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.
She was much disconcerted. It could not have been worse.
‘Turns you up, don’t it, seein’ ter-day’s dinner come in ’anging round someone’s neck like that?’ observed Mrs Beetle, who was loading a tray with food to take up to Mrs Doom. ‘Ter-morrer’s, too, for all I know, and the day after’s. Give me cold storage, any day.’
Urk opened the door of the kitchen and came slowly into the room.
He had been shooting rabbits. His narrow nostrils were slightly distended to inhale the blood-odour from the seventeen which hung round his neck. Their cold fur brushed his hands lightly and imploringly like little pleas for mercy, and his buttocks were softly brushed by the draggled tail-feathers of five pheasants which hung from the pheasant-belt encircling his waist. He felt the weight of the twenty-five dead animals he bore (for there was a shrew or two in his breast-pocket) pulling him down, like heavy, dark-blooded roots into the dumb soil. He was drowsy with killing, in the mood of a lion lying on a hippopotamus with its mouth full.
He held the letters in front of him, looking down at them with a sleepy stare. Flora saw, with a start of indignation, that his thumb had left a red mark upon an envelope addressed in Charles’s neat hand.
This was quite intolerable. She rose quickly to her feet, holding out her hand:
‘My letters, please,’ she said, crisply.
Urk pushed them across the table to her, but he kept one in his hand, turning it over curiously to look at a crest upon the back of the envelope. (‘Oh, Lord!’ thought Flora.)
‘I think that one is for me, too,’ she said.
Urk did not answer. He looked up at her, then down at the letter, then across at Flora again. When his voice came, it was a throaty snarl:
‘Who’s writing to you from Howchiker?’
‘Mary, Queen of Scots. Thanks,’ said Flora, with deplorable pertness, and twitched it out of his hand. She slipped it into the pocket of her coat, and sat down to finish her breakfast. But the low, throaty snarl cut once more across the silence:
‘Ye’re smart, aren’t yer? Think I don’t know what’s going on … wi’ books from London and all that rot. Now you listen to me. She’s mine, I tell you … mine. She’s my woman, same as a hen belongs to a cock, and no one don’t have her except me, ye see? She were promised to me the day she were born, by her Grandmother. I put a cross in water-vole’s blood on her feedin’-bottle when she was an hour old, to mark her for mine, and held her up so’s she might see it and know she was mine … And every year since then, on her birthday, I’ve taken her up to Ticklepenny’s Corner and we’ve hung over th’ old well until we see a water-vole, and I’ve said to her, I’ve said, “Remember.” And all she would saywas: “What, Cousin Urk?” But she knows all right. She knows. When the water-voles mate under the may trees this summer I’ll make her mine. Dick Hawk-Monitor … what’s he? A bit of a boy! Playin’ at horses in a red coat, like his daddy afore him. Many a time I’ve lay and laughed at ’em … fools. Me and the water-voles, we can afford to wait for what we want. So you heed what I say, miss. Elfin’s mine. I doan’t mind her bein’ a bit above me’ (here his voice thickened in a manner which caused Mrs Beetle to make a sound resembling ‘t-t-t-t-’), ‘’cause a man likes his piece to be a bit dainty. But she’s mine—’
‘We heard,’ said Flora; ‘you said it before.’
‘—and God help the man or woman who tries to take her from me. Me and the water-voles, we’ll get her back.’
‘Are those water-voles round your neck?’ asked Flora, interestedly. ‘I’ve never seen any before. What a lot of them all at once!’
He turned from her, with a peculiar stooping, stealthy, swooping movement, and padded out of the kitchen.
‘Well I never,’ said Mrs Beetle, loudly; ‘there’s a narsty temper for you.’
Flora placidly agreed that it was, but she made up her mind that Elfine must be taken up to Town that very day, instead of tomorrow, as she had planned.
She had meant to take Elfine up on the day before the ball, but there was no time to be lost. If Urk suspected that they were going to the ball he would probably try to stop them. They must be sure of the dress, and of Elfine’s shorn head, whatever happened. They must go at once. She rose, leaving her breakfast unfinished, and hurried upstairs to Elfine’s room. She found Elfine just returned from her walk.
Flora quickly told her of the change in their plans and left her to get ready while she hurried downstairs to try to find Seth, and to ask him to drive them down to the station. They could just catch the ten fifty-nine to town.
Seth was hanging over the fence round the great field, looking sullenly at Big Business, who was cantering round and round, bellowing.
‘Someone’s let the bull out,’ said Seth, pointing.
‘I know. I did. And quite time, too,’ said Flora. ‘But never mind that now. Seth, will you drive Elfine and me down to Beershorn, to catch the ten fifty-nine?’
Her request was made in a cool, pleasant voice. Yet the softly-burning, perpetual ruby flame of romance in Seth responded to some tremor
of urgency in her tones. Besides, he wanted to go to the Hawk-Monitor’s dance, and see if it was at all like the hunt ball scene in ‘Silver Hoofs’, the stupendous drama of English country life which Intro-Pan-National had made a year or two ago, and he guessed that Flora was taking Elfine up to London to buy her dress. He did not want anything to interfere with the preparations for the ball.
He said ‘Ay’, he would, and lounged away with his curious animal grace to get out the buggy.
Adam appeared at the door of the cowshed, where he had been milking Graceless, Pointless, Feckless, Aimless and Fury. His old body was bent like a thorn against a sharp dazzle of sticky buds bursting from the boughs of a chestnut-tree which hung over into the yard.
‘Eh, eh – someone’s let the bull out,’ he said. ‘’Tes terrible … I – I mun soothe our Feckless. She’m not herself. Who let ’un out?’
‘I did,’ said Flora, buckling the belt of her coat.
And distant shouts came from the back of the farm, where Micah and Ezra were busy setting up the hitten-piece which supported the bucket above the well.
‘Th’ bull’s out!’
‘Who let out Big Business?’
‘Who let ’un loose?’
‘Ay, ’tes terrible!’
Flora had been writing on a leaf from her pocket-diary, which she now gave to Adam, and instructed him to pin it on the door of the kitchen where it could be seen by everyone as they came hurrying into the yard. It said:
‘I did. F. Poste.’
The buggy came out into the yard with Viper in the shafts and Seth holding the reins, just as Elfine, wearing a deplorable blue cape, appeared at the kitchen door.
‘Jump up, my dear. We have no time to waste,’ cried Flora, mounting the step of the buggy.
‘Who let th’ bull out?’ thundered Reuben, starting from the pig-pen, where he had been delivering a sow who was experienced enough, heaven knows, to deliver herself, but who enjoyed being fussed over.