The Flowering Thorn (24 page)

“Do you really mean it?” he asked anxiously. “You're sure we shan't be in the way?”

“I do and you won't,” said Lesley. “I shall make you draw all the water.”

They did not actually kiss each other; but it was a very near thing.

3

In the face of such strong temptation, Mrs. Sprigg behaved rather better than might have been expected, neither mingling with the gentry in the orchard nor joining in their conversation through the dining-room hatch. This restraint, however, was less a matter of delicacy than a friendly concession to the short-sighted prejudices of her employer.

“All the same, it's a great waste,” she lamented after Lesley had expounded those prejudices at some length. “I could ha' told her a lot of things that I only wish someone would ha' told me. Why, I remember plain as anything—”

“In any case, she probably knows them already,” interrupted Lesley.

“Not she!” said Mrs. Sprigg. “She's a nice little thing.…”

The young Locks, meanwhile, were behaving rather as though they were in heaven, stepping cautiously over the grass and standing mute with admiration before all the commonplaces of Lesley's life. The thick old walls of the cottage, the thick new thatch on the roof, the well with the bucket you had to wind by hand, and from which they rapturously drew more water than Mrs. Sprigg could cope with—from all these things they got what can only be described as a holy kick. (Gina also got a blister, which she evidently intended to preserve as long as she could—unto New York, if possible, but certainly as far as the boat.) On the Saturday afternoon Lesley walked them across country to buy buns at Wendover: Gina carried the basket, Teddy opened the gates; and the mere fact of going on foot seemed to give them one kick more.

“You're the nicest guests I've ever had,” said Lesley, during a momentary halt to admire the view. “You like everything.”

“Like!” they echoed, one on either side of her on top of the gate. “We just adore it. It's the loveliest thing that's ever happened to us.”

A cow in a field turned and looked at them; but for once Gina did not remark her. She had seen something else.

“Look behind you, Teddy!”

Lesley looked too, and beheld the placid figure of old Horace Walpole approaching slowly along the path. He wore, as usual, a grey flannel shirt without a collar, a check waistcoat, and very old breeches.

“My!” breathed Gina. “Isn't he just too cunning?”

Her eyes shone with enthusiasm, her husband's no less. If they'd only got a camera, lamented Teddy, what a picture they could have taken!

“It's Horace Walpole,” said Lesley, “we'll have to get out of the way.”

They climbed respectfully down, he touched his hat and passed through.

“Fine afternoon, Miss Frewen.”

“Beautiful, isn't it?” said Lesley.

“Ah!” said old Horace.

As to the language of Shakespeare, the Locks listened spellbound; and observing their expressions Lesley was conscious of a slight dismay. Such joy was gratifying indeed, but how was it to be kept up? Having begun with the superlative, to what could one proceed? So Lesley, in her innocence; but she need not have troubled. Her guests had reserves of enthusiasm as yet untouched: they were barely out of the positive, and for the next three days Lesley was to watch with steadily increasing wonder while they scaled peak after peak of genuine rapture. For they stayed until Tuesday, in order to dine on the Monday night with Sir Philip at the Hall, where they let off behaving as though in heaven and behaved instead as though in the British Museum. That they were actually allowed to sit on the sofas was more than a treat, it was an experience; one could see them (said Sir Philip afterwards) absorbing culture through their behinds.…

But Sir Philip liked the Locks all the same, and having learnt his lesson from Lesley made no attempt to pay Gina's appearance the tribute of a kiss on the stairs. She wouldn't have minded: she would probably have thought it an old English custom, like God Save the King or left-hand driving; but Teddy was not so liberal.

“He's going all Southern on me,” Gina complained proudly. “Would you believe it, Sir Philip, when we were in London a boy from home wanted to take me dancing, and Teddy just would not let me go. He just put his foot right down.”

“And it's there still,” growled Teddy. “It feels like it's taking root.” He looked at Gina severely: she was the first wife he had ever had, and he was making the most of her.

“Young man,” said Sir Philip, “you're perfectly right. The woman's place is in the home, if not in the harem.” He watched them with benevolence; like Lesley, he found them extremely engaging, as though a couple of love-birds should ruffle up their feathers and pretend to be tough old owls; and for the sake of Gina's great eyes talked all evening long about more Princes of Wales than she had ever known existed.

He did even more: when the time came to go, he gave her a wedding-present. A little eighteenth-century Shakespeare, very difficult to read in, and with the Kerr dove and dagger emblazoned on the back.…

The pinnacle was reached.

4

Late the next afternoon, when at last they tore themselves away, Gina stood powdering her nose before the bedroom mirror. She had thanked and thanked again, and so had Teddy; but a final rush of gratitude was not to be denied.

“You'll never know, Miss Frewen—you just
can't
know—how much we've loved being here. It's what we'd both just longed for.”

“I'm glad you weren't disappointed, then,” said Lesley. (That reply-paid telegram!).

“
Disappointed!
” Gina stared in amazement. “Why, I didn't think it was going to be a
bit
like this! From what Teddy told me, I expected one of those rackety week-end places like we have sometimes, with a lot of drink around.”

‘Dear me!' thought Lesley: how wild that sounded! And with a wrinkle between her brows she tried to remember back to a summer four years ago, a summer—how extraordinary!—when she was hardly into the place, and Teddy Lock had come dangling after—who was it?—after Natasha! A dreadful week-end! And hadn't someone been rude to the Vicar?

“Dear me!” said Lesley aloud.

“I hope you didn't mind me saying that?” asked Gina a little anxiously. “Teddy's great on getting hold of the wrong story.…”

“On the contrary,” said Lesley, “he was perfectly right. It's nicer now.”

Her guest nodded.

“I think it's just wonderful. And—and about the little boy too, Miss Frewen.” (Lesley at once looked apologetic: for Pat, without being exactly rude to the visitors, had rather pointedly dodged them. Gina had kissed him on arrival, and he was afraid she might do it again.) “We think you're being just wonderful about him. And as for the place—it's what we read about all our lives, and then go back disappointed because we can't find it. You've no idea what your hospitality has meant to us, Miss Frewen.”

The great dark eyes, so charming and earnest, gazed reverently out of the window; and indeed in the scene below—the old green apple-trees, the young green grass—there
was
something special, something—how to define it?—one didn't get out of England. And what an English time of day!—five in the afternoon, the heat of the sun already gone, but a soft golden light making all clear and luminous. From the thatch above their heads a soft grey feather floated slowly down; and Gina sighed.

“Wouldn't it be just perfect,” she said softly, “if one could be here when … when …”

The sentence was never finished, but Lesley understood. And suddenly another memory of Natasha rose up out of the past.…

‘Women are just like cats,' thought Lesley to herself, ‘no sooner do they find a good place than they want to have a baby in it.'

CHAPTER THREE

That same evening, after the Locks had gone, she at last made the acquaintance of Denis Cotton. Sir Philip had asked him to play bridge, with Mr. Pomfret for a fourth; and arriving rather late Lesley found them all three on the terrace watching a clear green sky.

“Sit down and look at that, my dear,” said Sir Philip, pulling up a fourth chair. “There's a star just over the cypress, a little to the right. Got it?”

Lesley stood and stared. The colour of grapes, the colour of shallow water, the colour of jade hollowed into a dish! And watching her astonished eyes, Sir Philip suddenly threw up his hands.

The Vicar laughed.

“Yes,” he said, “Lesley's a proper country-woman. She never notices the landscape, only the weather.”

“Miss Frewen's a part of the landscape,” muttered Denis Cotton; and then flushed suddenly crimson, as though in readiness to be laughed at.

But unfortunately neither the Vicar nor his host paid him any attention. They were both looking at Lesley, as she stood with her head thrown back and her body motionless: in a dress of honey-coloured silk that held all the last of the light: with her sun-burned throat and line of white shoulder.

Then the green faded from the sky, the yellow from her gown; and behind them in the lighted house a gong rang for dinner.

2

It is a commonplace of natural history that young men cramming at country vicarages always fall in love. To this rule Denis Cotton was no exception, and during the course of the following week—as soon, that is to say, as relations between the Vicarage and the cottage had resumed their natural flow—he paid tribute to convention and fell in love with Lesley. He did it so thoroughly, moreover, that the passage of one week more found him dogging her footsteps with the persistence of a detective and the expression of a spaniel. Whenever she mentioned a new book someone always sent it to him (a belated birthday present) by the next post from Town. He was exhibiting, in fact, every symptom of a classic case, and both the Vicar and Sir Philip were making a grievance of it.

“It's all very well, my dear,” said Mr. Pomfret, “but I'm being paid to teach the young ass Turkish. If he gives his whole mind to it we may get as far as the pronouns: with the present one-third in action we'd better give up the Consular and try for Pitman's.”

Sir Philip's attitude was even simpler: with the arrival of Denis he had at last been able to make up a bridge four, and now, after only two sessions, all was rapidly being marred by the young man's palpable inability to keep his mind on his cards.

“If he plays with you he can see your eyes, if he plays against you he can see your profile.
I
can't think of anything,” said Sir Philip glumly.

Lesley put down her cup—they were taking tea together in the library—and sighed. It was all perfectly true, and the young man was swiftly becoming a perfect nuisance: but short of deliberate brutality there seemed to be no mode of behaviour from which he could not draw encouragement.

‘And I
can't
be brutal,' she thought, ‘it would be like being brutal to Pat.' And she sighed again, for, as was perhaps only natural, she herself saw Denis's case a good deal more sympathetically than either of the men. Young Cotton, however egregious in behaviour, was being badly hurt; and with the fellow-feeling of youth Lesley slightly resented Sir Philip's flippancy. To change the subject, therefore, she said idly,

“Pat had Ellen again last night. Do you know that's three times running?”

They both laughed; for the care of Pat, on the extremely frequent occasions when Lesley dined at the Hall, now devolved on one or other of the Hall maids, and the volunteers for this duty were so remarkably persistent that she was never much surprised to discover, on the following morning, a trace here and there of yokel-sized boots.

Sir Philip sighed.

“They use it, I fear, as what is technically known as a Love Nest; and short of calling for a second volunteer to chaperon the first, I can't see any way of stopping it. You don't really mind, do you?”

“Not in the least,” said Lesley, “so long as they'll hear if Pat's being kidnapped and fish him out if there's a fire.”

“Oh, they'll do that all right,” Sir Philip assured her. “In fact, in either of the cases you mention, two pairs of hands would probably be far more useful than one. My under-gardener, for example—he was probably there last night—would deal with any number of kidnappers.”

Lesley sat thoughtful a moment.

“It's so funny,” she said slowly, “to realise that this time next year he'll be on the verge of school. Dear me!”

Sir Philip looked at her.

“Relief, or regret?”

“I don't really know. Both, perhaps. But the odd thing,” said Lesley thoughtfully, “is that what relief there
is
isn't nearly so—so thorough as I expected it would be. In fact, it seems horribly likely that I'm going to go on feeling responsible for him.”

“It's a very good school,” said Sir Philip.

“I know. But if I don't think he gets enough to eat I shall quite probably write to the Head. And then Pat will find out and loathe me ever after.…”

They laughed together, but Lesley was serious.

“That's all very well, but at the moment he's quite fond of me. And it's not good for the young to be suddenly disillusioned.”

Sir Philip smiled.

“You needn't worry about that, my dear. Pat will never stop being fond of you.”

“Why not? It's very natural.”

“Because you don't try to possess him,” said Sir Philip with sudden energy. “You don't want to. You don't love him enough. He'll never have to bother about whether you're really going to commit suicide or are only bluffing him. He'll never have to go round the house removing ornamental weapons. And the older he grows the more grateful he'll be.”

From where she sat Lesley could see the great glowing Sargent on the opposite wall. Superb! She said,