Authors: Stella Gibbons
And, indeed, Mrs Smiling, far away in Mouse Place, was at that moment reading with some satisfaction a telegram, saying:
‘Worst fears realized darling seth and reuben too send gumboots.’
But her resolve to sleep late into the next morning was partly frustrated by a shocking row which broke out below her window in what she, muttering sleepily and furiously from her bed, described as the middle of the night.
Male voices were raised in anger, coming up out of the blanket of dead, sullen darkness pierced by the far-off shrilling of cockerels. Flora fancied she knew one of the voices.
‘Shame on ’ee, Mus’ Reuben, to bite the hand that fed thee as a cowdling. Who should know the wants of the dumb beasts better nor me? ’Tes not for nought I nursed our Pointless when she was three days old and blind as a wren. I know what’s in her heart better than I know what’s in the hearts o’ some humans.’
‘Be that as it may,’ shouted another voice, strange to Flora, ‘Graceless has lost a leg! Where is it? Answer me that, ye doithering old fool of a man. Who will buy Graceless now when I take her down to Beershorn Market? Who wants a cow wi’ only three legs, saving some great old circus man looking round for freakies to put in his show?’
There was a piercing cry of dismay.
‘Niver put our Graceless in one o’ they circuses! The shame of it would kill me, Mus’ Reuben.’
‘Ay, and I would, tu, if I could get hold of anyone to buy her, circus or no circus. But no one will. Ay, ’tes all the same. Cold Comfort stock ne’er finds a buyer. Wi’ the Queen’s Bane blighting our corn, and the King’s Evil laying waste the clover and the Prince’s Forfeit bringin’ black ruin on the hay and the sows as barren as come-ask-it – ay, ’tes the same tale
iverywhere all over the farm. Wheer’s that leg? Answer me that?’
‘I don’t know, Mus’ Reuben. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell ’ee. I know what goes on in the hearts of the dumb beasts, wi’out spyin’ round on them to see where they leaves their legs, from morn till eve. A beast needs solitude, same as a man does. I’d take shame to myself, Mus’ Reuben, to watch over them beasts like you do, awaitin’ for dead men’s shoes, and a-countin’ every blade of sporran and mouthful the dumb beasts eat.’
‘Ay,’ said another voice, meaningly, ‘and countin’ the very feathers the chickens let fall to see as no one makes off wi’ ’em.’
‘Well, and why should I not?’ shouted the voice called Mus’ Reuben. ‘Do I pay ’ee wages, Mark Dolour, to steal the chickens’ feathers and carry them off into Beershorn and sell them for good money?’
‘I doan’t sell the feathers. May I niver set hand to plough again if I do. ’Tes my Nancy. I takes ’em whoam to my Nancy.’
‘Oh, ye do, do ye? And for why?’
‘Ye know well why,’ returned the third voice, sullenly.
‘Ay, ye told me a pack o’ tales about trimmin’ dolls’ hats wi’ the good chicken feathers. As though there was no other use for them feathers them chickens drop than to trim the hat of a lot of idle, worthless dolls. Now hark ye, Mark Dolour—’
Here Flora found it useless to try to pretend herself back into sleep any longer, so she got crossly out of bed and felt her way across the room to the glimmering grey square which marked the window. She pushed it open a little wider and called down into the darkness:
‘I say,
do
you think you would mind not talking quite so loudly, please. I
am
so sleepy, and I should be
so
grateful if you would.’
Silence, emphatic as a thunderclap, followed her request. She felt, half-asleep as she was, that it was a flabbergasted silence. She hoped, drowsily, that it would last long enough for her to drift off into sleep again; and it did.
*
When she again awoke it was daylight. She rolled over in bed and dutifully did her morning stretch and looked at her watch. It was half-past eight.
Not a sound came up from the yard outside nor from the depths of the old house. Everybody might have died in the night.
‘Not a hope of hot water, of course,’ thought Flora, wandering round the room in her dressing-gown. However, she rubbed a little of the water in the ewer (yes, there was a ewer) between her palms, and was pleased to find that it was soft water. So she did not mind washing in cold. The regiment of small porcelain jars and pots on her dressing-table would help her to protect her fair skin from any rigours of climate, but it was pleasant to know that the water was her ally.
She dressed in pleasant leisure, studying her room. She decided that she liked it.
It was square, and unusually high, and papered with a bold though faded design of darker red upon crimson. The fireplace was elegant; the grate was basket-shaped, and the mantelpiece was of marble, floridly carved, and yellowed by age and exposure. Upon the mantelpiece itself rested two large shells, whose gentle curves shaded from white to the richest salmon-pink; these were reflected in the large old silvery mirror which hung directly above it.
The other mirror was a long one; it stood in the darkest corner of the room, and was hidden by a cupboard door when the latter was opened. Both mirrors reflected Flora without flattery or malice, and she felt that she could easily learn to rely upon them. Why was it, she wondered, that people seemed to have forgotten how to make mirrors? The old mirrors one found in deserted commercial and family hotels in places like Gravesend, or in the houses of Victorian relatives at Cheltenham, were always superb.
One wall was almost filled by a large mahogany wardrobe. A round table to match stood in the middle of the worn red and yellow carpet, which was covered with a design of big flowers. The bed was high, and made of mahogany; the quilt was a honeycomb, and white.
There were two steel engravings upon the walls, in frames of light yellow wood. One showed the ‘Grief of Andromache on Beholding the Dead Body of Hector’. The other showed the ‘Captivity of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra’.
Flora pounced on some books which lay on the broad window-sill; ‘Macaria, or Altars of Sacrifice’, by A. J. Evans-Wilson; ‘Home Influence’, by Grace Aguilar; ‘Did She Love Him?’ by James Grant, and ‘How She Loved Him’, by Florence Marryat. She put these treasures away in a drawer, promising herself a gloat when she should have time. She liked Victorian novels. They were the only kind of novel you could read while you were eating an apple.
The curtains were magnificent. They were of soiled but regal red brocade, and kept much of the light and air out of the room. Flora looped them back, and decided that today they must be washed. Then she went down to breakfast.
She followed a broad corridor, lit by dirty windows hung with soiled lace curtains, until it came to a flight of stairs; and at the foot of the stairs, through an open door, she could see into a room with a stone floor. She paused here for a second, and noticed a tray on which was the remainder of what had obviously been a large breakfast, lying on the floor outside a closed door a little way along the corridor. Good. Someone had breakfasted in their room, and if someone else could, so could she.
A smell of burnt porridge floated up from the depths. This did not seem promising, but she went down the stairs, her low heels clipping firmly on the stone.
At first she thought the kitchen was empty. The fire was almost out, and ash was blowing along the floor, and the table was covered with the intimidating remnants of some kind of a meal in which porridge seemed to have played the chief part. The door leading into the yard was open and the wind blew sluggishly in. Before she did anything else, Flora went across and crisply shut it.
‘Eh!’ protested a voice from the back of the kitchen, near the sink. ‘Niver do that, Robert Poste’s child. I cannot cletter the dishes and watch the dumb beasts in the cowshed both together
if ye shut the door. Ay, and there’s something else I’m watchin’ for, too.’
Flora recognized one of the voices which had disturbed her in the middle of the night. It belonged to old Adam Lambs-breath. He had been listlessly slicing turnips over the sink, and had interrupted his work to make his protest.
‘I am so sorry,’ she replied, firmly, ‘but I never could eat breakfast with a draught in the room. You can have it open again as soon as I have finished.
Is
there any breakfast, by the way?’
Adam shuffled forward into the light. His eyes were like slits of primitive flint in their worn sockets. Flora wondered if he ever washed.
‘There’s porridge, Robert Poste’s child.’
‘Is there any bread and butter and some tea? I don’t much care for porridge. And have you a piece of clean newspaper I could just put on the corner of this table (a half-sheet will be enough) to protect me from the porridge. It seems to have got tossed about a bit this morning, doesn’t it?’
‘There’s tea i’ the jar, yonder, and bread and butter i’ the crocket. Ye mun find ’em yourself, Robert Poste’s child. I have my task to do and my watch to keep, and I cannot run here and run there to fetch newspapers for a capsy wennet. Besides, we’ve troubles enough at Cold Comfort wi’out bringing in sich a thing as a clamourin’ newspaper to upset us and fritten us.’
‘Oh, have you? What troubles?’ asked Flora, interestedly, as she busily made fresh tea. It occurred to her that this might be a good opportunity to learn something about the other members of the family. ‘Haven’t you enough money?’
For she knew that this is what is the matter with nearly everybody over twenty-five.
‘There’s money enough i’ the farm, Robert Poste’s child, but ’tes all turned to sourness and ruin. I tell ye’ – here Adam advanced nearer to the interested Flora and thrust his lined and wrinkled face, indelibly etched by the corrosive acids of his dim, monotonous years, almost into hers – ‘there’s a curse on Cold Comfort.’
‘Indeed!’ said Flora, withdrawing slightly. ‘What sort of a curse? Is that why everything looks so gone to seed and what-not?’
‘There’s no seeds, Robert Poste’s child. That’s what I’m tellin’ ye. The seeds wither as they fall into the ground, and the earth will not nourish ’em. The cows are barren and the sows are farren and the King’s Evil and the Queen’s Bane and the Prince’s Heritage ravages our crops. ’Cos why? ’Cos there’s a curse on us, Robert Poste’s child.’
‘But, look here, couldn’t something be done about it? I mean, surely Cousin Amos could get a man down from London or something. – (This bread is really not at all bad, you know. Surely you don’t bake it here.) – Or perhaps Cousin Amos could sell the farm and buy another one, without any curse on it, in Berkshire or Dorsetshire?’
Adam shook his head. A curious veil, like the withdrawing of intelligence from the eyes of a tortoise, flickered across his face.
‘Nay. There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort. ’Tes impossible for any on us to dream o’ leavin’ here. There’s reasons why we can’t. Mrs Starkadder, she’s sot on us stayin’ here. ’Tes her life, ’tes the life in her veins.’
‘Cousin Judith, you mean? Well, she doesn’t seem very happy here.’
‘Nay, Robert Poste’s child. I mean the old lady – old Mrs Starkadder.’ His voice sunk to a whisper, so that Flora had to bend her tall head to catch the last words.
He glanced upwards, as though indicating that old Mrs Starkadder was in heaven.
‘Is she dead, then?’ asked Flora, who was prepared to hear anything at Cold Comfort, even that all the family was kept in order by a domineering ghost.
Adam laughed: a strange sound like the whickering snicker of a teazle in anger.
‘Nay. She’m alive, right enough. Her hand lies on us like iron, Robert Poste’s child. But she never leaves her room, and she never sees no one but Miss Judith. She’s never left the farm this last twenty years.’
He stopped suddenly, as though he had said too much. He began to withdraw to his dark corner of the kitchen.
‘I mun cletter the dishes now. Leave me be in peace, Robert Poste’s child.’
‘Oh, all right. But I do wish you would call me Miss Poste. Or even Miss Flora, if you’d rather be all feudal. I do feel that “Robert Poste’s child” every time is rather a mouthful, don’t you?’
‘Leave me in peace; I mun cletter the dishes.’
Seeing that he was really bent on doing some work, Flora let him be, and thoughtfully finished her breakfast.
So that was what it was. Mrs Starkadder was the curse of Cold Comfort. Mrs Starkadder was the Dominant Grandmother Theme, which was found in all typical novels of agricultural life (and sometimes in novels of urban life, too). It was, of course, right and proper that Mrs Starkadder should be in possession at Cold Comfort; Flora should have suspected her existence from the beginning. Probably it was Mrs Starkadder, otherwise Aunt Ada Doom, who had sent the postcard with the reference to generations of vipers. Flora was sure that the old lady was Aunt Ada Doom, and none other. It was a most Aunt Ada-ish thing to do, to send a postcard like that. Flora’s mother would have said at once, Flora was sure, ‘That’s typical of Ada.’
If she intended to tidy up life at Cold Comfort, she would find herself opposed at every turn by the influence of Aunt Ada. Flora was sure that this would be so. Persons of Aunt Ada’s temperament were not fond of a tidy life. Storms were what they liked; plenty of rows, and doors being slammed, and jaws sticking out, and faces white with fury, and faces brooding in corners, and faces making unnecessary fuss at breakfast, and plenty of opportunities for gorgeous emotional wallowings, and partings for ever, and misunderstandings, and interferings, and spyings, and, above all, managing and intriguing. Oh, they
did
enjoy themselves! They were the sort that went trampling all over your pet stamp collection, or whatever it was, and then spent the rest of their lives atoning for it. But you would rather have had your stamp collection.
Flora thought of ‘The Higher Common Sense’, by the Abbé Fausse-Maigre. This work had been written as philosophic treatise; it was an attempt, not to explain the Universe, but to reconcile Man to its inexplicability. But, in spite of its impersonal theme, ‘The Higher Common Sense’ provided a guide for civilized persons when confronted with a dilemma of the Aunt Ada type. Without actually laying down rules of conduct, ‘The Higher Common Sense’ outlined a philosophy for the Civilized Being, and the rules of conduct followed automatically. Where ‘The Higher Common Sense’ was silent, the Pensées of the same author often gave guidance.