The Flowering Thorn (17 page)

“Mrs. Sprigg's coming in again from half-past seven,” said Lesley. “It's really her whist-drive night, but fortunately they altered the date.”

The Vicar's wife nodded.

“Mrs. Povey's new dress wasn't finished, because Milly Cox, who was making it—the sister of my girl, you know—is down with sore throat; and that's really the reason I'm staying at home to-night,” explained Mrs. Pomfret allusively. They had now reached the turning in Pig Lane, where her path branched to the right; but still she lingered a moment as though there was something on her mind. And so indeed there was: nothing less, in fact, than a Social Hint, which for the last ten minutes had been causing her considerable embarrassment. She said,

“Oh, by the way, Miss Frewen—I don't know if Henry told you—but Sir Philip always dresses. For dinner, you know.”

“Jacket or tails?” said Lesley.

“Oh … dinner jacket, my dear. But of course you needn't put on anything really
low.
I always wear my black lace, and that's got sort of sleeves.”

Lesley thanked her politely; and continuing up Pig Lane put out in readiness the backless white moiré she had worn new to Elissa's.

2

Dressing that night in the tiny bedroom, she was assailed by memories. For it was almost exactly a year since that gown had last seen the light: a year which—now one came to think of it—had somehow passed with remarkable swiftness. ‘And I've done nothing,' thought Lesley, rubbing at her nails; ‘I haven't even been up to Town!' She looked again towards the bed. Like her shoes and her powder-box—like her own nails reddening under the stain—those gleaming yards of silk seemed part of a previous and dreamlike existence. That she had once worn such garments almost nightly was of course an established fact; but so also, in some households, is the angelic plumage of the unborn babe.

Lesley slipped off the dressing-gown and reached for her feathers. Fine and gleaming still—though with certainly no hint of the cherubic swansdown! With extreme precaution she dropped the stiff white folds over her head, felt the narrow shoulder-straps settle snugly in place, and so stood gazing a moment in the ill-lit glass. The dress still fitted. Then she sat down again to look more closely. The dress still fitted; but was there not, at the same time, a slight—how to put it?—a slight falling off from perfection? The dress still fitted: but was that all? With a wrinkle between her unplucked brows Lesley leaned closer. It was so long since she had really sat down before a mirror that the image therein was almost unfamiliar—the likeness of a brown-skinned woman with hair very like her own, but longer and thicker, and set in less formal waves. It was an illusion, no doubt, or something to do with the glass; for surely that smooth oval was broader and softer than she remembered it? Rounder in the cheeks, fuller in the lower lip?

‘I shall have to pull myself together,' thought Lesley; and shrugging her shoulders was aware of a peculiar sensation—night air on the small of the back. She thought, ‘No use powdering in patches: better leave it!' There was Mrs. Sprigg down below: but rather a fresh falling off from elegance than those gnarled and roughened hands, catching, perhaps, in the grain of the silk.…

A sudden and natural pang changed the current of her thought. Eight o'clock—as Mrs. Pomfret remarked, one had time to raise an appetite! Lesley picked up her cloak, looked out of the window: and a second or two later saw a very old Rolls at the end of Pig Lane.

3

If of her effect on the Vicar Lesley had very little idea, of her effect on Sir Philip there was no possible doubt.

“You've been on the stage, I believe?” he said hopefully, as they went in to dinner. The question was underlined by a slight but definite pressure of her arm: and looking down from an extra two inches Lesley saw a pair of light and goatish eyes glinting under their lids.… Extraordinary eyes, in colour, even to the whites, a clear pale agate, and in shape like the narrow slits of a paper mask: very odd eyes indeed for a retired J.P. with antiquarian leanings.…

“No,” said Lesley, “I'm afraid not: but I know quite a lot of dirty stories about actresses.”

Sir Philip at once looked extremely alert.

“Not now,” he said, “after dinner. My butler has a thoroughly salacious mind, and it would only distract him.”

“What about yours, Vicar?” asked Lesley over her shoulder.

“Pomfret! My dear young lady, he needs nothing but Smollett and the Bible.—We dine, you see, by candlelight,” said Sir Philip; “it belongs to the same period and spares all the blushes.”

Taking her seat before a bowl of tulips, Lesley felt rather than observed, and with a deep and sensuous pleasure, the glowing harmonies of Sir Philip's table. The wood was walnut, old and luminous as the sherry in her glass: between the two in tone came the pink of the tulip petals, lustred yet soft above pale bright silver: while the highest note of all, the clean and shining glass, shone subdued by candlelight to an accordant glow. Lesley lifted her spoon, and was oddly surprised by the scarlet of her finger-nails.

‘That stuff—usen't it to go darker?' she thought suddenly; and with a faint uneasiness saw that Sir Philip's glance was following her own.

“For what we are about to receive,” said the Vicar abruptly, “thank God. The ‘we,' Kerr, refers to Miss Frewen and myself: I haven't insulted you.” He turned to Lesley, surprised at her soup. “Sir Philip won't thank anyone but his cook and his tradespeople—about two dozen all told. I go straight to the source. If ever I forget and take him with me, it offends his principles.”

“What about mine?” asked Lesley.

“Oh, you don't care one way or the other,” explained the Vicar quite correctly, “and you're nice enough to humour my weakness. The first time Miss Frewen ever saw me, Kerr, she gave me twelve cigarettes—all good ones.”

Sir Philip looked at her again: ‘Cigarettes,' the look seemed to say, ‘Cigarettes, egad!' And again Lesley experienced that curious emotion. It was almost like nervousness; yet to feel nervous at a dinner-party—a dinner-party of two old men—the thing was absurd! But absurd or not, the sensation persisted: it even increased: and as a matter of fact, it was not absurd at all.

For Sir Philip was judging her—had indeed already done so—by a standard which was rapidly becoming obsolete, and which he himself had preserved only through the accident of circumstance. The outbreak of War found him in the late forties, and therefore too old, by the optimistic standards of 1914, for anything more active than quill-driving in the War Office. There he stayed five weeks, taking real pains with a naturally deplorable handwriting. At the beginning of the sixth week, however, he was missing from his desk; no questions were asked and he was next heard of in Greece. It was a country he knew well, there was very little office-work, and in Greece he remained until a year after the Armistice. The change from pre-war to post-war England was thus unsoftened, for Sir Philip, by any period of transition; returning home in 1919 he took one look at London, disliked it exceedingly, and went straight down to High Westover. There were changes even there, but not so many; in his own house and garden none at all. With the avowed intention of staying there till he died Sir Philip modernised his kitchens (retaining of course the coal fire) and made two or three trips to Town to suit himself with a cook. That done, he kept his word and strayed no more from his garden, his library, and his excellent cellar; consorting chiefly with the Vicar, eating seriously but with discretion, and having no more idea of the modern young woman than of the lost poems of Sappho, or the other side of the moon. Lesley Frewen was the first of the genus that had ever come his way; but far from being at a loss, he knew exactly what to make of her. By the standards of 1913, there was indeed no possible room for doubt: she lived alone, had an unexplained child; painted her face, dressed like an actress, smoked cigarettes and was free with her tongue. And very cautiously, under the walnut, Sir Philip put out his foot and touched her shoe.

Lesley did not even notice him. The food was good, the wine excellent, but she did not notice them either. She was too troubled. And the thing that troubled her was a growing conviction, that her host, having been promised a dirty story, would expect to have one.

He kept looking at her with a sort of quiet anticipation, lending only half an ear, she felt sure, to the Vicar's really amusing remarks. It was rather disconcerting: as though after the conventional defence of promiscuity all the men present should invite one to bed.… And with a sudden flicker of pure dismay Lesley wondered what would have been the result if, in that hasty choice of retorts, it
had
been promiscuity, and not the actress, that her tongue laid hold of. ‘
No, not on the stage, Sir Philip; but I quite often let men make love to me.…
' The phrase slipped ready into her mind: and what would her host have done then?

‘Sent a maid up with a warming-pan,' thought Lesley.

Still paying lip-service to the conversation, she tried with all her might to remember something really gross. And not only gross but lengthy, circumstantial, and if possible connected with the stage: for in Sir Philip's eyes—and as Lesley was too intelligent not to realise—she had, by that first casual piece of brightness, put herself definitely into the smoking-room: where she could fancy him urgent as Shylock and insatiable as the sea.

The wine passed, the Vicar talked, and Lesley racked her brains: only to discover, with no little dismay, that the conversation at Elissa's must have been a good deal purer than anyone intended. With the coming of the dessert her discomfort grew: it was like the last few minutes before a viva, in which the unprepared student feels his palms clammy with horror. For Lesley, though she had laughed at dirty stories for years, had never made a habit of passing them on: holding the retail of smut, like the conducting of orchestras, to be an almost purely masculine gift. The principle was of course an æsthetic, not a moral one: but the results were just as unfortunate.

“Coffee in the library, I think,” said Sir Philip.

With a sinking of the heart Lesley rose from her chair and obediently traversed the long wide corridor. As never in life before her spirit yearned and thirsted after the sanctuary of drawing-rooms: but there was no escape. Her white moiré fishtail swished over the carpet, her smooth white back gleamed in a succession of dim round mirrors: at the door of the examination-chamber a silver coffee-tray exactly preceded them. For the chamber itself, it was less aggressively masculine than her fancy had painted; being many-windowed, white-panelled, and lit and coloured by a sumptuous painting of a woman in evening dress.

“Early Sargent,” murmured the Vicar, “the late Lady Kerr.”

Lesley looked curiously at the woman who should have been her hostess. Superb, refulgent, tiny head above a stately bosom—Sargent and the Edwardians both at their best. One hand toying with her pearls, the other half-hidden in a billow of amber silk: pearls again in the auburn hair, pearls again at the ears. What had happened to them all, wondered Lesley?

“The only coffee fit to drink,” said Sir Philip suddenly, “is made by worthless nations. Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians—all make excellent coffee.”

“I like Turks,” said the Vicar thoughtfully.

“Where did you meet any?”

“At Gallipoli. Though they didn't have time to make much coffee. And what about the French?”

“They can't make coffee,” returned Sir Philip simply.

The Vicar turned to Lesley with a gesture of mute appeal; and a little piqued nevertheless at not being offered Arabia (to which country she had once had serious thoughts of going), she took up his cudgels.

“But surely the coffee on the boat-train is almost the last reason for crossing by sea? It tastes of a new civilisation.”

“
Anything
drunk on dry land, immediately after a channel crossing, tastes like a new civilisation,” said Sir Philip. “Have you ever drunk greasy cocoa immediately after a shipwreck?”

Lesley was forced to confess that she had not.

“That tastes like a new heaven and a new earth. A cigarette, Miss Frewen?”

Automatically she accepted it: and was at once aware of Sir Philip's happy interest now focused on her long jade holder.…

“Extraordinary,” said Lesley (to whom the subject appeared as innocuous as any they were likely to reach), “the difference between cocoa and chocolate. The real chocolate, frothed—there's nothing more delicious. Damnably fattening, of course, but delicious all the same.”

“It's a question of milk,” observed the Vicar, almost as though divining her thought. “Most common of household cocoa is made with water. Now chocolate—”

Sir Philip looked up.

“Chocolate? My dear fellow, there's only one place where they can make chocolate, and that's Paris. I once, in the days before you reformed me, used to know a young lady there who made probably the best chocolate in the whole world. One would even get out of bed for it. She was a dancer at the Opéra.…”

He paused: he offered the opening. Lesle looked at her slipper, and said,

“Opera—I wonder if we shall ever acclimatise it? At present it seems to be one of the few luxuries that the English are genuinely eager to give up.”

“Exactly,” said the Vicar. “We're a practical and a moral race. And quite a large section of the community would still like to see a ‘Danger' sign outside all playhouse doors.”

Sir Philip's eyes glinted.

“Speaking of road signs,” he said, “this young woman I was telling you about—she hit on a most ingenious use for them. Her bedroom had two doors, you see, and there was a sign over each. One came from outside a National School, the other from outside a hospital. The first said—”