The Flowering Thorn (10 page)

The powder-box closed with a snap.

“Extremely striking, my dear. Wears garters, but no stockings. To carry stilettos in. Or do I mean vodka?” said Elissa blandly.

2

It being finally decided that both Lesley and Bryan should return at once to the inn, the other two were conducted as far as the cottage door, introduced to Pat and Mrs. Sprigg, and there left to make themselves completely at home.

“We'll just get into country clothes, darling,” promised Elissa, “and then play in the garden till you come back. It's all so perfectly heavenly I feel about ten again.” With genuine emotion she gazed over the placid landscape. If anyone at that moment had offered her love in a cottage for the next twenty years, she would have answered: “No, freehold.”

“We'll have tea or drinks or something as soon as I get back,” said Lesley; and turning back with Bryan Collingwood, led him at a brisk pace down Pig Lane. He seemed vaguely uneasy, and even younger than Lesley remembered him: speaking nothing but the most trivial commonplaces, and hardly looking at her since the moment of arrival. They had kissed, of course, with the automatic enthusiasm displayed by all Elissa's friends on either meeting or parting: but the whole secluded length of Pig Lane was traversed without further incident. Outside the Three Pigeons stood a large American car, towards which her companion, however, though an amateur of the breed, cast no admiring glance; and no more, for the matter of that, did Lesley. She was merely reminded by it of the necessity of garaging Toby's.

“I think they're outside,” said Bryan glumly.

Too preoccupied with her own thoughts to mark his unexpected use of the plural, Lesley followed him round to the back of the Three Pigeons, where the genius of Mr. Povey had created a small open-air pleasure-ground. It contained an arbour, a statue, three long wooden tables with benches on either side: at one of which, her chin propped between her hands, now sat the sensitive Natasha.

As Elissa had said, she was extremely striking. She was as striking as a leopard, or a panther, or anything else tawny, untamed and matchlessly graceful. Both eyes and hair were precisely the colour of amber, her eyes the clear, her hair the clouded: for the rest of her features, they showed a child-like perfection of contour completely unmarred by the ravages of thought.

(‘Economics, my God!' murmured Lesley under her breath.)

Nor was the creature's companion, in his way, any less spectacular. On the other side of the table, preposterously muffled in an enormous motor-coat, sat one of those magnificent young Americans usually encountered only in advertisements for underwear. He appeared to be a little over six foot or so, he had a kind and trustful face, and a mouth formed by nature for the very phrase on which Bryan and Lesley now entered.

“You poor little girl!” said the American tenderly.

The great amber eyes were misty but brave. As though unable to trust her lips, Natasha nodded.

“Just all alone, the way I am, and no place to go,” said the American, more tenderly still.

Lesley was extremely annoyed. The vamping of the wealthy was a natural and recognised occupation, but there was no need to libel one's hostess in the process. Stepping promptly forward, therefore, she held out her hand and said briskly,

“But of course you've somewhere to go, my dear. I've just been scolding Bryan for not bringing you by force.”

It sounded to her own ears so unpleasantly like a rebuke that for an instant she half expected a leopard's claw full across the face: and for an instant, indeed, felt the whole graceful body tense with fury. The next moment Natasha had swung round in her place, hands outstretched and eyes dim with tears of gratitude. Emotion, it appeared, overcame her very easily indeed: or perhaps she felt that as she had tears in her eyes already, gratitude was what they might just as well be of.

“How good you are!” she murmured happily. “But I think everyone is good in England. Even the Americans.”

Thus admitted, so to speak, among the persons of the drama, the young American rose to his feet and bowed all round. From the general Natasha now descended to the particular.

“This,” she explained, “is Mr. Teddy Lock. He has been very, very kind.”

The kind Mr. Lock bowed again.

“I understand you have to go some little distance,” he said. “I could run you over in my car—”

“A bare quarter-of-a-mile,” said Miss Frewen crisply. “We couldn't think of troubling you. Ready, Bryan?”

With considerable alacrity Bryan dived under the table and brought forth a dressing-case. It was largish, old and quite remarkably battered: but there was still visible, upon its weathered side, the ghost of a monogram under the hint of a coronet. The American seized his chance.

“See here, sir, it may be only a quarter of a mile, but that's a pretty heavy article to carry. Now, my car's right outside, and it'll cover the track in two minutes: won't the lady reconsider her verdict?”

Overwhelmingly deferential, he turned once more to Lesley: and indeed with Bryan like a thundercloud and Natasha in tears her single impulse was now to terminate the incident as quickly as possible. With an absolute minimum of warmth, therefore, she withdrew the veto; and a moment or two later found herself being handed by Mr. Lock into the seat next to the driver.

“I'll want you to show me the way,” he explained. “If I'm left to myself round here I just overshoot the objective and land: way out on the coast.…” He glanced over his shoulder to see if the others were ready: they were quarreling audibly, but had hauled in the dressing-case. With a superbly modulated purr the car shot past the Post Office, edged round a corner, and in one mighty gulp had swallowed up Pig Lane.

“That's all,” said Lesley.

From her seat in the front row, so to speak, she could see straight through the open gate and into the orchard, where three unaccustomed figures were now discernible. Two of them were of course the other members of the house-party, and it was at once plain that they had got into their country clothes.

Elissa wore a bathing-suit and some bracelets. The suit, which fitted far better than most gloves, was grass-green, backless, and embroidered about the thighs with a row of little frogs. The bracelets were plain heavy circles of yellow wood, closely resembling curtain-rings. Beside her on the grass lay Toby Ashton in a pair of very wide white cotton trousers, a red-and-blue striped vest, and a hat like an American sailor's. They were making daisy-chains.

The third figure, standing a little apart by the cottage door, was dressed entirely in black, with one touch of white at the neck, and a wide black hat. As a matter of fact it was the Vicar.

“…
Where
, Bryan?” whispered Natasha, peering about as though for a rare bird.

“There, by the door! It is, isn't it, Lesley?”

Passing through the gate, she would have given a good deal if it hadn't been. As a legitimate source of clean fun he would naturally be invaluable; but her two months at High Westover, on the other hand, had just begun to give her the slightest of insights into the mentality of those who have to stay behind after the week-end party has gone. At the sound of approaching footsteps Elissa looked up.

“Hello, darling,” she called shrilly, “we're being children of nature. You don't mind, do you?”

“Not in the least,” called back Lesley, “only you'll probably get rather bitten.”

“Nothing bites me, darling, I'm too hardened,” shrilled Elissa. “We put our things in the little sitting-room-place. Oh, and Lesley, darling”—she dropped her voice a tone or two—“
il y a quelqu'un à la porte
—do let's ask it in to lunch, and let Toby and me be heathen converts!”

“Quelqu'un à la port',” chanted Toby Ashton.

“quelqu'un à la port',

      qui frappe et frappe et frappe et frapp'

“et frappe-e à ta port'!”

Even as she laughed, even as she hurried forward, a sudden doubt checked Lesley's course. It was funny to be so rude, obviously, but what about the converse?
Was
it rude to be so funny, or had her sense of humour got, as it were, rusted by disuse? Laughter on her lips, doubt in her mind, Lesley paused: and during that moment's indecision the situation was unexpectedly simplified. For the Vicar disappeared. Neatly as a professional illusionist, completely as through a trap in the turf, Mr. Pomfret vanished from view.

3

Not altogether unexpectedly, Mr. Lock stayed to tea. They had it at once, under the apple-trees, with a cocktail or two immediately afterwards: and between one cocktail and another Lesley drifted over to Toby Ashton and inquired whether he would like a walk. She had had to watch her opportunity: he appeared to have developed, during the previous two months, the completely new habit of sitting with his arm round Elissa. Lesley said,

“What about a walk, Toby? Everyone else looks exhausted. Shall I take you over a meadow or two?”

“A walk?” shrilled Elissa, refilling her glass from the tray by the well. “A lovely long walk? I'd adore it, darling.…”

With admirable generalship Lesley altered her plans.

“You come too, Mr. Lock, and observe the English scene.” It was her best move, for Mr. Lock would come out of politeness, and Natasha would come for Mr. Lock, and Bryan for Natasha. They would all, in fact, go for a lovely long walk together: Natasha and Bryan in shorts and cricket shirts, Elissa with the addition of trousers like Toby's and a little red monkey jacket. Toby went just as he was.

“I don't think we'll go through the village, after all,” said Lesley, as they started out. “It's terribly hot and there's nothing to see. We'll cut over the fields.”

“I don't mind where we go, so long as it's trespassing,” said Elissa. “Who's the local magnate, darling?”

“Sir Philip Kerr, I believe, but unfortunately he hasn't any land to trespass on. I'll take you over some farms, though,” said Lesley, with her hand on the latch of Horace Walpole's gate. “The man here, for instance, is a perfect brute.”

“Really brutal, darling? With horsewhips?” persisted Elissa. “He must have a horsewhip or it doesn't count.”

“No, really, darling,” said Lesley seriously, “he's got rather a tough reputation.” The mild shade of Mr. Walpole—kindly giver of permissions—hovered rebukingly before her eyes: but Elissa had to be kept happy somehow. “We'll go straight up to those trees, but don't talk too loudly.…”

Under the spur of terror, therefore, they struck up a footpath and covered a mile or so across the grass in little over an hour. Both Lesley and Elissa were extremely good walkers, except that Elissa was always wanting to sit down and smoke; while the three men, and especially Bryan in his running shorts, were loud in their praises of the twenty-five-mile day. The real trouble was Natasha. As a child she had walked half across Russia to escape from the Bolsheviks, and the experience had left her with a rooted distaste for all forms of self-propulsion.

“But why did you come, darling, if you hate it so?” demanded Bryan miserably. “You know I'd have loved to stay behind with you.”

“And you could have worn your shorts just as well in the garden, darling,” pointed out Elissa, who at that particular moment happened to be wanting to walk.

Like a dumb but beautiful animal Natasha lay coiled under the hedge. Golden-brown and strong as a sapling, she nevertheless gave the impression of being mortally wounded. Quite probably she would lie there till she died. Her tawny eyes, now the exact colour of Russian tea, were already fixed in a helpless gaze. It was only by the mercy of Providence that they happened to be fixed on Teddy Lock.

He saved her.

“Listen, Miss Frewen, I guess we're not more than two miles from your cottage right at the moment. That'ud take me, if I hurried, not much more than ten minutes. In the car, coming back, I can do it in five, and pick up Natasha right at that gate. How would that be?”

It would be splendid. With real gratitude Lesley saw him leap athletically over a stile and bound away towards West-over steeple: and leaving Bryan (who had also decided to return by car) to keep Natasha company, the diminished party resumed their road.

“I suppose we are coming to
somewhere
, darling?” asked Elissa, carelessly. “If I don't have a drink soon I feel as though I might melt.”

With a fictitious confidence Lesley scanned the horizon. She had not the faintest idea where they were, and was merely hoping to disguise the fact a few moments longer: but suddenly, beyond some trees, her eye was caught by a scattering of red. Roofs! thought Lesley gratefully: roofs for five or six houses: and five or six houses, in Buckinghamshire, almost certainly meant that one of them was a pub.…

Elissa having temporarily lost all desire to smoke, the conjecture was rapidly proved correct. They made a bee-line for the trees, undid a gate, and a minute or two later found themselves approaching the humble George and Crown. Unfortunately, it was closed, and this, when Elissa and Toby at last believed it, upset them very much indeed.

“But, darling,” protested Elissa, “one can
always
get a drink if one knows how. I've
never
had to go without … Can't one bribe a potman?”

Lesley looked up and down the sunny road and wished with all her might that she could. But there was no potman in sight.

“If I don't get a drink inside five minutes, I'm going to die,” said Elissa. “Try banging on the door, darling.”

With an elaborate imitation of a dying man making a last effort, Toby Ashton picked up a convenient piece of wood and obediently began to hammer. He had (as even the highbrows admitted) a strong natural sense of rhythm, and with the first phrase of ‘Loving My Girl' had soon roused every dog within earshot. Before he had time to try them with a second, however, an upstairs window opened directly over the door and there appeared at it such a snake-like head of curling papers as would have silenced Cerberus.