On the whole, it felt just friendly and comfortable, though it did
occasionally give me an odd flutter round the shoulders.
It was dark when we got to the castle. We asked them in, but they were expecting Mrs. Cotton to arrive that evening and had to get back.
Father came home while I was describing our day to Topaz. (not one
word did he say about what he had been doing in London.) He had
travelled on the same train as Mrs.
Cotton and asked her to dinner on the next Saturday- with Simon and
Neil, of course. For once, Topaz really got angry.
"Mortmain, how could you?" she simply shouted at him.
"What are we to give them--and what on? You know we haven't a stick of dining-room furniture."
"Oh, give them ham and eggs in the kitchen," said Father, "they won't mind. And they've certainly provided enough ham."
We stared at him in utter despair. It was a good thing Rose wasn't
there because I really think she might have struck him, he looked so
maddeningly arrogant. Suddenly he deflated.
"I--just felt I had to--" all the bravado had gone out of his voice.
"She invited us to dine at Scoatney again next week and My God, I think my brain's going--I actually forgot about the dining-room furniture.
Can't you rig something up ?"
He looked pleadingly at Topaz. I can't stand it when he goes
humble--it is like seeing a lion sitting up begging (not that I ever
did see one). Topaz rose to the occasion magnificently.
"Don't worry, we'll manage. It's fun, in a way--a sort of
challenge-was she tried to use her most soothing contralto, but it
broke a bit. I felt like hugging her.
"Let's just look at the dining-room," she whispered to me, while Father was eating his supper. So we took candles and went along.
I can't think what she hoped for, but anyhow we didn't find it-we
didn't find anything but space. Even the carpet was sold with the
furniture.
We went into the drawing-room.
"The top of the grand piano would be original," said Topaz.
"With Father carving on the keys ?"
"Could we sit on the floor, on cushions? We certainly haven't enough chairs."
"We haven't enough cushions, either. All we really have enough of is floor."
We laughed until the candle wax ran down on to our hands.
After that we felt better.
In the end, Topaz got Stephen to take the hen-house door off its hinges and make some rough trestles to put it on, and we pushed it close to
the window-seat, which saved us three chairs.
We used the gray brocade curtains from the hall as a table-cloth--they looked magnificent, though the join showed a bit and they got in the
way of our feet. All our silver and good china and glass went long
ago, but the Vicar lent us his, including his silver candelabra. Of
course we asked him to dinner too, and he came early and sat in the
kitchen giving his possessions a final polish while we got dressed.
(rose wore Topaz's black dress; we had found it didn't look a bit
conventional on Rose--it suited her wonderfully.) Our dinner menu
was:
Clear soup (made from half the second ham-bone) Boiled chicken and ham Peaches and cream (the Cottons sent the peaches--just in time) Savory: Devilled ham mousse Topaz cooked it all and Ivy Stebbins brought it
in; Stephen and Thomas helped her in the kitchen. Nothing unfortunate happened except that Ivy kept staring at Simon's beard.
She told me afterwards that it gave her the creeps.
Mrs. Cotton was as talkative as ever but very nice--so easy; I think
it was really she who made us feel the dinner was a success.
Americans are wonderfully adaptable--Neil and Simon helped with the
washing-up. (they call it "doing the dishes.") I rather wished they hadn't insisted, because the kitchen looked so very un-American. It
was wildly untidy and Thomas had put all the plates on the floor for
Heloise and Abelard to lick--very wrong indeed, because chicken-bones are dangerous to animals.
Ivy washed and we all dried. Then Stephen took Ivy home. She is the
same age as I am but very big and handsome. She obviously has her eye on Stephen--I hadn't realized that before, I suppose it would be an
excellent thing for him if he married her, because she is the
Stebbins's only child and will inherit the farm. I wondered if he
would kiss her on the way home. I wondered if he had ever kissed any
girl. Part of my mind went with him through the dark fields, but most of it stayed with the Cottons in the kitchen. Neil was sitting on the table, stroking About into a coma of bliss; Simon was wandering round examining things. Suddenly the memory of that first time they came
here flashed back to me. I hoped Rose had forgotten Simon's shadow
looking like the Devil-I had almost forgotten it myself. There surely never was a more un-devilish man.
Soon after that we were into the exciting part of the evening.
It began when Simon asked if they might see over the castle; I had
guessed he would and made sure that the bedrooms were tidy.
"Light the lantern, Thomas, then we can go up on the walls," I said--I felt the more romantic I could make it, the better for Rose.
"We'll start from the hall."
We went through the drawing-room where the others were talking- that
is, Father and Mrs. Cotton were.
Topaz was just listening and the Vicar opened his eyes so wide when we went in that I suspected he had been dozing. He looked as if he rather fancied joining us but I was careful to give him no encouragement. I
was hoping to thin our party out, not thicken it up.
"The gatehouse first," said Rose when we got to the hall--and swept through the front door so fast that I saw she meant to skip the
dining-room. Personally, I thought pure emptiness would have been more distinguished than our bedroom furniture.
Little did I know how grateful Rose was to be to the humblest piece of it!
As we walked through the courtyard garden, Simon looked up at the
mound.
"How tall and black Belmotte Tower is against the starry sky," he said.
I could see he was working himself into a splendidly romantic mood. It was a lovely night with a warm, gentle little breeze --oh, a most
excellently helpful sort of night.
I never mount to the top of the gatehouse tower without recalling that first climb, the day we discovered the castle, when Rose kept butting into me from behind. Remembering that, remembering us as children,
made me feel extra fond of her and extra determined to do my best for her. All the time we were following the lantern and Simon was
marveling that the heavy stone steps could curve so gracefully, I was willing him to be attracted by her.
"This is amazing," he said as he stepped out at the top. I had never before been up there at night, and it really was rather exciting-not
that we could see anything except the stars and a few lights twinkling at Godsend and over at Four Stones Farm. It was the feel that was
exciting--as if the night had drawn closer to us.
Thomas set the lantern high on the battlements so that it shone on
Rose's hair and face; the rest of her merged into the darkness be cause of the black dress. The soft wind blew her little chiffon shoulder
cape across Simon's face.
"That felt like the wings of night," he said, laughing. It was fascinating watching his head next to hers in the lantern light- his so dark and hers so glowing.
I tried and tried to think of some way of leaving them by themselves up there, but there are limits to human invention.
After a few minutes, we went down far enough to get out on the top of the walls. It took quite a while to walk along them because Neil
wanted to know all about defending castles- he was particularly taken with the idea of a trebuchet slinging a dead horse over the walls. Rose tripped over her dress almost the first minute and after that Simon