‘Charming,’ murmured Claud, in the background.
‘We’re going to announce it at the end of the evening,’ Richard went on. ‘Good opportunity, what?’
Claud, sardonically wondering what the feelings of Mrs Hawk-Monitor would be when she heard the news, said that the occasion might have been made for the announcement of the event. Flora then introduced him to Richard, and there was some general conversation, made interesting by the aura of happiness which hovered over the betrothed pair and the smiling sympathy with which Claud and Flora listened to their talk.
CHAPTER XV
It was now nearly twelve o’clock, and a general movement was made to return to the ball-room. The orchestra had been refreshed by some supper, and broke immediately into a jolly tune to which the ‘Lancers’ could be danced, and away pranced everybody, and danced until every cheek was crimson and the floor was scattered with fans, hairpins, shoe-buttons and wilting flowers.
Claud was as light on his feet as the harlequin he somewhat resembled, and while Flora was springing round the room, just guided by the cool touch of his hands, she observed Elfine in Richard’s arms, and saw with satisfaction how marvellously happy she looked and how beautiful. Flora glowed with content. Her aim was achieved. She felt as though she had shaken her fist in the face of Aunt Ada Doom. Elfine was rescued. Henceforth, her life would be one of exquisite, sunny natural content. She would bear children and found a line of pleasant, ordinary English people who were blazing with poetry in their secret souls. All was as it should be.
And Flora, energetically prancing herself to a standstill as the Lancers ended, clapped her hands vigorously, half with the desire for an encore, but more for the joy she felt in her evening’s work.
‘How you do enjoy yourself, don’t you, Florence Nightingale?’ observed Claud.
‘I do,’ retorted Flora; ‘and so do you.’
It was true; he did. But never without a pang of exquisite pain in his heart, and a conviction that he was a traitor.
In the pause that followed the music, Flora observed that Richard was leading Elfine to the staircase, and they went slowly up it, to where his mother sat on the balcony with a number of her older friends. Flora moved forward also, in case she should be needed, but before she could begin to mount the stairs Richard left his mother, over whom he had been bending in conversation, and, coming forward to the balcony rail, held up his hand for silence. Elfine stood beside him, but slightly in the background. Flora could not see the expression on the face of Mrs Hawk-Monitor, who was hidden by Richard’s body, but she observed that the face of Joan Hawk-Monitor bore an expression which was a curious blend of dismay and interest and envy. (‘But then, that shade of blue would do anything to anybody’s face,’ Flora comforted herself.)
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Dick. ‘It’s been awfully jolly seeing you all here tonight. I’m awfully glad you could all come. I mean, I shall always be glad to remember you were all here on my twenty-first birthday. It makes it all so much jollier somehow … I mean, I do like a cheery mob round me, what?’
He paused. There was laughter and some clapping. Flora held her breath. He must – he must announce the engagement! If he did not, she would know (whatever might happen afterwards) that her plot had failed.
But it was all right. He was speaking again. He was drawing Elfine forward to face the guests, and taking her hand in his.
‘And this is a particularly jolly evening for me, because I’ve got something else to tell you all. I want to tell you that Miss Starkadder and I are engaged.’
There! It was out! A storm of clapping and excited comment broke forth, and people began streaming up the staircase to offer their congratulations. Flora, feeling quite weak after the nervous excitement of the past few minutes, turned to Claud, and said: ‘There, that’s over. Oh, Claud, but do you think we ought to go up and speak to Mrs Hawk-Monitor? I must confess that I would rather not.’
Claud, however, said decidedly that he thought it would be most incorrect if Flora did not do so, for she was there, after all, in the capacity of Elfine’s chaperone, and the whole course of affairs had already been so irregular that anything Flora could do to give a colouring of convention to the situation would count in Elfine’s favour.
So Flora, reluctantly agreeing, went up the staircase to tackle Mrs Hawk-Monitor.
She found the poor lady looking dazed. She was sitting in an alcove, receiving the thanks and congratulation upon the success of the ball from those guests who were already departing. Flora was relieved to notice that the healthy Joan was standing at some distance away, by the door, so she would not have to cope with her, as well as with Mamma H.-M.
Flora went forward with outstretched hand.
‘Thank you so much … such a lovely party, and so nice of you to let us come.’
But Mrs Hawk-Monitor had risen, and was looking very gravely at her. She might be a vague woman and a darling, but she was not a fool. She took an eyeful of Flora, and knew that here was a young woman of good sense. Her heart longed for some reassurance in the midst of the dismay and doubt which possessed her. She said, almost pleadingly:
‘Miss Poste, I will be frank with you. I cannot pretend that I am delighted at this engagement. Who is this young lady? I have only met her once before. I know next to nothing of her or her family.’
‘She is a gentle, docile person,’ said Flora, earnestly. ‘She is only seventeen. I think she can be moulded into exactly what you would wish her to be. Dear Mrs Hawk-Monitor, pray do not be distressed. I am sure that you will learn to like Elfine. Do believe me when I say that she has excellent qualities. As for her family, if I may venture to offer you some advice, I should take steps at once to see that she sees next to nothing of them for the next few weeks. There will probably be strong opposition to the match.’
‘Opposition? What imperti—’
She checked herself. She was amazed, and at a loss. She had assumed that Elfine’s family would be overjoyed at their offspring’s luck.
‘Indeed, yes. Mrs Starkadder, her grandmother, has always intended Elfine to marry her cousin, Urk. I am afraid there may be some opposition from him too. In fact, the sooner you can arrange for the marriage to take place the better it will be for Elfine.’
‘Oh, dear! I had hoped for a year’s engagement, at least. Dick is still so young.’
‘The more reason why he should begin at once to be utterly happy,’ smiled Flora. ‘Indeed, Mrs Hawk-Monitor, I do really think it will be better if you can arrange for the wedding to take place in a month at the latest. Things at the farm are sure to be very unpleasant for Elfine until she leaves, and I am sure you do not want a lot of interference and discussion from the Starkadders, do you?’
‘Such a dreadful name, too,’ mused Mrs Hawk-Monitor.
At this moment, the arrival of Seth and Claud, dressed ready to depart, made it impossible to discuss the matter any further. Mrs Hawk-Monitor had only time to press Flora’s hand, murmuring in a friendlier tone than she had yet used: ‘I will think over what you say. Perhaps, after all, everything is for the best.’
So Flora went off in comparatively high spirits.
They found Elfine, looking like a white rose-peony, waiting for them at the door; Dick was with her, tenderly saying goodnight to her. Flora could see their car, with the chauffeur at the door, waiting for them at the foot of the steps, so after a pleasant farewell to Dick they got away at last.
Flora felt quite desolate after they had dropped Claud outside the Crown of Roses, where he was staying the night. She was rather sleepy and cross and suffering from a reaction after the evening’s excitements. So she shut her eyes and slept more or less successfully until the car was within two miles or so from home. Then she woke with a little start. Voices had roused her. Seth was saying, in a tone which was distinctly tinged with gloating:
‘Ay, th’ old ’un’ll have summat to say about this night’s work.’
‘Grandmamma can’t stop m
e getting married!’
‘Maybe not, but she’ll have a dom good try.’
‘She cannot do much in a month,’ broke in Flora, coldly, ‘and possibly Elfine will be staying with the Hawk-Monitors for most of the time. She must just avoid Aunt Ada while she is in the house, that’s all. Heaven knows it ought not to be very difficult to do, considering that Aunt Ada never leaves her bedroom.’
Seth gave a low, gloating laugh. An animal quality throbbed in the sound like the network of veins below a roat’s fur. The car was just drawing up at the gate leading into the yard, and Seth, leaning past Flora, pointed through the window with one thick finger at the farmhouse.
Flora stared in the direction to which he pointed and saw, with a thrill of dismay, that the windows of the farm were ablaze with light!
CHAPTER XVI
Perhaps ‘ablaze’ is too strong a word. There was a distinct suggestion of corpse-lights and railway station waiting-rooms about the lights which shone forth from the windows of Cold Comfort. But compared with the heavy, muffling darkness of the night in which the countryside was sunk, the lights looked positively rorty.
‘Oh, my goodness!’ said Flora.
‘It’s Grandmamma!’ whispered Elfine, who had gone very white. ‘She must have chosen this night, of all nights, to come downstairs, and have the family party.’
‘Nonsense! You don’t have parties at places like Cold Comfort,’ said Flora, taking notes from her bag with which to pay the chauffeur. She got out of the car, stretching a little and inhaling the fresh, sweet night air, and put them into his hand.
‘There. Thank you very much. Everything went off most satisfactorily. Goodnight.’
And the chauffeur, having thanked her respectfully for his tip, backed the car out of the yard, and away down the lane towards the road.
The headlights swept the hedges and touched the grass to livid green.
They heard him change into top, in the dead, eerie silence and darkness.
Then the friendly sound of the engine began to recede, until it was absorbed into the vast quiet of the night.
They turned and looked towards the house.
The lights in the windows had a leering, waiting look, like that on the faces of old pimps who sit in the cafés of Holborn Viaduct, plying their casual bartery. A thin wind snivelled among the rotting stacks of Cold Comfort, spreading itself in a sheet of flowing sound across the mossed tiles. Darkness whined with the soundless urge of growth in the hedges, but that did not help any.
‘Ay, ’tes Grandmother,’ said Seth, sombrely. ‘She’m holding the Counting. Ay, ’tes her, all right.’
‘What on earth,’ said Flora, peevishly, beginning to pick her way across the yard, ‘is the Counting, and why in the name of all that’s inconvenient should it be held at half-past one in the morning?’
‘’Tes the record of th’ family that Grandmother holds ivery year. See – we’m violent folk, we Starkadders. Some on us pushes others down wells. Some on us dies in childer-birth. There’s others as die o’ drink or goes mad. There’s a whole heap on us, too. ’Tes difficult to keep count on us. So once a year Grandmother she holds a gatherin’, called the Counting, and she counts us all, to see how many on us ’as died in th’ year.’
‘Then she can count me out,’ retorted Flora, raising her hand to knock at the kitchen door.
Then a thought struck her.
‘Seth,’ she whispered, ‘had you any idea that your grandmother was going to hold this infernal Counting tonight?’
She saw the gleam of his teeth in the dimness.
‘Reckon I had,’ he drawled.
‘Then you’re a crashing bounder,’ said Flora, vigorously, ‘and I hope your water-voles die. Now, Elfine, brace up. We are, I am afraid, for it. You had best not say a word. I will do the talking.’
And she knocked at the door.
The silence which swayed softly out from within to meet them was a tangible thing. It had plangency. It moulded and compelled. It imposed and awed.
It was broken by heavy footsteps. Someone was crossing the kitchen floor in hob-nailed boots. A hand fumbled with the bolts. Then the door was slowly opened, and Urk stood looking up at them, his face twisted into a Japanese Hō -mask of lust, fury and grief. Flora could hear Elfine’s terrified breathing behind her, in the darkness, and put out a comforting hand. It was clasped and held convulsively.
The great kitchen was full of people. They were all silent, and all painted over by the leaping firelight with a hellish red glow. Flora could distinguish Amos, Judith, Meriam, the hired girl; Adam, Ezra and Harkaway; Caraway, Luke and Mark and several of the farm-hands. They were all grouped, in a rough semi-circle, about someone who sat in a great high-backed chair by the fire. The dim gold lamplight and the restless firelight made Rembrandt shadows in the remoter corners of the kitchen, and threw the dwarf and giant shadows of the Starkadders across the ceiling.
A pungent scent came swooning out to meet the inrush of night air. It was sickly-sweet, and strange to Flora. Then she saw that the heat of the fire had caused the long, pink buds of the sukebind to burst; the wreath which hung round the portrait of Fig Starkadder was covered with large flowers whose petals sprang back, like snarling fangs, to show the shameless heart that sent out full gusts of sweetness.
Everybody was staring at the door. The silence was terrific. It seemed the air must burst with its pressure, and the flickering movement of the light and the fireglow upon the faces of the Starkadders was so restlessly volatile that it emphasized the strange stillness of their bodies. Flora was trying to decide just what the kitchen looked like, and came to the conclusion it was the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s.
‘Well, well,’ she said, amiably, stepping over the doorstep and drawing off her gloves, ‘the gang is all here, isn’t it! Is that Big Business I see there in the corner? Oh, I beg your pardon, it’s Micah. I suppose there aren’t any sandwiches?’
This cracked the social ice a bit. Signs of life were observed.
‘There’s food on the table,’ said Judith, lifelessly, coming forward, with her burning eyes fixed upon Seth; ‘but first, Robert Poste’s child, you must greet your Aunt Ada Doom.’
And she took Flora’s hand (Flora was very bucked that she had shed her clean gloves) and led her up to the figure which sat in the high-backed chair by the fire.
‘Mother,’ said Judith, ‘this is Flora, Robert Poste’s child. I have spoken to you of her.’
‘How d’ye do, Aunt Ada?’ said Flora, pleasantly, putting out her hand. But Aunt Ada made no effort to take it. She folded her own hands a little more closely upon a copy of the ‘Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide’, which she held on her lap, and observed, in a low, toneless voice:
‘I saw something nasty in the woodshed.’
Flora turned to Judith, with raised and enquiring eyebrows. A murmur came from the rest of the company, which was watching closely.
‘’Tes one of her bad nights,’ said Judith, whose gaze kept wandering piteously in the direction of Seth (he was wolfing beef in a corner). ‘Mother,’ she said, louder, ‘don’t you know me? It’s Judith. I have brought Flora Poste to see you – Robert Poste’s child.’
‘Nay … I saw something nasty in the woodshed,’ said Aunt Ada Doom, fretfully moving her great head from side to side. ‘’Twas a burnin’ noonday … sixty-nine years ago. And me no bigger than a titty-wren. And I saw something na—’
‘Well, perhaps she likes it better that way,’ said Flora, soothingly. She had been observing Aunt Ada’s firm chin, clear eyes, tight little mouth and close grip upon the ‘Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide’, and she came to the conclusion that if Aunt Ada was mad, then she, Flora, was one of the Marx Brothers.
‘Saw something nasty in the woodshed!!!’ suddenly shrilled Aunt Ada, smiting at Judith with the ‘Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide’, ‘something nasty! Take it away. You’re all wic
ked and cruel. You want to go away and leave me alone in the woodshed. But you never shall. None of you. Never! There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort. You must all stay here with me, all of you: Judith, Amos, Micah, Urk, Luke, Mark, Elfine, Caraway, Harkaway, Reuben and Seth. Where’s Seth? Where’s my darling? Come – come here, Seth.’
Seth came pushing his way through the crowd of relations, with his mouth full of beef and bread. ‘Here, grandma,’ he crooned, soothingly. ‘Here I am. I’ll niver leave ’ee – niver.’
(‘Do not look at Seth, woman,’ whispered Amos, terribly, in Judith’s ear. ‘You are always looking at him.’)
‘That’s my good boy … my mommet … my pippet …’ the old woman murmured, patting Seth’s head with the ‘Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide’. ‘Why, how grand he is tonight! What’s this? What’s all this?’ And she jerked at Seth’s dinner-jacket. ‘What’ve you been doing, boy? Tell your granny.’
Flora could see, from the way in which Aunt Ada’s remarkably shrewd eyes beneath their heavy lids were examining Seth’s person that she had rumbled their little outing. There was just time to save their faces before the deluge. So she took a deep breath and said loudly and clearly:
‘He’s been to Godmere, to Richard Hawk-Monitor’s twenty-first birthday dance. So have I. So has Elfine. So has a friend of mine called Claud Hart-Harris, whom none of you know. And, what is more, Aunt Ada, Elfine and Richard Hawk-Monitor are engaged to be married, and will be married, too, in about a month from now.’
There came a terrible cry from the shadows near the sink. Everybody started violently and turned to stare in the direction whence it came. It was Urk – Urk lying face downwards in the beef sandwiches, with one hand pressed upon his heart in dreadful agony. The hired girl, Meriam, laid her rough hand upon his bowed head and timidly patted it, but he shook her off with a movement like a weasel in a trap.