CHAPTER VI
ST. LUKE'S SUMMER
It was a bright autumn morning, and the central hall of the Manor House was given up to a Moloch worshipped by Annabel and described by her as the "Ladies' Needlework Guild." I had learnt from long and bitter experience that the festival of this Moloch fell in the first week in October, and during that time there was not a chair or a Chesterfield or even a table in the great hall which was not covered with heaps of unbleached and evil-smelling garments. To the uninitiated it looked like an extensive preparation for something which Ponty called "the Wash," and which was long confused in my childish mind with that portion of the North Sea which separates Norfolk from Lincolnshire; but the initiated knew better. I never really grasped the true inwardness of this Moloch of my sister's. Once, in an unguarded moment, I asked Annabel how the Ladies' Needlework Guild was worked and what it did; and for three-quarters of an hour on end—without even a half-time for sucking lemons—she volubly expounded to me the manifold rules and regulations of the fetish. Needless to say I didn't understand; but after that I always pretended that I did, for fear Annabel should explain again. As far as I could grasp the situation, the monster had to be fed with a huge meal of unbleached calico, flannelette, rough flannel and other inexpensive and somewhat odoriferous materials, served in the form of useful undergarments, some of which it swallowed whole, and some of which it generously returned to the respective parishes whence they had originally sprung. But the reasons why they were given to the monster, and why the monster gave some of them back again, I have never even attempted to fathom. But that yearly festival was to Annabel as sacred as the Feast of Tabernacles is to the Jews or the Feast of Ramadhan is to the Mohammedans; and the smell of its flannelette and unbleached calico was as incense in my sister's nostrils.
On this particular October morning she and Fay were apparently sorting clothes for a gigantic laundry, but were actually assisting at one of Annabel's most holy rites. I sank on to a settee, full of wonder at the marvellous power the gentler sex possesses of transforming into a sacred ritual the most ordinary and commonplace actions.
But I was not allowed to sit for long.
"Good gracious, Reggie, you are sitting upon St. Etheldreda's flannel petticoats. Do get up at once!"
I rose with due apologies to the saint in question.
"Those were St. Etheldreda's flannel petticoats on that sofa, weren't they, Fay?" continued my sister.
"Yes," replied her acolyte, "and the rest of St. Etheldreda's garments are on the chair by the fire-place. Hadn't I better put them all together, and do the Etheldreda bundle up?"
"Not yet, my dear. I think St. Etheldreda's garments are too scanty at present."