The Flowering Thorn Page 9

  “I got to go now, Miss Frewen, but everything’s stacked ready for washin’. It won’t take long if you all lay an ’and to it.”

  Lesley looked towards the sink and concealed her emotion.

  “You couldn’t do it in the morning, Mrs. Sprigg?”

  “I could if I did nothing else, but it looks like it’s going to be an ’eavy day. Besides, there’s the breakfast, and not a clean crock in the place.”

  With a feeling near despair, as though at losing a last ally, Lesley watched the old woman pin on her hat and go. There were dishes in the sink, dishes on the table, dishes on the kitchen chair. Some had been used to cook things in. Nearly all bore traces of cigarette-ash. At that moment, in the room overhead, Patrick awoke and began to call.

  To reach the stairs she had to pass through the sitting-room, and with her hand on the door-knob Lesley’s mind rushed forward after some light but convincing explanation. “This is where I tell the bedtime story, my dears!”—something like that. ‘And then I’ll send them into the orchard,’ thought Lesley rapidly, ‘and run upstairs to Pat—and then come down and get started.…’

  The knob turned under her hand, her lips parted on the chosen phrase: but her pains might have been spared, for there was no one there to hear it. The door stood open, and from the shadowy orchard came a confused sound of voices: just as she had told them to, her guests were making themselves completely at home.…

  With a distasteful glance for the uncleared table Lesley shrugged her shoulders and ran upstairs to the little bedroom. If not actually cooler there, it was at least free from cigarette-smoke, and pausing in the doorway she took a deliberate chestful of the clean, unscented air. Then a spring creaked, a pillow fell, and she switched on the light.

  “What is it, Pat?”

  Hot, rumpled, but mercifully tearless, he sat up in bed and sighed loudly.

  “I want a drink of water.”

  Lesley glanced at the chair by the bed and saw that Mrs. Sprigg had forgotten to put his glass. There was one in Elissa’s room, however, over the carafe; Lesley went and filled it and brought it back to Pat. He drank in a series of small, steady pulls, never shifting his lips and breathing rhythmically into the glass.

  ‘Now I’ll have to wash that too,’ thought Lesley.

  With an increasing consciousness of fatigue she turned his pillow, drew up the cool sheet: then went over to the window and knelt a moment against the sill. Far down the orchard four giant glow-worms told her the whereabouts of four of her guests—two under the elm-tree, two by the shed: Elissa and Toby Ashton, Teddy and Natasha: all smoking hard to keep off the midges. As for poor Bryan, he was probably out looking for a pond to commit suicide in, and with all her heart she hoped he wouldn’t find one. Lesley sighed: they didn’t mean to be inconsiderate, but … in another minute she was going down to deal single-handed with the supper things. It was her own fault, of course, for saying Mrs. Sprigg did it, though how on earth they imagined that one old woman … Lesley sighed again: they couldn’t imagine, that was the whole trouble. No one could imagine, who hadn’t actually to do it.

  “Frewen?”

  She turned back to the room and saw Pat sitting up like a rabbit.

  “What is it, Pat? Lie down and go to sleep.”

  “Have they come to live here?”

  Startled out of her fatigue, Lesley hastened to reassure him.

  “Of course not, Pat. Only for three days—only two, now. They’re going home on Tuesday.” An involuntary optimism warmed her voice. “I’ll put the light out, and you must go to sleep.”

  With a great sigh of appeasement Pat at last curled up into his customary ball; but for a moment or two longer Lesley waited beside him.

  It was their first faint glimmer of a fellow-feeling.

  3

  As has been previously stated, the members of the house-party—among whom Lesley had now apparently to number Mr. Lock—were due to remain until the Tuesday after Bank Holiday. That they all went home on Sunday night was therefore no preconceived design, but merely a happy accident.

  The midges, however, had possibly something to do with it. At some time or other during the Saturday afternoon or evening Bryan Collingwood had been bitten all up his legs, Toby Ashton all up his arms, and poor Elissa simply everywhere.

  “They’re getting worse, too,” she complained bitterly; “my left shoulder’s gone all pimply. I thought midge-bites didn’t.”

  “They do down here, I’m afraid,” said Lesley: not because she believed it, but to keep their minds off harvesters. “Eat lots of salad, darling, and try not to scratch. Mrs. Sprigg! Where’s the oil?”

  “The young lady ’ad it yesterday to put on ’er sores,” replied Mrs. Sprigg, appearing suddenly at the hatch. “The young lady in the bathing-dress.”

  “Oh, so I did, darling,” said Elissa, almost before the pause had become noticeable. “I always oil all over for fear of blistering. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Not a bit,” said Lesley. “Was there enough?”

  “Oh, yes, darling. I used it all, but there was enough.” She reached out for a fork and helped herself to some smoked salmon; it was the first meal of the day, and so much too late for breakfast that Lesley had sacrificed all the rest of the week-end’s hors d’œuvres to a sort of Russian sandwich-bar. There was also, for those feeling sufficiently bucolic, eggs and bacon and a pot of Oxford marmalade, both provided by Mrs. Sprigg in defiance of her employer’s orders. In this case at least, however, the employer’s instinct had been the right one; and the only person to feel bucolic was Lesley herself. Elissa looked at her in amazement.

  “You will get fat, darling! … or don’t you mind, now?”

  “Personally, I don’t think food has anything to do with it,” said Lesley, who was feeling both hungry and pugnacious. “I’ve been eating bacon for nearly two months, and I don’t believe it’s made the slightest difference.”

  “You should look at yourself sideways, darling,” said Elissa idly.

  It was rather the tone of the whole party. They had not actually come to blows, but on the other hand they could not truthfully be described as enjoying themselves. It is almost impossible to enjoy oneself in the country while feeling dead tired: and for some reason Sunday morning found every member of the house-party, from Lesley to Pat, feeling very tired indeed. Neither Elissa nor Natasha had slept a wink, each accusing the other of snoring; but Natasha also accused Elissa of talking in her sleep, and said that to any student of psycho-analysis it was all far too dreadful to repeat.

  (“My dear,” said Elissa, “I’m not really responsible for Bryan, but I feel I owe you an apology. Surely he could have seen …”)

  But that, at the moment, was the one thing Bryan would not do. All through the long Sunday morning—and in spite of the lateness of breakfast, it was very long indeed—all through the longer afternoon, he behaved as though there were no one in the orchard but Lesley, Elissa and Toby Ashton. It was a difficult thing to do, for Natasha and Teddy had stretched themselves in the middle of the grass, where they had almost to be stepped over in passing to and from the well, and where Lesley was constantly forced to disturb them with a request for water. This Teddy drew with a pleasant alacrity, and even carried as far as the kitchen before going to lie down again: but in the second pailful there bobbed a large grassy sod, which Lesley rightly interpreted as a symbolic Russian method of requesting to be let alone.

  “Oh, well, it’ll do for them to wash in,” said Mrs. Sprigg philosophically. “Now you go along outside, Miss Frewen, and leave the rest to me.”

  With an unusual sensation of gratitude Lesley put down the milk-jug (she had just returned from a hasty trip to the Walpole’s back door), applied a little more lipstick, picked up a sherry bottle, and followed this advice. It was time, she felt rather strongly, that someone began to make love to her; preferably Toby, of course, but at any rate someone. What else (hell take them!) had she asked the poor fish down for? The
energy of her thought marked a sudden return of spirits (completely inexplicable unless by reference to a very fair number of cocktails consumed during an extremely wearing lunch. At the time they had had no more effect than water, so that she had been compelled to listen, in complete sobriety, to the wranglings of Elissa and Natasha over a missing tube of face cream. Belated but potent, however, the gin was at last in action: to box Natasha’s ears would have been but the enjoyable work of a perfect moment. And as for Toby—darling Toby!—he should take her right off in the car somewhere, and if the others didn’t like it, it would serve them damn well right.…

  The afflatus, in fact, had descended; but it had descended too late. As Lesley stepped on to the grass a shrill cry of dismay rang under the apple-trees; and from the centre of an agitated group rose Elissa with a telegram.

  It was a perfectly genuine one, which she happened to have received just before leaving Town, and which they now declared to have arrived while Lesley was fetching the milk. The contents were alarming and Elissa made no secret of them.

  “It’s Henry, darling, he’s just broken his leg and implores me to go up to Town. And as we are more or less engaged, darling, I’m terribly afraid I’ll have to humour him.”

  “What a hellish shame, darling!” said Lesley, at the same time wishing she could warn them that the boy who took round telegrams had just been serving her with milk. “Does that mean at once?”

  Elissa tore her hair.

  “I’m most frightfully afraid it does, darling. Or at any rate after tea. Toby’s promised to run me up in the car. He is rather adorable, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, no, I’m not,” cut in Toby mournfully. “I am a man with an ulterior motive. The same as a secret sorrow, only worse. The fact is, darling, I’ve just remembered a man from Paris.”

  “The man you had to go over about while I had your house?” prompted Lesley. The afflatus was rapidly leaving her again, but she could still carry the thing off.

  He looked at her with real liking.

  “That’s the one. He’s in London for the week-end, and I’ve got to give him a damned good dinner and play him five new songs. So if by chance I can’t get back, tout comprendre will be tout pardonner.”

  “We’ll have tea at four, then,” said Lesley. “You don’t mind it early, Natasha, or did you and Bryan want to go another walk?”

  “I never will go a walk again,” said Natasha sullenly. She was upstairs at the bedroom window, retouching her eyebrows and thinking it very foolish of everyone to keep on pretending. If one wanted to go away, why not say so plainly? “Common courtesy,” Bryan had said, when he was making up his own story about an uncle’s birthday: but surely it was more courteous to speak the truth than to tell lies? And with a feeling of carefree righteousness—the same feeling that used to come over her, as a child, just before she broke her sister’s hideous and therefore unpermissible doll—she leant a little farther out of the window and said simply:

  “I am tired of here too.”

  4

  When the time came to go, however (and tea that day was very early indeed), a sudden wave of mutual affection lifted them buoyantly over the parting. Elissa kissed Lesley, Lesley kissed Elissa, and was herself kissed by Bryan and Toby. Natasha, it is true, did not kiss anyone, but the gratitude of Teddy Lock ran almost to blank verse. He had gone down to the village and fetched up his car, so obviously ready and willing to take charge of Natasha that Lesley at once carried out the big coroneted suitcase and dumped it in the back. Beside Toby’s Talbot she found the luggage already piled and young Bryan Collingwood in an attitude of despair: at the sight of Natasha’s suitcase he turned his back, and pretended to be examining the dashboard.

  Suddenly touched, Lesley went to his side, and regretting her tactlessness.

  “Look here, my dear,” she said impulsively, “if you’d like to stay on a day by yourself—I don’t mind.”

  With an elaborate start he turned and saw her.

  “Darling, how sweet of you! But I think I’d better be getting back with Toby. As a matter of fact, my uncle’s got a birthday to-morrow.…”

  At the open gate the voices of Elissa and Toby, of Teddy and Natasha, could already be heard. Lesley yielded to temptation.

  “My poor Bryan!” she said gently, “was she going to Warsaw with you?”

  For answer he pulled open the door and slumped into a back seat. The next moment Toby and Elissa were settling themselves in front, while the Packard, already in motion, had begun to purr gently into Pig Lane.

  “All right behind?” inquired Toby, letting in the clutch.

  Bryan grunted. He was not all right, he was deplorable, and didn’t care who knew it. From the car in front Teddy Lock turned and waved vigorously.

  “Good-bye, Miss Frewen!”

  “Good-bye, good-bye!”

  “See you again soon, darling!”

  “Soon, soon, soon!” shrilled Elissa.

  When at last they were out of sight Lesley pulled-to the gate and went back through the orchard; where the first thing that met her eyes was young Patrick Craigie curled under an apple-tree and sleeping like the dead.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  As the wind, said Larochefoucauld, puts out candles and kindles fire, so absence will diminish a slender affection and increase a great. His words, passed on to Lesley at a Chelsea bottle-party, had somehow been remembered (it was a trick his words often had) a great deal longer than the rest of the conversation: and during the first week in August they were constantly in Lesley’s mind.

  ‘Candles every one of them!’ thought Lesley, in her first bitterness. Mere flickering dips, unstable to the lightest breath! For she had forgotten, naturally enough, how fast things changed, how swiftly emotions developed and relationships changed, when their change and their development were the chief recreation of largely unoccupied persons. In a couple of hours, at one of Elissa’s parties, one could be fallen in love with, fall in love oneself, lose interest, recover it again, and at the last be driven affectionately home by a person who two hours earlier had still been a perfect though interesting stranger. And if so much in two hours, how much more in two months! Elissa and Toby, when they came to the cottage, were already at their second and penultimate phase: from Lesley to Natasha had been more, for Bryan, than a single emotional stride. All these things, indeed, Lesley’s intelligence, had she called on it, could probably have guessed at; but for once in her life she was giving rein to pure feeling. And in her feelings she was sore, disheartened, puzzled, shocked. To one almost professionally disillusioned, disillusion came very hard.

  In this mood, and about half-way through August, Lesley Frewen called on the Vicar.

  Her motive was frankly interested, being simply to obtain for Patrick the society of the young Pomfrets. At the moment the bulk of his time was being spent with Mrs. Sprigg, who, though in many ways a sound and suitable companion for youth, was also the possessor of a strong local accent. Pat had lately, in fact, began to drop his h’s, a practice which annoyed Lesley considerably, and he was also forming the habit of constantly concealing himself behind fences to watch for the young Walpoles. One day soon he would quite probably climb over, and if some social intercourse were absolutely inevitable Lesley found herself with an instinctive bias in favour of the Pomfrets. They were considerably cleaner, they had impeccable accents, and above all there were at least two of them old enough to send Pat out alone with.

  In spite of these advantages, however, it was a resolution to which Lesley proceeded at least with distaste. She had no desire in the world to enter into relations with the Vicarage, and deeply resented the threat to her isolation. There also remained to be cleared up that unfortunate business of the Vicar’s call.

  ‘I shall have to go and see him, I suppose,’ thought Lesley: and thereupon spent a good deal of time and effort in trying to remember whether Elissa’s behaviour had been bad enough to call for an apology. Right up to the last she was still undecided: right up
to the finishing touch of rouge and the last dusting of powder. In obedience to an unexamined instinct, she had made up rather more thoroughly than usual, employing a new tangerine lipstick in place of her usual scarlet: between a tailored white walking dress and a tilted white hat, it took on an extraordinary vividness. Thus embellished, and complete to every detail, Lesley drew on her gloves and set out for the Vicarage.

  She went by the short cut, across Walpole pastures: but less from an impatience to reach her destination than from a deep reluctance to pass through the village. The inhabitants of High Westover had none of that shy rural courtesy so rightly extolled by those who have presumably experienced it. They stared. They might be trying to dissemble their interest, but if so they dissembled it very badly. And behind their stares lay a dumb, sullen, and intimate antagonism. Or so felt Lesley: and she walked across the meadows.

  Arriving at the Vicarage gate, the first objects that met her eye were none other than the four young Pomfrets in person, happily and usefully occupied in painting a garden roller. Lesley scrutinised them carefully. Except for a short hiatus of about fifteen inches they all looked almost exactly alike, with short sandy hair, freckled noses, white cotton cricket shirts, long brown legs, and the stoutest sandals she had ever seen; but between waist and knee some extra yard or so of grey flannel differentiated between the sexes. Two of the painters wore skirts, two knickerbockers. The whole four appeared uniformly healthy, hardy and unintimidated. With a slight stirring of satisfaction Lesley pulled at the bell.

  It was answered, after a certain hesitation, by an odd little maid with untied apron-strings. Her eye was startled, her speech non-committal, but on hearing Lesley’s name she let her come inside and scuttled away down an echoing passage. Lesley waited obediently. Through an opening door came the strains of the Brandenburg No. 5 played on a goodish gramophone; then silence, a short pause, and Miss Frewen was shown into the Victar’s study.