Authors: Stella Gibbons
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 outside the wall by the atmosphere of the farmhouse.)
‘Ni smornin’,’ screamed Mrs Beetle, adding that we could do with a bit of it.
Flora smilingly agreed and went across to the cupboard to take down her own little green teapot (a present from Mrs Smiling) and tin of China tea. She glanced out into the yard and was pleased to see that none of the male Starkadders were about. Elfine was out on a walk. Judith was probably lying despairingly across her bed, looking with leaden eyes at the ceiling across which the first flies of the year were beginning monotonously to circle and crawl.
The bull suddenly bellowed his thick, dark-red note. Flora paused, with the teapot in her hand, and looked thoughtfully out across the yard towards his shed.
‘Mrs Beetle,’ she said, firmly, ‘the bull ought to be let out. Could you help me do it? Are you afraid of bulls?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Beetle, ‘I am afraid o’ bulls. And you don’t let ’im out, miss, not if I stand ’ere till midnight. In all respect, Miss Poste, though you was to kill me for it.’
‘We could guide him towards the gate with the bull-fork, or whatever it is called,’ suggested Flora, glancing at the implement which lay across two hooks at the side of the shed.
‘No, miss,’ said Mrs Beetle.
‘Well, I shall open the gate, and try to drive him through it,’ said Flora, who was utterly terrified of bulls, and cows too, for that matter. ‘You must wave your apron at him, Mrs Beetle, and shout.’
‘Yes, miss. I’ll go up to your bedroom window,’ said Mrs Beetle, ‘and shout at ’im from there. The sound’ll carry better.’
And she nipped away like lightning before Flora could stop her. A few seconds later Flora heard her shouting shrilly from the window overhead.
‘Go on, Miss Poste. I’m ’ere!’
Flora was now rather dismayed. The situation seemed to have developed much more quickly than she had thought it would. She was extremely afraid. She stood there, idly waving the teapot, and trying to remember all she had ever read about the habits of bulls. They ran at red. Well, they would not run at her; she was all in green. They were savage, especially in spring (it was the middle of April, and the trees were in bud). They gored you …
Big Business bellowed again. It was a harsh, mournful sound; there were old swamps and rotting horns buried in it. Flora ran across the yard and pushed open the gate leading into the big field facing the farm, fastening it back. Then she took down the bull-prong, or whatever it called itself, and, standing at a comfortable distance from the shed, manoeuvred the catch back, and saw the door swing open.
Out came Big Business. It was a much less dramatic affair than she had supposed it would be. He stood for a second or two bewildered by the light, with his big head swaying stupidly. Flora stood quite still.
‘Eeee-yer! Go on, yer old brute!’ shrieked Mrs Beetle.
The bull lumbered off across the yard, still with his head
down, towards the gate. Flora followed cautiously, holding the bull-prong. Mrs Beetle screeched to her for the dear’s sake to be careful. Once Big Business half turned towards her, and she made a determined movement with the prong. Then, to her relief, he went through the gate into the grassy field, and she swung it to and shut it before he had time to turn round.
‘There!’ said Mrs Beetle, reappearing at the kitchen door with the speed of a newspaper proprietor explaining his candidate’s failure at a by-election. ‘I told you so!’
Flora replaced the bull-prong and went back into the kitchen to make her breakfast. It was nine o’clock. The postman should arrive at any minute now.
So she sat down to her breakfast in a position that gave her, through the kitchen window, a view of the path leading up to the farm, for she did not want any one of the Starkadders to get the letters from the postman before she had seen whether the invitation to the Hawk-Monitor ball was among them.
But, to her dismay, just as the figure of the postman appeared at that point of the path where it curved over the hill towards the farmhouse, it was joined by another figure. Flora craned her eyes above her cup to see who it might be. It was somebody who was hung about with a good many dead rabbits and pheasants in one way and another, so that his features were obscured from view. He stopped, said something to the postman, and Flora saw something white pass from hand to hand. The rabbit-festooned Starkadder, whoever he might be, had forestalled her. She bit crossly into a piece of toast and continued to observe the approaching figure. He soon came close enough for her to see that it was Urk.