Read Online Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons - Free Book Online

with their slightest gesture. She looked a woman without boundaries as she stood wrapped in a crimson shawl to protect her bitter, magnificent shoulders from the splintery cold of the early air. She seemed fitted for any stage, however enormous.
    ‘Well, get as many buckets as you can,’ she said, lifelessly, half-turning away. ‘Mrs Starkadder questioned me about the milk yesterday. She has been comparing our output with that from other farms in the district, and she says we are five-sixteenths of a bucket below what our rate should be, considering how many cows we have.’
    A strange film passed over Adam’s eyes, giving him the lifeless primaeval look that a lizard has, basking in the swooning Southern heat. But he said nothing.
    ‘And another thing,’ continued Judith, ‘you will probably have to drive down into Beershorn tonight to meet a train. Robert Poste’s child is coming to stay with us for a while. I expect to hear some time this morning what time she is arriving. I will tell you later about it.’
    Adam shrank back against the gangrened flank of Pointless.
    ‘Mun I?’ he asked, piteously. ‘Mun I, Miss Judith? Oh, dunna send me. How can I look into her liddle flower-face, and me knowin’ what I know? Oh, Miss Judith, I beg of ’ee not to send me. Besides,’ he added, more practically, ‘’tes close on sixty-five years since I put hands to a pair of reins, and I might upset the maidy.’
    Judith, who had slowly turned from him while he was speaking, was now half-way across the yard. She turned her head to reply to him with a slow, graceful movement. Her deep voice clanged like a bell in the frosty air:
    ‘No, you must go, Adam. You must forget what you know – as we all must, while she is here. As for the driving, you had best harness Viper to the trap, and drive down into Howling and back six times this afternoon, to get your hand in again.’
    ‘Could not Master Seth go instead o’ me?’
    Emotion shook the frozen grief of her face. She said low and sharp:
    ‘You remember what happened when he went to meet the new kitchenmaid … No. You must go.’
    Adam’s eyes, little blind pools of water in his primitive face, suddenly grew cunning. He turned back to Aimless and resumed his mechanical stroking of the teat, saying in a sing-song rhythm:
    ‘Ay, then. I’ll go, Miss Judith. I dunnamany times I’ve thought as how this day might come … And now I mun go to bring Robert Poste’s child back to Cold Comfort. Ay, ’tes strange. The seed to the flower, the flower to the fruit, the fruit to the belly. Ay, so ’twill go.’
    Judith had crossed the muck and rabble of the yard, and now entered the house by the back door.
    In the large kitchen, which occupied most of the middle of the house, a sullen fire burned, the smoke of which wavered up the blackened walls and over the deal table, darkened by age and dirt, which was roughly set for a meal. A snood full of coarse porridge hung over the fire, and standing with one arm resting upon the high mantel, looking moodily down into the heaving contents of the snood, was a tall young man whose riding-boots were splashed with mud to the thigh, and whose coarse linen shirt was open to his waist. The firelight lit up his diaphragm muscles as they heaved slowly in rough rhythm with the porridge.
    He looked up as Judith entered, and gave a short, defiant laugh, but said nothing. Judith slowly crossed over until she stood by his side. She was as tall as he. They stood in silence,she staring at him, and he down into the secret crevasses of the porridge.
    ‘Well, mother mine,’ he said at last, ‘here I am, you see. I said I would be in time for breakfast, and I have kept my word.’
    His voice had a low, throaty, animal quality, a sneering warmth that wound a velvet ribbon of sexuality over the outward coarseness of the man.
    Judith’s breath came in long shudders. She thrust her arms deeper into her shawl. The porridge gave an ominous, leering heave; it