"Oh, yes."
"Inside-churning excited?"
"Inside turning over and over."
"That's interesting. It just doesn't show, I suppose."
"I suppose not."
"It's an extraordinarily useful sort of face to have. Mine goes a dull unhealthy pink, as you can see."
He thought the warm childish flush on her normally cool features touching and endearing.
"I hear that Peggy Gates has a new outfit for the occasion. Have you ever seen her on a horse? I can't remember."
"No."
"She looks nice," Eleanor said approvingly. "She rides very well. I think she will do justice to that horse of Dick Pope's."
It was typical of Eleanor that her judgement was independent of her emotions.
The High Street of Bures glittered in the low morning sunlight. Large Motoring Association signs encouraged the traveller, and fluttering advertisements cajoled him. "Carr's Meal for Calves," said a banner. "Saffo, the Safe Disinfectant!" screamed a chimney-to-chimney pendant. "Pett's Dip," said a placard quietly, taking it for granted that the Dip was sufficiently famous to explain itself.
In the dim hall of the Chequers Bee was waiting for them. Simon had gone round to the stables, she said.
"The rooms are Numbers 17, 18, and 19, Brat. You are sharing 17 with Simon, Nell and I have 18, and the twins are in the connecting one, 19."
Sharing a room with Simon was something he had not reckoned with, but there was nothing he could do about it. He picked up Eleanor's bag and his own and went upstairs with them, since the hall was a flurry of arriving guests. Eleanor came with him and showed him where the rooms were.
"The first time I came here and was allowed to stay the night I thought life had nothing left to offer," she said. "Put it down there, Brat, thank you, and I'll unpack it at once or my frock will be ruined."
In Number 17 Simon's things were already strewn all over the room, including the second bed. It was odd how these inanimate belongings of Simon's had, even in his absence, a kind of arrogance.
Brat cleared his own bed and unpacked, hanging his new evening things carefully in the still empty wardrobe. To-night for the first time in his life he would wear evening clothes.
"In case you get lost, Brat," Bee said to him when he came down, "lunch is at twelve-thirty in the luncheon tent. The last table to your left as you come in. What do you plan to do this morning? Poke the pigs?"
"No, he is going to walk the course," Eleanor said.
"All right. Don't stray off it into any Government holy-of-holies and get yourself arrested, will you?"
Tony was handed over to Mrs. Stack, who, being interested solely in rural industries, represented a Fixed Point in the flux of an agricultural show.
"If he tells you that his father is dying and he is urgently wanted at home, don't believe him," Eleanor said.
"Is his father ill, then?"
"No, but Tony may grow bored before half-past twelve. I'll come and fetch him for lunch."
Brat walked into the High Street of Bures with a feeling of escape. For the first time for nearly a month he was his own master, free to be himself. He had forgotten what it was like to walk about without care. For nearly three hours he could go where he liked, ask what he wanted, and answer without a curb on his tongue.
"Hallands Park," said the direction sign on a bus, so he got on the bus and went there. He had never been to a country show before, and he went round the exhibits with an interest that was at once fresh and critical, comparing all he saw with similar things seen elsewhere. Homespuns in Arizona, farm implements in Normandy, rams in Zacatecas, Herefords after American air, pottery in New Mexico. Occasionally someone looked at him curiously, and more than one hand was half lifted in salutation only to fall again. He was too like an Ashby ever to be completely free in Bures. But, speaking generally, people were too absorbed in the exhibits and in their own cares at that hour of the morning to take much interest in the passer-by.
Having exhausted the exhibition, he walked out into the park, where the red flags marked out the temporary race-course. It was a straight, fast-galloping course over hurdles for the first half-mile through the park, then it went out into the country in a wide curve of a mile or more, came back to the park about half a mile from the stands, and from then on was another series of hurdles up to the finish in front of the stands. Except for the sharp turns and a few very blind fences in the country, it was not a difficult course. The hurdles in the park stretches were regulation racing ones, and the turf was wonderful. Brat's heart lifted.
It was very peaceful out there in the country, and he came back to the show with a sense of reluctance. But he was surprised to find how glad he was to see the familiar faces round the table in the luncheon tent when he got there; how glad he was to sink into the place kept for him, and be part of this family again.
People came up to their table to welcome him back to Bures Show, to England. People who had known Bill and Nora Ashby, and Bill's father before him. None of them expected him to remember them, and he had merely to be polite.
25
"I think I'm going to be sick," Ruth said, when she and Brat were left alone in the stand.
"I don't wonder," said Brat.
"Why?" she was surprised into saying, this being not at all the reaction she expected.
"Three ices on top of dressed crab."
"It is not anything I ate," she said, repressive. "It's that I have a delicate nervous system. Excitement makes me feel ill. I get sick with it."
"I should go and get it over," Brat advised.
"Be sick, you mean!"
"Yes. It's a wonderful feeling."
"If I sit very still I may feel better," Ruth said, giving up.
Ruth was feeling her lack of importance to-day. She avoided horses too consistently for the rest of the year to claim any right to exhibit any on this one day at Bures, so she sat in the stand in her neat grey flannel and looked on. It was to her credit that she did not grudge her twin her well-earned place in the sun, and was passionately anxious that Jane should come first in her class.
"There's Roger Clint with Eleanor."
Brat looked for the couple and found them.
"Who is Roger Clint?"
"He has a big farm near here."
Roger Clint was a black-browed young man, and he was being old-friendly with Eleanor.
"He's in love with Eleanor," said Ruth, having failed with one try for drama.
"A very good person to be in love with," Brat said, but his heart contracted.
"It would be a very good thing if she married him. He has lots of money and a lovely big house and simply scads of horses."
Against his will Brat asked if Eleanor were thinking of it.
Ruth considered the pros and cons or this as they fitted into her dramatic framework.
"She is making him serve his seven years for her. You know: like Jacob. He is simply frantic about it, poor Roger, but she is La Belle Dame Sans Merci."
La Belle Dame Sans Merci bade Mr. Clint a temporary farewell and came up to join them in the stands as the Novices under Ten filed into the ring.
"Do you know that Tony scraped into this by the skin of his teeth," she said, sitting down by Brat. "He is going to be ten the day after to-morrow."
There were eleven novices, the youngest being a fat child of four in a black velvet jockey cap, who bounced about on a solid pony of which she had no control whatever.
"Well, at least Tony never looked as awful as that, even in his bad days," Eleanor said.
"Tony looks wonderful," Ruth said, and Tony did indeed look wonderful. As Eleanor had said on an earlier occasion, Tony had the root of the matter in him.
The novices walked, and trotted, and cantered, under the lenient eye of the judges, and presently the seeding began. Even from the stand the fanatic determination in Tony's snail-black eyes was plain to see. He was going to be in the money or die in the attempt. From being six possibles they were narrowed down to four, but these four kept the judges puzzled. Again and again they were sent out to canter and brought back for inspection, and sent out to canter again. There were only three prizes and one must go.