Free Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

door which closed off the staircase from the kitchen. Someone paused on the threshold.
    The step was light as thistledown. If Adam had not had the rush of the running water in his ears too loudly for him to be able to hear any other noise, he might have thought this delicate, hesitant step was the beating of his own blood.
    But, suddenly, something like a kingfisher streaked across the kitchen in a glimmer of green skirts and flying gold hair, and the chime of a laugh was followed a second later by the slam of the gate leading through the starveling garden out on to the Downs.
    Adam flung round violently on hearing the sound, dropping his thorn twig and breaking two plates.
    ‘Elfine … my liddle bird,’ he whispered, starting towards the open door.
    A brittle silence mocked his whisper; through it wound the rank odours of rattan and barn.
    ‘My pharisee … my cowdling …’ he whispered, piteously. His eyes had again that look as of waste grey pools, sightless primaeval wastes reflecting the wan evening sky in some lonely marsh, as they wandered about the kitchen.
    His hands fell slackly against his sides, and he dropped another plate. It broke.
    He sighed, and began to move slowly towards the open door, his task forgotten. His eyes were fixed upon the cowshed.
    ‘Ay, the beasts …’ he muttered, dully; ‘the dumb beasts never fail a man. They know. Ay, I’d ’a’ done better to cowdle our Feckless in my bosom than liddle Elfine. Ay, wild as a marshtigget in May, ’tes. And a will never listen to a word from annyone. Well, so t’must be. Sour or sweet, by barn or bye, so ’twill go. Ah, but if he’ – the blind grey pools grew suddenly terrible, as though a storm were blowing in across the marsh from the Atlantic wastes – ‘if he but harms a hair o’ her liddle goldy head I’ll
kill
un.’
    So muttering, he crossed the yard and entered the cowshed, where he untied the beasts from their hoot-pieces and drove them across the yard, down the muddy rutted lane that led to Nettle Flitch Field. He was enmeshed in his grief. He didnot notice that Graceless’s leg had come off and that she was managing as best she could with three.
    Left alone, the kitchen fire went out.

CHAPTER IV
    The timeless leaden day merged imperceptibly towards eve. After the rude midday meal Adam was bid by Judith to put Viper, the vicious gelding, between the shafts of the buggy and to drive backwards and forwards to Howling six times to revive his knowledge of the art of managing a horse. His attempt to stave off this event by having a fit during the rude meal was unfortunately robbed of its full effect by the collapse of Meriam, the hired girl, while in the act of passing a dish of greens to Seth.
    Her hour had come upon her rather sooner than was anticipated, and in the ensuing scene Adam’s fit, which he had staged in the cowshed out of regard for his personal comfort and safety, passed almost unnoticed except as a sort of Greek chorus to the main drama.
    Adam was therefore left without any excuse, and spent the afternoon driving backwards and forwards between Howling and the farm, much to the indignation of the Starkadders, who could see him from their position at the side of the well they were supposed to be getting on with; they thought he was an idle old man, and said as much.
    ‘How shall I know the maidy?’ pleaded Adam of Judith, as they stood together while he lit the lanthorn hanging on the side of the buggy. Its dim flame flowered up slowly under the vast, uncaring bowl of the darkening sky, and hung heavily, like a brooding corpse-light, in the windless dusk. ‘Robert Poste was aye like a bullock: a great moitherin’ man, aye playin’ wi’ batses and ballses. Do ’ee think his maid will be like him?’
    ‘There are not so many passengers as all that at Beershorn,’ replied Judith, impatiently. ‘Wait until everybody has left the station. Robert Poste’s child will be the last; she will wait to see if there