‘My little water-vole,’ they heard him moan. ‘My little water-vole!’
A babel broke out, in which Aunt Ada could dimly be discerned beating at everybody with the ‘Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide’, and shrilly screaming: ‘I saw it … I saw it! I shall go mad … I can’t bear it … There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort. I saw something nasty in the woodshed … something nasty … nasty … nasty …’
Seth took her hands and held them in his, kneeling before her and speaking wooingly to her, as though she were a sick child. Flora had dragged Elfine up on to a table in a corner near the fireplace, out of the racket, and was pensively feeding the two of them on bread and butter. She had given up all hope of getting to bed that night. It was nearly half-past two, and everybody seemed sitting pretty for the sunrise.
She observed several females unknown to her flitting dejectedly about in the gloom, replenishing plates with bread and butter and occasionally weeping in corners.
‘Who’s that?’ she asked Elfine, pointing interestedly at one who had a perfectly flat bust and a face like a baby bird, all goggle eyes and beaky nose. This one was weeping half inside a boot cupboard.
‘’Tes poor Rennett,’ said Elfine, sleepily. ‘Oh, Flora, I’m so happy, but I do wish we could go to bed, don’t you?’
‘Presently, yes. So that’s poor Rennett, is it? Why (if it be not tactless to ask) are all her clothes sopping wet?’
‘Oh! she jumped down the well, about eleven o’clock, Meriam, the hired girl, told me. Grandmamma kept on mocking at her because she’s an old maid. She said Rennett couldn’t even keep a tight hold on Mark Dolour when she had got him, and poor Rennett had hysterics, and then Grandma kept on saying things about – about flat bosoms and things, and then Rennett ran out and jumped down the well. And Grandma had an attack.’
‘Serve her right, the old trout,’ muttered Flora, yawning. ‘Hey, what’s up now?’ For a renewed uproar had broken out in the midst of the crowd gathered round Aunt Ada.
By standing on the table and peering through the confusing flicker of the firelight and lamplight, Flora and Elfine could distinguish Amos, who was bending over Aunt Ada Doom’s chair, and thundering at her. There was such an infernal clatter going on from Micah, Ezra, Reuben, Seth, Judith, Caraway, Harkaway, Susan, Letty, Prue, Adam, Jane, Phoebe, Mark and Luke that it was difficult to make out what he was saying, but suddenly he raised his voice to a roar, and the others were silent:
‘… So I mun go where th’ Lord’s work calls me to go, and spread th’ Lord’s word abroad in strange places. Ah, ’tes terrible to have to go, but I mun do it. I been wrestlin’ and prayin’ and broodin’ over it, and I know th’ truth at last. I mun go abroad in one o’ they Ford vans, preachin’ all over th’ countryside. Ay, like th’ Apostles of old. I have heard my call, and I mun follow it.’ He flung his arms wide, and stood with the firelight playing its scarlet fantasia upon his exalted face.
‘No … No!’ screamed Aunt Ada Doom, on a high note that cracked with her agony. ‘I cannot bear it. There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort. You mustn’t go … none of you must go … I shall go mad! I saw something nasty in the woodshed … Ah … ah … ah …’
She struggled to her feet, supported by Seth and Judith, and struck weakly at Amos with the ‘Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide’ (which was looking a bit the worse for wear by this time). His great body flinched from the blow, but still he stood rigid, his eyes fixed triumphantly upon some far-off, ecstatic vision, the red light wavering and flickering across his face.
‘I mun go …’ he repeated, in a strange, soft voice. ‘This very night I mun go. I hear th’ glad voices o’ angels callin’ me out over th’ ploughed fields wheer th’ liddle seedlings is clappin’ their hands in prayer; and besides, I arranged wi’ Agony Beetle’s brother to pick me up in th’ Lunnon milk-van at half-past three, so I’ve no time to lose. Ay, ’tes goodbye to you all. Mother, I’ve broken yer chain at last, wi’ th’ help o’ th’ angels and the Lord’s word. Wheer’s my hat?’
Reuben silently handed it to his father (he had had it ready for the last ten minutes).
Aunt Ada Doom sat huddled in her chair, breathing feebly and fast, striking impotently at the air with the ‘Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide’. Her eyes, slots of pain in her grey face, were turned on Amos. They blazed with hate, like flaring candles that feel the pressing dark all about them and flare the brighter for their fear.
‘Ay …’ she whispered. ‘Ay … so you go, and leave me in the woodshed. There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort … but that means nothing to you. I shall go mad … I shall die here, alone, in the woodshed, with nasty – things’ – her voice thickened; she wrung her hands distractedly, as though to free them of some obscene spiritual treacle – ‘pressing on me … alone … alone …’
Her voice trailed into the silence. Her head sunk into her breast. Her face was drained of blood: grey, broken.
Amos moved with great, slow steps to the door. No one moved. The hush which froze the room was broken only by the idle rippling dance of the flames. Amos jerked open the door, and there was the vast, indifferent face of the night peering in.
‘Amos!’
It was a screech from her heart-roots. It buried itself in his plexus. But he never turned. He stepped blunderingly out into the dark – and was gone.
Suddenly there was a wild cry from the corner in the shadows by the sink. Urk came stumbling forward, dragging the hired girl, Meriam, in his wake.
(Flora woke up Elfine, who had gone to sleep with her head on her shoulder, and pointed out that some more fun was just beginning. It was only a quarter past three.)
Urk was chalk-white. A trail of blood drooled down his chin. His eyes were pools of pain, in which his bruised thoughts darted and fed like tortured fish. He was laughing insanely, noiselessly. Meriam shrank back from him, livid with fear.
‘Me and the water-voles … we’ve failed,’ he babbled in a low, toneless voice. ‘We’re beaten. We planned a nest for her up there by Ticklepenny’s Well, when the egg-plants was in bloom. And now she’s given herself to him, the dirty stuck-up, lying—’ He choked, and had to fight for breath for a second. ‘When she was an hour old, I made a mark on her feeding bottle, in water-vole’s blood. She were mine, see? Mine! And I’ve lost her … Oh, why did I iver think she were mine?’
He turned upon Meriam, who shrank back in terror.
‘Come here – you. I’ll take you instead. Ay, dirt as you are, I’ll take you, and we’ll sink into th’ mud together. There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort, and now there’ll be a Beetle too.’
‘And not the first neither, as you’d know if you’d ever cleaned out the larder,’ said a voice, tartly. It was Mrs Beetle herself, who, hitherto unobserved by Flora, had been busily cutting bread and butter and replenishing the glasses of the farm-hands in a far corner of the long kitchen. She now came forward into the circle about the fire, and confronted Urk with her arms akimbo.
‘Well …’oo’s talking about dirt? ’Eaven knows, you should know something about it, in that coat and them trousers. Enough ter turn up one of yer precious water-voles, you are. A pity you don’t spend a bit less time with yer old water-voles and a bit more with a soap and flannel.’
Here she received unexpected support from Mark Dolour, who called in a feeling tone from the far end of the kitchen:
‘Ay, that’s right.’
‘Don’t you ’ave ’im, ducky, unless you feel like it,’ advised Mrs Beetle, turning to Meriam. ‘You’re full young yet, and ’e won’t see forty again.’
‘I don’t mind. I’ll ’ave him, if ’un wants me,’ said Meriam, amiably. ‘I can always make ’im wash a bit, if I feels like it.’
Urk gave a wild laugh. His hand fell on her shoulder, and he drew her to him and pressed a savage kiss full on her open mouth. Aunt Ada Doom, choking with ra
ge, struck at them with the ‘Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide’, but the blow missed. She fell back, gasping, exhausted.
‘Come, my beauty – my handful of dirt. I mun carry thee up to Ticklepenny’s and show ’ee to the water-voles.’ Urk’s face was working with passion.
‘What! At this time o’ night?’ cried Mrs Beetle, scandalized.
Urk put one arm round Meriam’s waist and heaved away, but could not budge her from the floor. He cursed aloud, and, kneeling down, placed his arms about her middle, and heaved again. She did not stir. Next he wrapped his arms about her shoulders, and below her knees. She declined upon him, and he, staggering beneath her, sank to the floor. Mrs Beetle made a sound resembling ‘t-t-t-t-t’.
Mark Dolour was heard to mutter that th’ Fireman’s Lift was as good a hold as any he knew.
Now Urk made Meriam stand in the middle of the floor, and with a low, passionful cry, ran at her.
‘Come, my beauty.’
The sheer animal weight of the man bore her up into his clutching arms. Mark Dolour (who dearly loved a bit of sport) held open the door, and Urk and his burden rushed out into the dark and the earthy scents of the young spring night.
A silence fell.
The door remained open, idly swinging in a slow, cold wind which had arisen.
As though frozen, the group within the kitchen waited for the distant crash which should tell them that Urk had fallen down.
Pretty soon it came: and Mark Dolour shut the door.
It was now four o’clock. Elfine had gone to sleep again. So had all the farm-hands except Mark Dolour. The fire had sunk to a red, lascivious bed of coals, that waned, and then, on the other hand, waxed again in the slow wind which blew under the door.
Flora was desperately sleepy; she felt as though she were at one of Eugene O’Neill’s plays; the kind that goes on for hours and hours and hours, until the R.S.P.C. Audiences batters the doors of the theatre in and insists on a tea interval.
There was no doubt that the fun was wearing a bit thin. Judith, huddled in a corner, was looking broodingly at Seth from under her raised hand. Reuben was brooding in another corner. The sukebind flowers were fading. Seth was studying a copy of ‘Photo Bits’ which he had produced from the pocket of his evening jacket.
Only Aunt Ada Doom sat upright, her eyes fixed upon the distance. She was rigid. Her lips moved softly. Flora, from her refuge on the table, could make out what she was saying, and it sounded none too festive.
‘Two of them … gone. Elfine … Amos … and I’m alone in the woodshed now … Who took them away? Who took them away? I must know … I must know … That chit. That brat. Robert Poste’s child.’
The great bed of red coals, slowly settling into its last sleep towards extinction, threw a glare on her old face, and gave her the look of a carving in a Gothic cathedral. Rennett had crept forward until she was within a few feet of her great-aunt (for such was the relationship between Rennett and Ada Doom), and stood looking down at her with a mad glare in her pale eyes.
Suddenly, without turning round, Aunt Ada struck at her with the ‘Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide’, and Rennett fled back to her corner.
A withered flower fell from the sukebind wreath into the coals.
It was half-past four.
Suddenly, Flora felt a draught at her back. She looked round crossly, and found herself staring into the face of Reuben, who had opened the little concealed door behind the great bulge of the chimneypiece, which led out into the yard.
‘Come on,’ whispered Reuben, soundlessly. ‘’Tes time ’ee were in bed.’
Amazed and grateful, Flora silently woke Elfine, and with breathless caution they slid off the table and tiptoed across to the little door. Reuben drew them safely through it, and closed it noiselessly.
They stood outside in the yard, in a bitter wind, with the first streaks of cold light lying across the purple sky. The way to their beds lay clear before them.
‘Reuben,’ said Flora, too drunk with sleep to articulate clearly, but remembering her manners, ‘you are an utter lamb. Why did you?’
‘You got th’ old devil out of th’ way for me.’
‘Oh … that,’ yawned Flora.
‘Ay … an’ I doan’t forget. Eh, th’ farm’ll be mine now, surelie.’
‘So it will,’ said Flora, amiably. ‘Such fun for you.’
Suddenly a shocking row broke out in the kitchen behind them. The Starkadders were off again.
But Flora never knew what it was about. She was asleep where she stood. She walked up to her room like an automaton, just stayed awake long enough to undress, and then fell into bed like a log.
CHAPTER XVII
The next day was Sunday, so thank goodness everybody could stay in bed and get over the shocks of the night before. At least, that is what most families would have done. But the Starkadders were not like most families. Life burned in them with a fiercer edge, and by seven o’clock most of them were up and, to a certain extent, doing. Reuben, of course, had much to do because of Amos’s sudden departure.
He now thought of himself as master of the farm, and a slow tide of satisfied earth-lust indolently ebbed and flowed in his veins as he began his daily task of counting the chickens’ feathers.
Prue, Susan, Letty, Phoebe and Jane had been escorted back to Howling by Adam, at half-past five that morning, and he had returned just in time to begin the milking. He was still bewildered by the fact of Elfine’s betrothal. The sound of old wedding-bells danced between the tufts of hair in his withered ears, and catches of country rhymes sung before George IV was born:
‘Come rue, come snow,
So maidies mun go.’
he sang, over and over again to himself as he milked Feckless. He saw, yet did not see, that Aimless had lost another hoof.
The dawn widened into an exquisite spring day. Soft, woollike puffs of sound came from the thrushes’ throats in the trees. The uneasy year, tortured by its spring of adolescence, broke into bud-spots in hedge, copse, spinney and byre.
Judith sat in the kitchen, looking out with leaden eyes across the disturbed expanse of the teeming countryside. Her face was grey. Rennett huddled by the fire, stirring some rather nasty jam she had suddenly thought she would make. She had decided to stay behind when the other female Starkadders had gone off with Adam; her flayed soul shrank, obliquely, from their unspoken pity.
So noon came, and passed. A rude meal was prepared by Adam, and eaten (some of it) by the rest in the great kitchen. Old Ada Doom kept to her room, whence she had been carried at six o’clock that morning by Micah, Seth, Mark Dolour, Caraway and Harkaway.
None dared go in to her. She sat alone, a huddled, vast ruin of flesh, staring unseeingly out between her wrinkled lids. Her fingers picked endlessly at the ‘Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide’. She did not think or see. The sharp blue air of spring thundered silently on window-panes fogged by her slow, batrachian breath. Powerless waves of fury coursed over her inert body. Sometimes names burst out of her green lips: ‘Amos … Elfine … Urk …’ Sometimes they just stayed inside.
No one had seen anything of Urk since he had gone galloping out into the night carrying Meriam, the hired girl. It was generally assumed that he had drowned her and then himself. Who cared, anyway?
*
As for Flora, she was still asleep at half-past three in the afternoon, and would have slept on comfortably enough until tea-time, but that she was aroused by a knocking at her door and the excited voice of Mrs Beetle proclaiming that there was two gentlemen to see her.
‘Have you got them there?’ asked Flora, sleepily.
Mrs Beetle was much shocked. She said indeed not, they was in Miss Poste’s parlour.
‘Well … who are they? I mean, did they tell you their names?’
‘One’s that Mr Mybug, miss, and the other’s a gentleman ’oo says ’is name’s Neck.’1
‘Oh, yes ?
?? of course, how delightful. Ask them both to wait till I come. I won’t be long.’ And Flora began slowly to dress, for she would not make herself feel ill by bounding vigorously out of bed, even though she was delighted at the idea of seeing her dear Mr Neck again. As for Mr Mybug, he was a nuisance, but could be coped with easily enough.
She went downstairs at last, looking as fresh as a leaf, and as she entered her little parlour (wherein Mrs Beetle had kindled a fire) Mr Neck advanced to meet her, holding out both his hands and saying:
‘Well, well, sweetheart. How’s the girl?’
Flora greeted him with warmth. He had already had some conversation with Mr Mybug, who was looking rather sulky and miserable because he had hoped to find Flora alone and have a lovely long scene with her, apologizing for his behaviour last night, and talking a lot about himself. He became more sulky at first on hearing Mr Neck address Flora as sweetheart, but after listening to a little of their conversation, he decided that Mr Neck was the sort of Amusing Type that calls everybody sweetheart, and did not mind so much.
Flora instructed Mrs Beetle to bring them some tea, which soon came, and they sat very pleasantly in the sunlight, which streamed through the window of the little green parlour, drinking their tea and conversing.
Flora felt sleepy and amiable. She had made up her mind that Mr Neck must not go without seeing Seth, and quietly told Mrs Beetle to send him to the parlour as soon as he could be found; but apart from this decision, she was not worrying about anything at all.
‘Are you over here looking for English film stars, Mr Neck?’ asked Mr Mybug, eating a little cake that Flora had wanted for herself.
‘That’s so. I want to find me another Clark Gable. Yeah, you wouldn’t remember him, maybe. That’s twenty years ago.’
‘But I have seen him at a Sunday Film Club Repertory Show, in a film called “Mounting Passion”,’ said Mr Mybug, eagerly. ‘Do you know the work of the Sunday Film Club Repertory people at all?’
‘I’ll buy it,’ said Mr Neck, who had taken a dislike to Mr Mybug. ‘Well, I want a second Clark Gable, see? I want a big, husky stiff that smells of the great outdoors, with a golden voice. I want passion. I want red blood. I don’t want no sissies, see? Sissies give me a pain in the neck, and they’re beginning to give the great American public a pain in the neck too.’