The Daughters of Mrs Peacock

by Gerald Bullet

  Sunday dawned, bright with delusive promise. Once again there was the chapel-going, the hearty luncheon, the aimless afternoon walk filled with Ellen’s incessant prattle about the children she ministered to and the prospect of becoming a fully-fledged teacher. The day, with enormous sloth, dragged on; the crisis of evening loomed ahead; and in due time the same hobnobbery of neighbours arrived, bursting with solemn expectation of improving their minds, in a godly, intellectual fashion, by reading Cary’s Dante together: Mr and Mrs Ironmonger Grigg, Mr Purbeck the long-nosed chemist, old Mr Jolly the saddler, and a dried-up spinsterish person, Miss Latti, at whose shop one could buy hosiery, glassware, letter-paper, string, yesterday’s newspapers, and honey from her own hives. These came, but no Robert. True, he had said, or implied, that he would not, could not come; but Catherine in her heart of hearts could not quite believe he would be as bad as his word.

  ‘So you girls have been out gallivanting with my excellent partner, I find,’ said Mr Peacock.

  ‘He took us to see the Ruins,’ said Sarah. ‘Wasn’t it good of him? We hadn’t visited them since we were at school, all those years ago. I’d quite forgotten how dull they were.’

  ‘Did you mention that to your escort, by any chance? He must have been highly gratified.’

  ‘When Sarah says dull she doesn’t mean dull in a dull way,’ said Catherine. ‘She means historical. We liked it very much and were most polite. You’d have been proud of us, Papa. He told us about the monks and their spiritual exercises, and how all the work was done by the unspiritual ones. Would you have been a monk, Papa, if you’d lived in those days? Think how nice it would have been not having any daughters to worry about.’

  ‘Very true, my love. A blissful thought. But let’s not dwell on it. Tell me more.’

  ‘There’s no more to tell,’ said Sarah. ‘Not really. Except that—would you believe it?—the fascinating Mrs Stapleton was there, lying in wait for him.’

  ‘Ready to pounce,’ said Catherine.

  ‘Like a cat at a mousehole,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Or a scorpion,’ Catherine suggested. ‘Or a giant spider.’

  ‘A versatile lady,’ said Mr Peacock. ‘And did she pounce?’

  ‘Not exactly, did she, Sarah? She just waited for him to walk into her parlour. Do you think she means to gobble him up, Papa?’

  ‘She hasn’t acquainted me with any such intention, my dear Kitty. Would you like me to inquire for you?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Catherine confessed. ‘It would be nice to know.’

  ‘This passion for knowledge is very commendable in you, my child. Does it extend to other spheres, or only to Mrs Stapleton?’

  ‘We want to know everything,’ Sarah assured him. ‘Don’t we, Kitty? What’s been happening while we’ve been away?’

  ‘Life has gone on,’ said her father, ‘in spite of your regretted absence. The sun has risen punctually every morning, much to its credit. The cows have been milked and the pigs fed.’

  ‘And Mama?’

  ‘Yes, Sarah, she too has been fed, and she continues to enjoy good health.’

  ‘What a tease you are, Papa!’ cried Catherine. ‘Haven’t you any news for us?’

  ‘If by news you mean news of scandal or disaster, as of course you do, I’m afraid I must disappoint you, Kitty. We at Lutterfield, you know, live in a quiet corner of the world, minding our business, and growing a little older every day. But yes,’ he went on, in a brighter tone, ‘there is one little item. The poor old Vicar has taken to his bed, and young Pardew now conducts the services. That’s the best I can do for you, but it’s something, you’ll admit.’

  ‘Poor Mr Garnish! Is he very ill?’

  ‘Julia will tell you all about it. She’s been several times to see him. She’s a good girl, your sister, and a brave one.’

  ‘Brave, Papa?’

  ‘Yes, and needs to be, with the formidable Mrs Budge to tackle. She’s a dragon, that woman, by all accounts.’

  Catherine’s eyes sparkled: with excitement, compassion, and the light of battle. Robert Crabbe for the moment was forgotten in the exhilaration of homecoming, the prospect of family gossip. She found it difficult to imagine that Julia, dear mild Julia, could be a match for the Budge; and as the train slowed to a standstill at Lutterfield station it was more difficult still, for there she was on the platform waiting to welcome them, prim, serious, elegant, her lips slightly parted, her dark eyes full of watchful affection.

  ‘Well, my dears!’ she said, almost in Mama’s manner. Her sisters flung themselves upon her. ‘Goodness, you’re smothering me!’ The kisses over, the laughter and excitement subsiding, ‘There’s a letter from Aunt Druid,’ she announced. ‘An invitation for Sarah. You’ll like that, won’t you, Sarah?’

  ‘Shall I?’ said Sarah. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you’re not to go till September, thank goodness,’ said Julia. ‘We’ve missed you both dreadfully, Mama and I.’

  ‘And what about me?’ demanded Mr Peacock. ‘Haven’t I missed them, the baggages?’

  ‘Have you really, Papa?’ said Catherine, gratified.

  ‘Well, my dear, I am your father, you know. Or so I have been led to believe. It’s at least a plausible hypothesis,’ he added judicially.

  That Aunt Druid should be visited was a family obligation, and this year it was Sarah’s turn. The prospect did not allure her; she expected little pleasure from it; but short of making a fuss and displeasing Mama there was nothing she could do about it. To make a fuss was not in her character: to be placid and sensible and do what was required of her was apparently her destiny; and her trick of detachment, her capacity for extracting amusement from little things, and especially from the oddities of her fellow-creatures, made it easier to comply than to rebel. Yet of late, ever since her rejection of Mr Pardew, she had been conscious at intervals of a vague discontent, a half-formed wish that something, she didn’t know what, might happen to her. Time was passing, life was drifting away, and to be an amused spectator was not, was not always, quite enough. Boredom was an experience unknown to her, but now, at moments, it hovered, a threatening shadow.

  Meonthorpe, they said, would be ‘a nice change’ for her. She assented to the proposition, but without believing it. No sooner, however, had she said good-bye and boarded the slow-going cross-country train, taking care, as commanded, to choose a compartment containing other female passengers who would protect her from rape, than her mood changed. The unaccustomed sensation of being alone, with no one but herself to consider, was exhilarating, and the journey that had been embarked upon reluctantly began to assume the aspect of adventure. It was two years since she had seen her Meonthorpe relations: by now they would be almost strangers to her. But Aunt Druid—whom to her face one must remember to call Aunt Bertha—was after all Mama’s sister, and therefore worth studying. That she was Mama’s sister, that the two had been girls together, was a truth stranger than fiction: only by an effort of the imagination could it be believed.

  The warmth of her welcome left nothing to be desired.

  ‘How you’ve grown, my dear!’ said Aunt Druid admiringly. ‘And what nice plump, rosy cheeks!’

  ‘It’s hardly likely, Aunt Bertha. I stopped growing years ago.’

  ‘Oh, but you have! Hasn’t she, Father?’

  ‘Youth’s the time for growth,’ said Uncle Druid, earnestly regarding his niece and carefully weighing every word. ‘My meaning, if a body doesn’t grow when he’s young he never will, nor she neither, if you follow me.’ Opening his eyes wider, ‘It stand to reason,’ he urged, with the air of one imparting an important discovery. ‘Let me put it another way, young lady. The seed falls to the ground. And presently, what happens? The soil nurridges it, so to say; the rain gives it moisture; the sun gives it warmth; and it begins to grow. Am I right? Very well then. But mark this: when it’s finished growing it doesn’t grow any more. There’s a lesson for us there.’

  ‘Yes, uncle,’ agreed Sarah.
‘I expect there is.’

  ‘Ah, there’s always a lesson,’ remarked Aunt Bertha, ‘if only we could find it. But come along, my dear, you’ll be ready for your tea, I‘ll be bound.’

  ‘So she will,’ said Uncle Druid, ‘and so she should be, seeing the perilous long way she’s come, poor soul. After a train-journey, nurridgement. It’s the law of nature.’

  ‘That’s very true, Father. You’ll find your Cousin Patience in the kitchen, my dear. She’ll have wetted the leaves by now, if I’m any judge. We won’t wait for Barney. He’ll come when he can from the milking.’

  Aunt Bertha, unlike her sister, was short and plump. She had the kind of resolutely pious face that one sees in stained-glass windows: the conventional halo was all but visible. She was kind and earnest; spoke with an exaggerated gentleness, as to a backward child; and shared with her husband the habit of sententiousness. Which of them, Sarah wondered, had acquired from the other this talent for investing the obvious with moral glamour? Or had their common possession of it drawn them together? Aunt Bertha was older than Mama by several years. Her cheeks, though plump, were colourless, her eyes soulful, her hair sparse and peppery. Uncle Druid was broad and burly, with ferocious eyebrows, a ruddy complexion, and a forest of black beard. Such conversation as his came oddly from a man whom Nature had designed as a pirate, or a highwayman, but was in fact a working farmer. Out of the strong came forth triteness.

  ‘A boiled egg will restore the tissues, as the saying goes, so long as it’s not too hard nor yet too soft. Too soft is too soft, if you take my meaning, and too hard is harder than it should be. Lightly boiled is the rule, some say; but I say, rightly boiled.’ He repeated the aphorism with solemn relish. ‘Whether it’s eggs or no matter what,’ he continued, ‘always do right, and you can’t go wrong: that’s my motto, isn’t it, Mother? And that, you know, Sarah my dear, is the trouble with this modern world of ours. We live in an age of hurry and scurry, scamper and rush, no time for this, no time for that, no time to get anything right. But you can trust your aunt. You’re safe with her—eh, Mother? And with Patience too. Patience by name and patience by nature, is our Patience. Four and a half minutes, neither more nor less. There’s a time for everything, as the Good Book says. A time for laughing and a time for weeping and a time for boiling eggs. Do you follow me, niece?’

  ‘Yes, uncle. I think I understand.’

  ‘How many lumps, my dear?’ asked Aunt Bertha, sugar tongs in hand.

  ‘One, please, Aunt Bertha.’

  ‘Three score years and ten,’ said Uncle Druid, rather sternly. ‘And honey from our own bees.’

  He looked round the table in a knowing manner, with the air of having clinched a difficult argument.

  ‘How are they all at home?’ asked Cousin Patience, breaking a mystified silence.

  ‘Quite well, thank you,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Uncle Edmund?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Aunt Emily?’

  ‘And Julia,’ said Sarah, ‘and Catherine. All well, thank you, Cousin Patience.’

  ‘I do hope dear Barney won’t be long,’ sighed Aunt Bertha. ‘The tea will be stewed.’

  ‘That’s another thing we can learn from,’ said Uncle Druid. ‘The hive. Industry and per-sevverance. Service for others. Busy all day long gathering honey for us.’

  ‘God’s little husbandmen,’ interpolated Aunt Bertha.

  ‘For us, uncle? Surely not!’

  ‘For you and me, Sarah. For your Aunt Bertha. For your Cousin Patience. Milk from the cow, honey from the bee. That’s Providence, that is. Isn’t it, Mother?’

  ‘Yes, dear. All good things around us, as the hymn says.’

  ‘In the comb,’ said Uncle Druid. ‘But not till we’ve finished our eggs.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Sarah meekly, ‘but all the same I’m glad I’m not a bee. For one thing they haven’t any sex worth speaking of, except the queen and the poor drones. It seems rather an unfair arrangement.’

  ‘My dear,’ said Aunt Bertha, ‘we don’t talk of things like that.’ She smiled forgivingly.

  ‘Don’t you, Aunt Bertha? We do,’ answered Sarah. She glanced expectantly towards her uncle, hoping for a further instalment of wisdom. He did not disappoint her.

  ‘Nature,’ said Uncle Druid, announcing his new text. ‘You can’t go against Nature. Rain and sun. Seedtime and harvest. Take the bees, take the flowers, take anything you choose,’ he added generously, ‘and what have you got, what does it all amount to? Nature. Consider the lilies how they grow, said Our Lord. They toil not, neither do they spin. But they’re there, there’s no denying, and you may depend on it, they’re there for a good reason. Why, you may ask. Why are they there? Why do they grow and grow and … in short, why do they grow? The flowers of the field. The poppies in the corn. The buttercups, the dandelions, the daisies. Every spring they appear, every summer they bloom, every autumn they shed their petals, every winter they die down. But they’re there, Sarah, they’re still there, biding their time, as you might say. Why? I’ll tell you. Because of Nature.’

  ‘And,’ said Aunt Bertha, gently corrective, ‘because it’s God’s will.’

  ‘Amen, Mother,’ said Uncle Druid. Throwing back his head he lifted his cup and poured its contents into a small red gap in his beard. ‘Ah, that’s better. There’s nothing like a cup of tea.’

  In the conversational lull that followed, Sarah had time to take stock of her situation: the low ceiled red-tiled kitchen, the open brick hearth, the chimneypiece with its gleaming array of pots and pans, and the proximity, half-seen, half-heard, of the cobbled yard. Through the narrow sash-window, open three inches at the top, came the rhythmic, resonant sound of warm milk spurting into a pail. To her ears it was a familiar music, but here at Meonthorpe the sense of farm was stronger, more pervasive, than at home. There it was an incidental accompaniment to a more elegant style of living: here it was the prime business of life, to which all other activities were subordinate. As she listened, lost in drowsy reflection, the sound of milking ceased; there was a rattle of loosening chains, a man’s voice speaking, the slap of a broad buttock, the soft thud of hooves as the cattle slowly lumbered across the yard; and a few moments later, with a great clatter of boots, Barnabas Druid burst into the kitchen, a lean giant of a man, already going bald, with a small, sharp-featured face, prominent ears, a straggling wisp of sun-coloured moustache. He brought with him a pungent suggestion of farmyard.

  ‘Daisy’s going dry, governor! What d’you make of that?’ He dragged a chair up to the table, sat himself down, and began voraciously eating.

  ‘There’s manners for you!’ said his mother fondly. ‘Aren’t you going to say how-d’you-do to your Cousin Sarah, dear?’

  ‘Eh? Hullo, cousin! So you’ve arrived then? Pleasant journey?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ If a dog could talk, thought Sarah, it would talk like Cousin Barnabas.

  ‘That’s the style. What about a cup of tea, Mother?’

  ‘Manners,’ said Uncle Druid, ‘are what you like to make of them. The way I look at it, there’s good manners and there’s bad manners, and what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over, as my old father used to say. When he was alive, that is,’ he explained, turning to Sarah. ‘Dead and gone now this many a year, poor soul.’

  He proceeded to embroider the theme, but Sarah, though she appeared to give him her full attention, was no longer listening. Fascinated though she was by the quality of her uncle’s discourse, and longing for the time when she would be able to share him with Catherine, for the moment she could hold no more.

  ‘Quite right, Father,’ said Aunt Bertha. ‘The important thing, for us all, is to set a good example.’

  Patience took no part in the conversation. She attended diligently to the wants of the others, and for the rest sat in silence, munching, sipping, unsmiling: a woman of perhaps forty whose premature greyness and apathetic expression made her seem scarcely you
nger than her mother. As for Barnabas, he did not open his mouth again except to put food into it or to interrupt his father’s flow of words with a curt remark about crops, market prices, the weather. It was small wonder, Sarah reflected, that Uncle Druid’s surviving children were inclined to be taciturn: the three others she had vaguely heard of had no doubt been talked to death in their infancy. The wonder was, not that they were silent, these two, but that dear Uncle Druid, with so much to say, had ever found time to initiate them. Despite these unuttered sarcasms, however, and though already she was counting the days to her return, she did not regret having come. Whether ‘nice’ or not, a change it certainly was, to be living in a genuine farmhouse, with full-time farmers, and surrounded by excitingly unfamiliar country. She promised herself some good long walks; she might, it was just possible, meet some new people to add to her collection of human specimens; and there was always a chance that something amusing might happen during the next thirteen days.

  What is a man to do when, having wilfully with resolute folly involved himself with a bold-eyed, tenacious Cleopatra, he becomes aware of young Juliet, fair as the morning and sweetly beckoning, and finds himself distracted in his too-successful pursuit of the one by inconvenient visions of the other? Leaving Robert Crabbe to resolve this problem as best he can, for it will take him some time, let us turn in parenthesis to another theme, to Julia: who, like her young sister but from motives more genuinely disinterested, was now engaging in a work of rescue. Death was the adversary she had set herself to circumvent, and Fear, his cunning lieutenant. She had entered the battle without enthusiasm, animated by nothing but her unsleeping sense of duty, the unarguable necessity of doing the right, the neighbourly thing; but before many weeks were past she had found herself deeply, personally concerned, moving in a region of dark and palpitating mystery; and now, with her mother’s consent and approval, she was visiting the vicarage almost every day, leaving Catherine to cope, willy nilly, with the various small household tasks that normally fell to the lot of Mama’s Right Hand. That she, Julia, should have been willing to resign that proud office, even for a while, gives the measure of her new zeal.