urk?” But she knows all right. She knows. When the water-voles mate under the may trees this summer I’ll make her mine. Dick Hawk-Monitor … what’s he? A bit of a boy! Playin’ at horses in a red coat, like his daddy afore him. Many a time I’ve lay and laughed at ’em … fools. Me and the water-voles, we can afford to wait for what we want. So you heed what I say, miss. Elfin’s mine. I doan’t mind her bein’ a bit above me’ (here his voice thickened in a manner which caused Mrs Beetle to make a sound resembling ‘t-t-t-t-’), ‘’cause a man likes his piece to be a bit dainty. But she’s mine—’

‘We heard,’ said Flora; ‘you said it before.’

‘—and God help the man or woman who tries to take her from me. Me and the water-voles, we’ll get her back.’

‘Are those water-voles round your neck?’ asked Flora, interestedly. ‘I’ve never seen any before. What a lot of them all at once!’

He turned from her, with a peculiar stooping, stealthy, swooping movement, and padded out of the kitchen.

‘Well I never,’ said Mrs Beetle, loudly; ‘there’s a narsty temper for you.’

Flora placidly agreed that it was, but she made up her mind that Elfine must be taken up to Town that very day, instead of tomorrow, as she had planned.

She had meant to take Elfine up on the day before the ball, but there was no time to be lost. If Urk suspected that they were going to the ball he would probably try to stop them. They must be sure of the dress, and of Elfine’s shorn head, whatever happened. They must go at once. She rose, leaving her breakfast unfinished, and hurried upstairs to Elfine’s room. She found Elfine just returned from her walk.

Flora quickly told her of the change in their plans and left her to get ready while she hurried downstairs to try to find Seth, and to ask him to drive them down to the station. They could just catch the ten fifty-nine to town.

Seth was hanging over the fence round the great field, looking
sullenly at Big Business, who was cantering round and round, bellowing.

‘Someone’s let the bull out,’ said Seth, pointing.

‘I know. I did. And quite time, too,’ said Flora. ‘But never mind that now. Seth, will you drive Elfine and me down to Beershorn, to catch the ten fifty-nine?’

Her request was made in a cool, pleasant voice. Yet the softly-burning, perpetual ruby flame of romance in Seth responded to some tremor of urgency in her tones. Besides, he wanted to go to the Hawk-Monitor’s dance, and see if it was at all like the hunt ball scene in ‘Silver Hoofs’, the stupendous drama of English country life which Intro-Pan-National had made a year or two ago, and he guessed that Flora was taking Elfine up to London to buy her dress. He did not want anything to interfere with the preparations for the ball.

He said ‘Ay’, he would, and lounged away with his curious animal grace to get out the buggy.

Adam appeared at the door of the cowshed, where he had been milking Graceless, Pointless, Feckless, Aimless and Fury. His old body was bent like a thorn against a sharp dazzle of sticky buds bursting from the boughs of a chestnut-tree which hung over into the yard.

‘Eh, eh – someone’s let the bull out,’ he said. ‘’Tes terrible … I – I mun soothe our Feckless. She’m not herself. Who let ’un out?’

‘I did,’ said Flora, buckling the belt of her coat.

And distant shouts came from the back of the farm, where Micah and Ezra were busy setting up the hitten-piece which supported the bucket above the well.

‘Th’ bull’s out!’

‘Who let out Big Business?’

‘Who let ’un loose?’

‘Ay, ’tes terrible!’

Flora had been writing on a leaf from her pocket-diary, which she now gave to Adam, and instructed him to pin it on the door of the kitchen where it could be seen by everyone as they came hurrying into the yard. It said:

‘I did. F. Poste.’

The buggy came out into the yard with Viper in the shafts and Seth holding the reins, just as Elfine, wearing a deplorable blue cape, appeared at the kitchen door.

‘Jump up, my dear. We have no time to waste,’ cried Flora, mounting the step of the buggy.

‘Who let th’ bull out?’ thundered Reuben, starting from the pig-pen, where he had been delivering a sow who was experienced enough, heaven knows, to deliver herself, but who enjoyed being fussed over.

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!’

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.