The Flowering Thorn (23 page)

“Gr-r-r—I'm a lion.” That was Pat, conservative as ever.

“Well, I'm a bus—I'll put you in my radiator.”

“No, you can't—this isn't a stopping-place.”

“Yes, I can—I'm marked Private.”

There was a short pause.

“Oh, well,” said the lion philosophically, “I'll be a beetle.”

Lesley heard them with pleasure, for most of the time they were off all day looking for motor bandits. The way they did it was to lie concealed outside road-houses and see that the same people got into cars as had previously got out of them; and though no bandits had actually been caught, enthusiasm as yet showed no sign of waning. To the recital of their exploits, however, neither Lesley nor Mrs. Pomfret lent a particularly sympathetic ear: for in the opinion of both it would have been much nicer and healthier to go on being lions.

‘But they're growing up so!' thought Lesley, helping herself to a chocolate almond. The nut crunched agreeably between her teeth; and suddenly out of the shadow walked Alice the cat, newly elegant after the weaning of her five kittens. She was bound for the back door, nor did the sight of company distract her from her course: with a casual nod, so to speak, she waved her tail and sauntered purposefully on.

“Where's Pincher?” called Lesley.

Alice looked scornfully over her shoulder. There had once, it is true, been a time when the sound of that name would have sent her flying into an apple-tree; but that was long ago, and the joke palled.

‘Oh, dear,' thought Lesley (concealing nevertheless her chagrin), ‘it must be years since Alice has jumped!' And she began idly to calculate how long they had had her. Alice! There had been a lamb called Alice as well, but that was in spring. Alice the cat dated from a summer—from the summer, in fact, when Florrie had her baby; and the youthful Gerald (he had been christened after the eldest son of Princess Mary) was now two years old.

‘Two years!' thought Lesley. ‘And I'd been here more than a year already. Nearly four years.…' And she looked vaguely round the orchard as though to see what had become of them.

Well, there they were, at any rate in part. The grass was not yet a lawn, but there were some quite smooth patches: her two herbaceous borders, without actually blazing, at least gave out a glow. They had hollyhocks in them, lupins both blue and yellow, sunflowers, anchusas, a good deal of lavender, oriental poppies, phlox and tiger-lilies; so they would blaze all right in time. But the next bed she made—with the true gardener's instinct her mind at once ranged ahead—was to be for roses.…

Only chintzes first; for with the gardener there dwelt a housekeeper, and the two were occasionally at war. Well, chintzes first, then; and from the visionary Maréchal Niels Lesley's eye came affectionately and thoughtfully to rest on the cottage itself. Everyone said it was perfect, but she knew better. One might just as well call Pat perfect, or the garden, when to the eye of understanding they were all three of them very little more than hopeful beginnings. From without, to be sure, the cottage was good, for behind the plaster there had been broad black timbers—no neat and superimposed zigzag, but the strong irregular pattern of upward heaving arms. That was good, that was very good, that was not to be bettered: but within! Without moving from her seat Lesley looked straight through the walls and saw her four spurious ladderbacks, once a collector's triumph, now a daily reminder of the Tottenham Court Road. The fireplace, too, for instead of having it bricked she had temporarily lost her head to the quaintness of Dutch tiles. Well, that could be put right easily enough, as soon as she had the money; only curtains must come first, because even across the orchard the blowing pink-and-blue chintz showed lamentably faded.…

‘And towels,' added the housekeeper, ‘those big new coloured ones.' Pat would love a pink towel! The picture was enchanting! And with grave, considerate eyes Lesley looked through one wall more to the boarded-off section of the barn that was now known as the bathroom. It was not very showy, for Sir Philip, while by the loudness of his complaints giving the impression that he was facing the walls with marble, had actually managed to make do at very small expense. The white enamel bath was fed by a pipe and tap from the copper, and unaffectedly voided itself into a flower-bed: nor was the simplicity of material, or the still greater simplicity of construction, in any way concealed. Though without frills, however, the place served its purpose; and in a smaller subdivision still the genius of Messrs. El-San had made possible an indoor lavatory.

‘Really,' thought Lesley, ‘I could have anyone to stay now.…' And as the gate creaked open she smiled quite hospitably, though on no more of a visitor than the morose Mr. Walsh.

Taciturn as ever, and walking a little too straight, he advanced across the grass and placed the letters in her hand. Lesley felt suitably flattered, for he did not usually put himself out, even by so little as an extra ten paces. Her vanity, however, was not long in action before it gave place to surprise; for between the couple of seed-merchants' catalogues, and looking remarkably out of place there, was a letter from London.

Elissa? The last time Elissa wrote she was just going to Cairo, but that was—how long?—almost a year ago. And Elissa hadn't—or usen't to have—a typewriter. Aunt Alice, then, or old Graham Whittal? Except for the annual ninepenny Christmas card—to which Lesley now replied with a fourpenny—they held no communication with her.… And still childishly turning the envelope, Lesley's eye was suddenly caught by the extraordinary difference in appearance between her two last addresses. Miss Frewen, Flat J16, Beverley Court, Baker Street, N.W.1—it used to straggle from corner to corner; whereas Miss Frewen, High Westover, Bucks, sat squarely in the middle and gave the impression of someone far more important than the Miss Frewen of Baker Street. Lesley laughed, slipped a finger under the flap, and found herself in cordial communication with a gentleman called Teddy Lock.

‘…
Your kindness to me that summer
,' he exclaimed, ‘
has always been one of my happiest English memories!
' and after a good deal more in the same strain went on to announce that he now had with him a wife, for whom he was naturally desirous of procuring similar joys. They were in London, at Claridges, they were staying a fortnight, and on any day Miss Frewen might select would just love to run down and renew old acquaintance.

Lesley stared at the signature, repeated it aloud; and casting her mind back and back to a long-ago summer, she did seem to remember, along with Elissa and Toby Ashton, a tall young American with very good manners. And he had a car, and there was another girl … and wasn't Bryan Collingwood somehow mixed up in it? But not the new Mrs. Lock, for the letter specially mentioned that this was her first visit to the real home-country of the American people.

‘Bless their hearts!' thought Lesley. “They're on their honeymoon.' Well, she wished for a visitor, her wish had been answered: and not only answered but multiplied by two. Lesley smiled. For if Providence could be lavish, so could she: and returning to the house she wrote a brief but cordial note inviting Mr. and Mrs. Lock to come down on Saturday and stay the night.

2

Walking down Pig Lane on her way to the Post Office, Lesley met first Florrie Walpole and then Arnold Hasty. They were not exactly together, nor yet exactly apart: they were separated, that is to say, by a distance of about six yards, but there was also present Florrie's infant son, who strayed to and fro as he listed and to whom remarks were being shouted by both parties. He was a handsome child, the pride of his mother's heart, and at two years old had stout brown legs, gipsy eyes, and hair as dark as Lesley's own. “Looks like we got the wrong ones, don't it?” Florrie had said, the first time she saw him and Patrick together; and the remark striking her as particularly happy, she had gone on making it ever since. She made it now.

“It does, doesn't it?” agreed Lesley. Politer than her cat, she even raised a smile; but her impulse was to go back and offer Alice an apology.

CHAPTER TWO

They answered by wire. They would arrive on Saturday, they were evidently in an ecstasy, and there was a reply prepaid form on which Lesley could think of nothing better to put than a meagre ‘Delighted.' She was suffering, indeed, from a slight reaction in favour of peace and quiet, which the exuberance of the telegram did nothing to lessen: they seemed to be just the sort of people (reflected their hostess in alarm) who would want to see cathedrals.

With a shake of the head for her own folly, Lesley picked up a tape-measure and slowly unrolled it. One thing in any case the visit had settled: if she were going to have new curtains at all, she might just as well have them now.

‘I'll get Mrs. Pomfret,' she thought, noting down the total measurements, ‘and we'll go over to Aylesbury and find something with sprigs'! Sprigs! Very English! As English, in their way, as any cathedral! Well, she would do her best, and Sir Philip would have to help: he should invite the Locks to dinner and talk about Queen Victoria. And Mr. Pomfret, what could he be? An old county family, or the Vicar of Wakefield? With spirits a little risen Lesley picked up her bag, put on her hat; and was half-way across fields before the suddenly remembered (what nothing but approaching honeymooners could ever have made her forget) that her appearance at the Vicarage would almost exactly coincide with the arrival of a resident pupil and an electric gramophone.

Lesley paused. That meant Mrs. Pomfret would be busy—at any rate too busy to come jaunting; but having already turned aside from the straight route to the 'bus stop, it seemed a pity not to go and see what was to be seen. So Lesley continued along the path at a good swinging pace, heard a church clock strike eleven, and arrived pink-cheeked with hurrying to find Mr. Cotton and the gramophone five minutes before her. They had come, it appeared, by the same train, a happy coincidence which enabled the instrument and its fixtures to be surreptitiously conveyed on Mr. Cotton's cab. Mr. Cotton himself had no more than a rucksack and a suitcase, and but for the porter's promptness would undoubtedly have walked: which all went to show (as Sir Philip afterwards remarked) how the love of music can stimulate employment.

“How long are you going to keep him?” asked Lesley, when the young man had vanished upstairs.

“Until the gramophone's paid for, of course,” replied the Vicar, rapidly unrolling a ball of flex. “If you'll wait one moment, my dear, I'll have this thing fixed. Put on the Brandenburg, and sit down.”

With the fleeting reflection that she had just missed a 'bus in any case, Lesley obeyed. From the spare room overhead came the thump of Mr. Cotton's baggage, and she said idly,

“What are you going to teach him?”

“Modern Greek, Turkish, and the rudiments of sol-fa. He's still up at Oxford, with an eye on the Consular. Now shove that plug in, my dear, and let the old man rip.”

Like a glorified harvest festival the first movement rushed joyfully upon the air: his knees white with dust, the Vicar stood translated.

2

In the ordinary course of events not a day could have passed without leaving Lesley in full possession of Mr. Cotton's personal appearance and general characteristics; but such were the exigencies of curtain-making that for the next forty-eight hours she never stirred from the cottage save on errands of domestic necessity. The Pomfrets came over, of course, and once Dennis Cotton accompanied them; but what with her billows of sprigged chintz and a wind that was blowing through the orchard, Lesley gathered merely a vague uncritical impression of extreme youth and fair hair. Mrs. Pomfret seemed to like him, and Lesley was of course glad to hear it: but what really gave her pleasure was the unexpected discovery of two dozen new curtain-rings. She stitched quite placidly, however, comfortably aware of the cottage in apple-pie order and two white piqué frocks hanging immaculate on their hooks. The visitors would have her room, now permanently furnished with the big double bed—a remarkably good one, its origin wrapped in mystery—that used to be in the barn; so that apart from putting the divan in with Pat there was really nothing that needed attention. Even the weather seemed almost reliable, displaying red skies at night and on Saturday morning the fine shimmering mist that means a day to be proud of.

And such a day it was, blue overhead, green underfoot, and all washed over with unlimited gold: a day, felt Lesley, to lie on the grass and read Hans Andersen—or, better still, to lie on the grass and read nothing at all. She did not, of course, really hope that the Locks would meet with an accident; but there was a spot under the pear-tree, just lightly dappled with shade, where one would almost wish to take root.

It was not to be. Punctual to the minute—she had vaguely mentioned noon and the cuckoo slammed its door as their car crawled up Pig Lane—the visitors arrived. They were out and at the gate as Lesley hurried across the orchard—Teddy just as she remembered him, tall, broad and handsome: a wife as high as his shoulder, dark-eyed and pretty: and every stitch they had on was brand and shining new.

“Miss Frewen!” cried Teddy joyfully. Emotion was too much for him, he shook her violently by the hand, and for the next few minutes all was joy and introductions. Joy unalloyed, moreover, for at the very first sight of them—both so pleased and happy in their beautiful new clothes—all Lesley's churlishness had melted like the mist. They were charming! And quite carried away, she said impulsively,

“Don't go to-morrow! Can't you stay till Monday?”

Their eyes started; from the look that passed between them she knew that they had been discussing just that possibility all the way down. Was there a chance, or wasn't there? Would she, or wouldn't she? And now she had. Teddy drew a deep breath.