Cold Comfort Farm (29 page)

‘Well, never mind that now,’ said Flora, soothingly. ‘Just you make up your mind to be ready by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’

And before she left her that evening, she managed to gain from Judith a vague half-promise that she would be ready as suggested. Judith did not seem to care what happened to her so long as she was not made to talk; and Flora took advantage of her lassitude to impose her fresh will upon her cousin’s flaccid one.

After leaving Judith, she sent Adam down into Howling with the following wire:

  ‘Herr Doktor Adolf Müdel,
      ‘National Institute Psycho-Analysis,
          ‘Whitehall, S. W.
‘Interesting case for you can you lunch two of us Grimaldi’s one fifteen to-morrow Wednesday hows the baby love F. Poste.’

And at nine o’clock that night, while she was sitting at the open window of her little parlour inhaling the fragrance of a may-tree and writing to Charles, a telegram was delivered to her (by Mark Dolour’s very Nancy herself) which read:

‘But of course delighted baby has marked paranoic tendencies nurse assures me quite normal at eight months she knows much more than I do perfect treasure looking forward seeing you what weather eh … Adolf.’

Her day with Judith in London was a complete success, though there were, it is true, some minor disadvantages. Judith’s hair, for example, fell down every fifteen minutes and had to be re-pinned by Flora. Then there were the sympathetic and interested enquiries of fellow-travellers to be fobbed off, who were naturally intrigued by hearing Judith refer to herself at intervals as a Used Gourd and a Rind.

But when once their journey was over, Flora’s worries were over as well. Seated opposite Dr Müdel and Judith at a quiet table near a window at Grimaldi’s, she watched, with a feeling of relief, Dr Müdel taking command of the situation.

It was one of his disagreeable duties as a State psycho-analyst to remove the affections of his patients from the embarrassing objects upon which they were concentrated; and focus them, instead, upon himself. It was true that they did not remain focused there for long: as soon as he could, he switched them on to something harmless, like chess or gardening. But while they
were
focused upon himself, he had rather a thin time of it and earned every penny of the eight hundred a year paid to him by a judicious Government.

And Flora, observing how soon Judith began to glow darkly and do the slumbering volcano act in Dr Müdel’s direction, could not help admiring the practised skill with which he had effected the transference in the course of the commonplace conversation throughout lunch.

‘She will be oll right now,’ he murmured, soothingly, to Flora, in an undertone, when lunch was over, while Judith was gazing broodingly out of the window at the busy street below.
‘I shall take her to the nursing home, and let her talk to me. There she will stay for six months, perhaps. Then I send her abroad for a little holiday. I make her interested in olt churches, I think. Yes, olt churches. There are so many in Europe, and it will take her the rest of her life to see them all. She has money, yes? You must have money in order to see all the olt churches you want. Well, that is oll right, then. Do not distress yourself. She will be quite happy. Oll that energy … it is a pity, yes. It oll turns
in
instead of
out
. Now I turn it out … on to the olt churches. Yes.’

Flora felt a little uneasy. It was not the first time she had seen a distraught patient grow calm beneath the will of the analyst, yet she had never grown used to the spectacle. Would Judith
really
be happier? She looked doubtfully at her cousin. Certainly Judith
looked
happier already. Her eyes followed every movement of Dr Müdel as he paid the bill for the lunch; Flora had never seen her look so animated and normal.

‘I understand that you are going to stay with Dr Müdel for a while, Cousin Judith?’ she said.

‘He has asked me. He is very kind … There is a dark force in him,’ returned Judith. ‘It beats … like a black gong. I wonder you do not feel it.’

‘Oh, well, we can’t all strike lucky,’ said Flora amiably. ‘But really, Judith, I do think it would be quite a sound scheme if you went. You need a holiday, you know, after all the – er – fuss there’s been at home lately. It will do you no end of good. Set you up, and what not. And then after a bit you might go abroad and see some of the sights of Europe. Old churches, and all that. Don’t worry about the farm. Reuben will look after that for you, and send you a fat piece out of the takings every month.’

‘Amos …’ murmured Judith. She looked as though the threads which bound her to her old life were snapping one by one, yet still held her in a frail tenure.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t fuss about him,’ said Flora, easily. ‘He’s gone off to America with the Reverend Elderberry Shiftglass by now, I shouldn’t wonder. He’ll let you know when he’s coming back. Don’t you bother. You enjoy yourself while you’re young.’
And this was what Judith evidently decided to do, for she drove off with Dr Müdel in his car looking quite content: at least, she looked illumined and transfigured and reft out of herself and all the rest of it, and even when allowances were made for her habit of multiplying every emotion she felt by twice its own weight, she probably
was
feeling fairly chirpy.

Before they said goodbye Flora arranged to send on to the nursing home the five dirty red shawls and sundry bundles of hairpins which seemed to make up the greater part of Judith’s wardrobe; and also a comfortable sum of money which should pay for her pleasures during the next six months. Dr Müdel could, of course, be trusted to see that her funds were properly administered.

So that was all settled; and Flora watched the doctor’s car drive away with feelings of considerable satisfaction.

It was with a feeling of satisfaction too, and with something strangely like affection, that she caught her first glimpse of the farmhouse on her return that night to Cold Comfort.

It was a mild and lovely evening. The rays of the sun looked heavy, as they frequently do towards the approach of a summer sunset, and lay between the tunnels of green leaves like long rods of gold. There were no clouds in the blue sky, whose colour was beginning to deepen with the advance of night, and the face of the whole countryside was softened by the shadows which were slowly growing in the depths of the woods and hedgerows.

The farmhouse itself no longer looked like a beast about to spring. (Not that it ever had, to her, for she was not in the habit of thinking that things looked exactly like other things which were as different from them in appearance as it was possible to be.) But it had looked dirty and miserable and depressing, and when Mr Mybug had once remarked that it looked like a beast about to spring, Flora had simply not had the heart to contradict him.

Now it looked dirty and miserable and depressing no longer. Its windows flung back the gold of the sunset. The yard was swept clean of straws and paper. Check curtains hung crisply at most of the windows, and someone (as a matter of fact it
was Ezra, who had a secret yen for horticulture) had been digging and trimming up the garden, and there were already rows of beans in red flower.

‘I,’ thought Flora, simply, as she leant forward in the buggy and surveyed the scene, ‘did all that with my little hatchet.’ And a feeling of joy and content opened inside her like a flower.

But then she looked upwards at the closed, blank face of the window immediately above the kitchen door, and her face grew pensive again. Aunt Ada’s room. Aunt Ada was still there, fighting her losing battle. Aunt Ada, the spirit of Cold Comfort, was hard pressed, but still undefeated. And could she, Flora, really congratulate herself upon her work at the farm, and flatter herself that the end of that work was in sight, while Aunt Ada Doom still brooded aloft in her tower?

‘Yer supper’s on the table, duck,’ said Mrs Beetle, opening the gate to let Reuben lead Viper into the yard. ‘Cold veal and salad. I’m off ’ome now. Oh, and there’s a blamonge. Pink.’

‘Lovely,’ said Flora, with a sigh of pleasure, as she climbed down from the buggy. ‘Thank you, Mrs Beetle. Miss Judith won’t be back tonight. She is going to stay in London for a while. Has everything been all right?’

‘
She
took on something awful about Miss Judith going off ’smorning,’ said Mrs Beetle, lowering her voice and glancing significantly upwards at the closed window. ‘Said she
was
all alone in the woodshed now, and no mistake. She says she don’t count Reuben. (She wouldn’t, of course –’im bein’ the pick of the bunch.) Still, she keeps ’er appetite, I will say that for ’er. Three ’elpings of veal and two of suet roly for ’er dinner today. Can you beat it? Well, this won’t buy the baby a new frock. Good night, Miss Flora. I’ll be ’ere eight sharp tomorrow.’

And off she went.

Flora went into the kitchen, where a lamp already burned on the table. Its soft light fell into the hearts of a bunch of pink roses in a jam-jar. There was a letter from Charles propped against the jar, too, and the roses threw down a heavy, rounded shadow on to the envelope. It was so pretty that Flora lingered a moment, looking, before she opened her letter.

*

The serene weather held; and Flora and everybody was hoping that it would last until Elfine’s wedding reception at the farm on the fourteenth of June, which was Midsummer Day.

The preparations for this reception were now Flora’s chief care. She was anxious that the farm should not disgrace Reuben and his sister; so she went frankly to the former and told him that she must have money to buy decorations and a feast for the wedding guests. Reuben seemed pleased at the idea of holding the reception at the farm, and gave her thirty pounds with which to do her damndest, but, he added, glancing meaningly up at the ceiling:

‘What about the old ’un?’

‘Leave her to me,’ said Flora, decidedly. ‘I am thinking out a plan for coping with her, and in a few days I am going to try it out. Well, thank you so much for this money, my lamb. I will see about decorations and food at once. Oh, and
need
we have all the pictures wreathed with that smelly sukebind? I am afraid it might have a bad effect on Meriam and Rennett. They’re so easily upset.’

‘’Tes no choice o’ mine. ’Tes grandmother’s choice. Do as you please, Cousin Flora. I niver wants to see a sprig of it again.’

So, armed with his permission, Flora began her preparations.

The days passed pleasantly. She had plenty to do, and even paid three visits to Town, for she was having a new dress made for the reception and it had to be fitted. Mrs Smiling was still abroad; she was not expected home until the day after the wedding, so 1, Mouse Place was shut up. Julia was in Cannes; Claud Hart-Harris at home in Chiswick, whence he repaired every summer, for a month, because he said he could at least be sure of meeting no one he knew there. But Flora could amuse herself; and dined and lunched in pleasant solitude.

In the intervals of fitting her dress, and of superintending a simply colossal spring cleaning of the farm (the first it had received for a hundred years), Flora kept a weather eye upon the affair of Mr Mybug and Rennett. She thought it would be best, of course, if they got married; but she was well aware that marriage was not the intellectual’s long suit, and she did not want Rennett landed with a shameful bundle.

Mr Mybug, however, did ask Rennett to marry him. He said that, by god, D. H. Lawrence was right when he had said there must be a dumb, dark, dull, bitter belly-tension between a man and a woman, and how else could this be achieved save in the long monotony of marriage? As for Rennett, she accepted him at once and was perfectly happy choosing saucepans. So that was all right; and they were to be married at a registry office one week-end in Town and have a share in Elfine’s reception on the fourteenth.

As the evenings grew longer towards Midsummer Day, Flora would sit alone in the little green parlour, where the scent of the may-tree came in through the open window, reading in ‘The Higher Common Sense’ the chapter on ‘Preparing the Mind for the Twin Invasion by Prudence and Daring in Dealing with Substances not Included in the Outline’.

It would help her, she knew, to deal with Aunt Ada Doom. Those long words in German and in Latin were solemn and cragged as Egyptian monoliths; and when the reader peered more closely into the meaning of their syllables that rang like bells, backwards and backwards into Time, they were seen to be frosted with wisdom, cold and irrefutable. Before them, Passion, awed, slunk back to its lair; and divine Reason and her sister Love, locked in one another’s arms, raised their twin heads to receive the wreath of Happiness.

Aunt Ada was most emphatically one of the Substances not Included in the Outline. As Flora read on, evening after evening, she was aware that a conviction was growing in her mind that this was one of the cases (the chapter warned the student that such might exist) in which she must meekly await the help of a flash of intuition. The chapter would help her to prepare her mind for the invasion, but it could do no more. She must await the moment.

And on an evening of more than common peace and beauty the moment came. She had put aside ‘The Higher Common Sense’ for half an hour while she partook of her supper, and had opened ‘Mansfield Park’, at random, to refresh her spirits.

‘It was over, however, at last; and the evening set in with more composure to Fanny …’

And suddenly – the flash! It was over indeed: her long indecision and her bewilderment about how to deal with Aunt Ada Doom. In a few seconds she had her plan clearly in her head, with every detail as distinct as though the scheme had already been carried through. Calmly she detached a leaf from her pocket-book and wrote the following telegram:

   ‘Hart Harris,
         ‘Chauncey Grove,
               ‘Chiswick Mall.
‘Please send at once latest number vogue also prospectus hotel miramar paris and very important photographs fanny ward love Flora.’

Then she summoned Mark Dolour’s Nancy, who had come in to help with the spring cleaning, and sent her down to the post office in Howling with the telegram.