第12章

Claud Hart-Harris wrote from his house at Chiswick Mall a few days later in reply to Flora’s letter. He knew the Hawk-Monitors. Papa was dead, Mamma was a darling old bird whose hobby was the Higher Thought. There was a son who was easy on the eye but slow on the uptake, and a healthy sort of daughter named Joan. He thought he could arrange four invitations for Flora, if she was sure she wanted them? Would it not be rather a tiresome affair? But if she really wanted to go, he would write to Mrs Hawk-Monitor and tell her that a friend of his was in exile on a farmhouse at Howling, and that she would love to come to the ball and bring her girl cousin and two young men. He, Claud, would of course be charmed to partner Flora, but, candidly, Seth sounded pretty squalid. Need he come?

‘Squalid or not,’ said the small, clear voice of Flora, fifty miles away (for she thought she would answer his letter by telephone, as she was in a hurry to get the affair arranged), ‘he is all we can find, unless we have that Mr Mybug I told you about. I would really rather we did not have him, Claud. You know how dreadful intelligent people are when you take them to dances.’

Claud twisted the television dial and amused himself by studying Flora’s fair, pensive face. Her eyes were lowered and her mouth compressed over the serious business of arranging Elfine’s future. He fancied she was tracing a pattern with the tip of her shoe. She could not look at him, because public telephones were not fitted with television dials.

‘Oh, yes, we certainly don’t want a lot of intelligent conversation,’ he said, decidedly. ‘I think we will rule out the Mybug. Well, then, I will write to Mrs Hawk-Monitor today, and let you know as soon as I hear. Or perhaps I had better ask her to send the invitations direct to you, shall I?’

And so it was arranged.

Flora came out of the post office at Beershorn into the pleasant sunshine feeling a little ashamed of her schemes. Claud had said Mrs Hawk-Monitor was a darling. Flora was planning to palm off Elfine on the darling’s only son. She strained her imagination, but found that it refused to present her with a picture of Mrs Hawk-Monitor welcoming Elfine with joy as a daughter-in-law. Mrs Hawk-Monitor’s hobby might be the Higher Thought, but Flora felt sure she would be practical enough when it was a question of considering a wife for Richard. She would not be sympathetic, in spite of her own leanings, with Elfine’s artiness. Elfine would have to be transformed, inside and out, before Mrs Hawk-Monitor could consider her suitable; and even if the transformation were made, Mrs Hawk-Monitor could not possibly approve Elfine’s family. Who, indeed, could approve of such figures of rugged but slightly embarrassing grandeur as Micah and Judith?

And the Starkadders themselves would be sure, when the engagement was announced, to kick up one hell of a shine.

Difficult times lay ahead.

But this was what Flora liked. She detested rows and scenes, but enjoyed quietly pitting her cool will against opposition. It amused her; and when she was defeated, she withdrew in good order and lost interest in the campaign. She had little or no sporting spirit. Bloody battles to the death bored her, nor did she like other people to win.

But it was no fun to fight a darling. Flora herself, had she been sixty-five and Mrs Hawk-Monitor, would have felt most bitter towards a girl who planted an Elfine into the midst of a quiet county family.

There was only one way of soothing her tiresome conscience. Elfine must be transformed indeed; her artiness must be rooted out. Her mind must match the properly groomed head in which it was housed. Her movements must be made less frequent, and her conversation less artless. She must write no more poetry nor go for any more long walks unless accompanied by the proper sort of dog to take on long walks. She must learn to be serious about horses. She must learn to laugh when a book or a string quartet was mentioned, and to confess that she was not brainy. She must learn to be long-limbed and clear-eyed and inhibited. The first two qualities she possessed already, and the last she must set to work to acquire at once.

And there were only twenty-seven days in which to teach her all these things!

Flora walked down the High Street towards the place where the buses started, planning how she would begin Elfine’s education. She looked at the clock on the Town Hall, which said twelve, and realized that she had half an hour to wait for a bus. It was a Saturday morning and the town was full of people who had come in from outlying farms and villages to do their shopping for the week-end; some of them were already waiting for the bus, and Flora walked across the Market Place, prepared to wait with them.

But then she became aware that someone, a man, was trying to attract her attention. She was very properly not looking at him when something in his appearance seemed familiar to her; he looked like a Starkadder (there were so many of them that one of her minor worries was a fear of not recognizing one when she met him in the street). Sure enough, it was Harkaway. He had just come out of the bank, into which he had been paying the weekly takings of the farm. In a second Flora recognized him, and said ‘Good morning’, with a bow and a smile.

He returned her greeting in the Starkadder manner, that is, with a suspicious stare. He looked as though he would have liked to ask her what she was doing in Beershorn. She decided that if he did she would undo the parcel of pale green silk she carried and shake it in his face all down the High Street.

Harkaway stopped in front of her and out-manoeuvred her in her advance on the bus.

‘You’m a long way from whoam,’ he muttered.

‘So are you,’ retorted Flora. She was rather cross.

‘Ay, but I ha’ business to do in Beershorn every Saturday. I comes down every Saturday morning in the year, wi’ Viper’, and he jerked his head towards that large and disagreeable beast, which Flora now observed anchored to the buggy a little way farther on.

‘Indeed. I came by bus.’

A slow, secret smile crept into Harkaway’s face. It was wolfish, ursine, vulpine. He softly jangled some coins in his pocket. He seemed as though he bathed in some secret satisfaction of his own. This was because he had driven down to Beershorn in the buggy, and saved the shilling his grandmother gave him every week for the fare.

‘Ay, th’ bus …’ he repeated, drawlingly.

‘Yes, the bus. There isn’t another one until half-past twelve.’

‘Happen I might drive you home with me,’ he suggested, as Flora had meant him to do. Her disinclination to sit in the damp, smelly bus had fought with her disinclination to drive home with a Starkadder, and the bus had lost. Besides, she was always glad to see more of the private lives of the Starkadders. Harkaway might be able to tell her something about Urk, who was supposed to be going to marry Elfine.

‘That would be very kind of you,’ she said, and they moved off together to the buggy.

She looked at him meditatively as the buggy passed rapidly between the hedges. She wondered what was his particular nastiness? She could hardly distinguish him from Urk and Caraway, Ezra, Luke and Mark. Never mind, probably she would get them sorted out in time.

She began to make conversation.

‘How is the well getting on?’ (Not that she cared.)

‘’Tes all collapsed. ’Tes terrible.’

‘Oh, I am so sorry! What a pity. The last time I saw it, it was nearly finished. How did it happen?’

‘’Twas Mark. He and our Micah was argyfyin’ who should lay the last brick, and we was all standin’ round waitin’ to see which would hit t’other first. And Mark, he pushed Micah down th’ well, and pushed th’ bricks down on top of ’un. Laugh! We fair lay on th’ ground.’

‘Was – is Micah – er – is he badly hurt?’

‘Nay. Mark dived in after ’un and rescued ’un. But th’ bricks was lost.’

‘A pity, indeed,’ commented Flora.

She was much surprised when Harkaway burst out:

‘Ay, ’tis a pity. There’s some at Cold Comfort would do better for a few bricks thrown at their heads. I names no names but I know what I think.’

The coins jingled softly again in his pocket. The ursine smile touched his lips.

‘Who?’ asked Flora.

‘Her … th’ old lady. My grand-aunt. Her as has us all under her thumb.’ He jingled the coins again.

‘Ah, yes, my aunt,’ said Flora, thoughtfully. She found Hark-away comparatively easy to talk to. Nor did he seem unfriendly.

‘I cannot understand,’ she resumed, ‘why you do not break away from her. I suppose she has all the money.’

‘Ay … and she’s mad. If any on us was to leave th’ farm, she’d go madder yet. ’Twould be a terrible disgrace on us. We mun keep the head of the family alive and in her right mind. There have always been—’

‘I know, I know,’ said Flora, hastily. ‘Such a comfort, I always feel, don’t you? But really, Harkaway, I do think it is carrying authority a little too far when grown men are prevented from marrying—’

Harkaway laughed shortly, rather to Flora’s dismay; she feared he was going to make a farmyard joke. But he said, much more surprisingly:

‘Nay, nay. Some on us is married right enough. But th’ old lady, she mun niver see our women-folk, or she’d go right away mad. The women-folk of the Starkadders keeps themselves to themselves. They lives down in the village and only comes up when there’s a gatherin’, or th’ old lady comes downstairs. There’s Micah’s Susan, Mark’s Phoebe, Luke’s Prue, Caraway’s Letty, Ezra’s Jane. Urk, he’m a bachelor. Me … I’ve got me own troubles.’

Flora longed to ask what his own troubles were, but feared that the question might bring forth a flood of embarrassing confidences. Perhaps he was in love with Mrs Beetle? Mean-while, his news was so surprising that she could only stare and stare again.

‘And do you mean to say that they all live down in the village. Five women?’

‘Six women,’ corrected Harkaway, in a low voice. ‘Ay, there’s – another. There’s poor daft Rennett.’

‘Really? What relation is she to the others?’

‘She’m own daughter to Micah’s Susan by her first marriage. Her marriage to Mark, I mean; and Mark, he’s own halfbrother to Amos, who is Micah’s cousin. So ’tes rather confusin’, like. Ay, poor Rennett …’

‘What is the matter with her?’ enquired Flora, rather tartly. She was exceedingly dismayed at the news that there was a whole horde of female Starkadders whom she had not seen. It really seemed as though her task would be too much for her.

‘She were disappointed o’ Mark Dolour, ten years ago. She’s never married. She’s queer, like, in her head. Sometimes, when the sukebind hangs heavy from the passin’ wains, she jumps down th’ well. Ay, an’ twice she’s tried to choke Meriam, the hired girl. ’Tes Nature, you may say, turned sour in her veins.’

Flora was really quite glad when the buggy stopped outside the farm. She wanted to hear no more. She felt that she could not undertake to rescue Susan, Letty, Phoebe, Prue, Jane and Rennett as well as Elfine. Dash it, the women must take their chance. She would rescue Elfine, and as soon as that was accomplished, she would try to have a show-down with Aunt Ada, but beyond this she would make no promises.

*

For the next three weeks she was so busy with Elfine that she had no time to worry about the unknown female Starkadders.

She spent most of her time with Elfine. She expected at first that someone would interfere, and try to stop Elfine and her from going for their morning walk along the top of the Downs and from spending the afternoons in Flora’s little green parlour. These habits were innocent, but that was not enough to keep the Starkadders from trying to stop them. Nay, their very innocency was more likely to set the grand, rugged Starkadder machinery in motion. For it is a peculiarity of persons who lead rich, emotional lives, and who (as the saying is) live intensely and with a wild poetry, that they read all kinds of meanings into comparatively simple actions, especially the actions of other people, who do not live intensely and with a wild poetry. Thus you may find them weeping passionately on their bed, and be told that you – you alone – are the cause because you said that awful thing to them at lunch. Or they wonder why you like going to concerts; there must be more in it than meets the eye.

So the cousins usually slipped out for their walks when no one was about.

Flora had learned, by experience, that she must ask permission of the Starkadders if she wanted to go down into Beershorn, or if (as she did a week or so after her arrival) she wanted to buy a pot of apricot jam for tea. On this occasion she had found Judith lying face downwards in the furrows of Ticklepenny’s Corner, weeping. In reply to her question, Judith had said that anybody might do anything they pleased, so long as she was left alone with her sorrow. Flora took this generous statement to mean that she might pay for the jam.

And so she did; but on the whole she spent little money at Cold Comfort, and so she had nearly eighty pounds to spend on Elfine. She decided that they would go up to London together the day before the ball and buy her gown and get her hair cut correctly.

She was pleased to be spending eighty pounds on Elfine. If she succeeded in making Dick Hawk-Monitor propose to Elfine it would be a successful geste in the face of the Starkadders. It would be a triumph of the Higher Common Sense over Aunt Ada Doom. It would be a victory for Flora’s philosophy of life over the sub-conscious life-philosophy of the Starkadders. It would be like a splendid deer stepping haughtily across a ploughed field.

For three weeks she forced Elfine, as a gardener skilfully forces a flower in a hothouse. Her task was difficult, but might have been much more so. For Elfine’s peculiarities of dress, outlook and behaviour were due only to her own youthful tastes. They had not been ground into her, for years, by older people. She was ready to shed them if something better was shown to her. Also, she was only seventeen years old, and docile; when Flora planed away all the St Francis-cum-barbola-work crust, she found beneath it an honest child, capable of loving calmly yet deeply, friendly and sweet-tempered and fond of pretty things.

‘Have you always admired St Francis?’ asked Flora, as they sat one rainy afternoon in the little green parlour, towards the end of the first week. ‘I mean, who told you about him, and who taught you to wear those shocking clothes?’

‘I wanted to be like Miss Ashford. She kept the Blue Bird’s Cage down in Howling for a month or two last summer. I went in there to tea once or twice. She was very kind to me. She used to have lovely clothes – that is, I mean, they weren’t what you would call lovely, but I used to like them. She had a smock—’

‘Embroidered with hollyhocks,’ said Flora, resignedly. ‘And I’ll bet she wore her hair in shells round her ears and a pendant made of hammered silver with a bit of blue enamel in the middle. And did she try to grow herbs?’

‘How did you know?’

‘Never mind, I do know. And she talked to you about Brother Wind and Sister Sun and the wind on the heath, didn’t she?’

‘Yes … She had a picture of St Francis feeding the birds. It was lovely.’

‘And did you want to be like her, Elfine?’

‘Oh, yes … She never tried to make me like her, of course, but I did want to be. I used to copy her clothes …’

‘Yes, well, never mind that now. Go on with your reading.’

And Elfine obediently resumed her reading aloud of ‘Our Lives from Day to Day’ from an April number of ‘Vogue’. When she had finished, Flora took her, page by page, through a copy of ‘Chiffons’ which was devoted to descriptions and sketches of lingerie. Flora pointed out how these graceful petticoats and night-gowns depended upon their pure line and delicate embroidery for their beauty; how all gross romanticism was purged away, or expressed only in a fold or a flute of material. She then showed how the same delicacy might be found in the style of Jane Austen, or a painting by Marie Laurencin.

‘It is that kind of beauty,’ said Flora, ‘that you must learn to look for and admire in everyday life.’

‘I like the night-gowns and “Persuasion”,’ said Elfine, ‘but I don’t like “Our Lives” very much, Flora. It’s all rather in a hurry, isn’t it, and wanting to tell you how nice it was?’

‘I do not propose that you shall found a life-philosophy upon “Our Lives from Day to Day”, Elfine. I merely make you read it because you will have to meet people who do that kind of thing, and you must on no account be all dewy and awed when you do meet them. You can, if you like, secretly despise them. Nor must you talk about Marie Laurencin to people who hunt. They will merely think she is your new mare. No. I tell you of these things in order that you may have some standards, within yourself, with which secretly to compare the many new facts and people you will meet if you enter a new life.’

She did not tell Elfine of ‘The Higher Common Sense’, but quoted one or two of the Pensées to her, from time to time, and resolved to give her H. B. Mainwaring’s excellent translation of ‘The Higher Common Sense’ as a wedding present.

Elfine progressed. Her charming nature and Flora’s wise advice met and mingled naturally. Only over poetry was there a little struggle. Flora warned Elfine that she must write no more poetry if she wanted to marry into the county.

‘I thought poetry was enough,’ said Elfine, wistfully. ‘I mean, I thought poetry was so beautiful that if you met someone you loved, and you told them you wrote poetry, that would be enough to make them love you, too.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Flora, firmly, ‘most young men are alarmed on hearing that a young woman writes poetry. Combined with an ill-groomed head of hair and an eccentric style of dress, such an admission is almost fatal.’

‘I shall write it secretly, and publish it when I am fifty,’ said Elfine, rebelliously.

Flora coldly raised her eyebrows, and decided that she would return to the attack when Elfine had had her hair cut and seen her beautiful new dress.

They entered upon the third week in hopeful spirits. At first, Elfine had been bewildered and unhappy in the new worlds into which Flora led her. But as she grew at home in them, and became fond of Flora, she was happy, and bloomed like a rose-peony. She fed upon hope; and even Flora’s confident spirit faltered before the thought of what a weltering ruin, what a desert, must ensue if those hopes were never achieved!

But they must be achieved! Flora wrote as much to her ally, Claud Hart-Harris. She had chosen him, rather than Charles, as her escort to the Hawk-Monitor’s ball, because she felt that she would need all her powers of concentration to see herself and Elfine safely through the evening; and if Charles came to partner her she would be conscious of a certain interest in their own personal relationship, a current of unsaid speeches, which would distract her feelings and perhaps confuse a little her thoughts.

Claud had written to say that she might expect the invitation on April 19th or so. So she came down to breakfast in the kitchen on the morning of the nineteenth with a pleasant sensation of excitement and anticipation.

It was half-past eight. Mrs Beetle had finished sweeping the floor and was shaking the mat out in the yard, in the sunshine. (It always surprised Flora to see the sun shining into the yard at Cold Comfort; she had a feeling that the rays ought to be short-circuited just