by Dion Fortune
‘I’ve been busy at the farm,’ said Hugh. I’ve got it pretty nearly straight now. Let’s all pack up and go down there. We’ll shunt the whole party and leave no trail. We’ll be hard to trace if we get off promptly. They haven’t sold my big Rolls yet. She’s sitting at the garage. I’ll run the sports car back and get the other.’
‘I will if Uncle will,’ she said.
At that moment Jelkes reappeared. ‘Mrs Macintosh got off all right,’ he said. ‘Asked me to say good-bye to you for her.’
‘Sorry to have missed her,’ said Hugh. ‘She was a good sort, but a trifle oppressive. I don’t believe she’d have fitted in with Pan.’
‘Hugh’s got a suggestion to make, Uncle Jelkes,’ said Mona.
Hugh outlined the plan, and Jelkes looked at Mona.
‘That’s what we’re going to do, Uncle Jelkes,’ said she quietly. ‘It’s the only thing to do. We shall have all sorts of trouble if Hugh stops here.’
‘Yes,’ said Jelkes, ‘I know we shall. But, Lord, I wish it wasn’t the farm!’
‘It’s got to be the farm, Uncle Jelkes. There’s nothing to do but grip the nettle. You know that as well as I do.’
‘Magnificent,’ cried Hugh, leaping to his feet. ‘You two sling a few things together, and I’ll go and get the car,’ and he vanished before they had time to change their minds.
CHAPTER SIX
Hugh slammed the big Rolls-Royce through the traffic, and as they reached the open road the great headlights went on and the car settled down to her beautiful gait, eating up the miles until it slid silent as a ghost across the common and down the lane to the farm. Hugh pulled up beside the dark and silent buildings, switched on the inside light, and turned in the driving-seat to speak to his companions.
There, in his corner, sat Jelkes, looking like an old cock gone broody, with Mona asleep on his shoulder. The sight affected Hugh in an indescribable manner. It seemed to him that the deepest springs in his nature would be fed if a woman did that to him. Mona woke up and raised her head and their eyes met. Hugh turned away hastily lest his face should say too much.
‘Well, we get out here,’ he said. He opened the car door and held out his hand to help Mona to alight. ‘Come on. I know it’s like burgling a tomb at the moment, but we’ll soon have it more cheerful.’
They entered, the air striking cold and dank and smelling of fresh plaster. Hugh, who had no matches, struck a light on his pocket lighter, and held up the dim blue flame to illuminate their surroundings. They were not too bad. The reproduction furniture that Hugh had installed was inoffensive and went well enough with the old farm-house. Hugh lit a battered hurricane lamp hanging from a beam, and the place began to look more like a human habitation and less like the family vault.
‘Now for a fire,’ said Hugh.
Jelkes followed him through a door that led into a scullery, and thence into what had been the farmyard, and there, in the centre, they saw dimly in the moonlight an enormous pile of old lumber. They each gathered up an armful, returned to the living-room, and deposited their loads in the great empty fire-place. Hugh went out to the car and returned with a grease-gun and shot black oil all over the pile. He touched a match to it, and it went up like a volcano.
‘Now then, T.J., I’ll leave you to stoke. I’m going to the village to get some supplies.’
Arriving at the village, he was faced by the delicate task of breaking it to Mrs Pascoe, the landlady of the Green Man pub, that he was about to desert her. Things were not made any easier, however, by the fact that she apparently had company in her sanctum behind the bar, for someone was singing a languorous and long-drawn-out ditty to the accompaniment of an accordion in there. However, there was nothing for it, and Hugh overcame his shyness and knocked on the door. The accordion died away with a wail like a despairing tom-cat, the door opened, and a man stood there, obviously a seaman of the roughest type.
‘Hullo?’ said Hugh, too taken aback to think of anything else.
‘Hullo yerself,’ said the stranger, ‘and what might you be wantin’?’
‘I wanted a word with Mrs Pascoe,’ said Hugh.
‘She’s gone across to the shop. Back in a minute. I’m her son. Come inside and sit down,’ and ushered him into the lamp-lit, smoke-clouded, low-ceilinged snuggery.
‘‘Ave one with me?’ he said, taking up a stone jug that stood on the table amid the remains of a meal.
‘I don’t mind if I do,’ said Hugh, ‘I’ve had no lunch.’
‘Bite of supper?’ said the seaman.
‘No, I won’t do that,’ said Hugh. ‘I’ve got some people waiting for me, and I want to get some supper for them too; that’s what I want to see Mrs Pascoe about.’
‘She’ll be back in two tweaks. Where are you from?’
‘Up at Monks Farm.’
‘Ah, so you’re Mr Paston. Ma wasn’t expecting you back till Monday.’
A bumping in the passage announced the return of Mrs Pascoe, her arms full of parcels. Hugh explained his predicament. He had an old gentleman and a young lady, his niece, Hugh added hastily, up at the farm, and the young lady was only just out of bed, having been ill.
Mrs Pascoe was horrified, and flew round like a hen in a corn-bin. Hugh was immensely amused to see what was her notion of the primary necessities of life. A case of bottled beer, two bottles of port and a bottle of whisky made their way into the car almost of their own volition. Then at his suggestion, she got in too. Without waiting for any suggestion her nautical offspring added himself to the party, and they set off in the Rolls-Royce for Mr Huggins, the grocer.
They formed a human chain, with Mr Huggins and Mrs Pascoe at the business end and himself and Bill as mindless links in outer darkness beside the car, and it seemed as if the entire contents of the shop were being passed out to them. In fact, it was only Bill’s scientific stowage that enabled the Rolls to hold the stuff. Finally Mrs Pascoe and Mr Huggins came out to supervise the last of the loading and to wave good-bye as Hugh drove the heavily laden Rolls away.
Firelight shone out of the farm windows so brightly that Hugh wondered whether it had caught alight. But no, Jelkes had merely done as instructed, and stoked efficiently. A furnace roared up the chimney, throwing more light than the lamp.
Mona, her toes on the hearth, looked much more like herself than she had done for a long time. He drew a chair up to the hearth beside her, and dropped into it. ‘Mona, I want to talk to you. Old Jelkes cannot stay on here forever — after all, he has a business to run.’ He hesitated for a moment, and then went on: ‘You know Mrs Macintosh has let me down?’
‘Yes, so she told us. I think she was right, you know. It wouldn’t have worked.’
Hugh nodded. ‘I know, but it does present a problem. Look, Mrs Pascoe has been telling me about a really good servant girl that she could get for us. If this girl comes to live with us here at the farm will you stop on after Uncle Jelkes goes home?’
Mona thought for a minute. ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t,’ she said at length. Her Bohemian soul cared nothing for the unconventionality of the situation. There had been a momentary flutter of fear at the thought of coping with Ambrosius single-handed after Jelkes had left, but she steeled her heart. After all, what prospects had she beyond her job with Hugh?
Mona was the first to awake next morning, Hugh and Mr Jelkes being constitutionally late risers. She looked out of her window and saw the first young green on the birches, and the first sunlight over the firs, and as soon as might be she was out of doors. Living in London so long, she had hardly realized what the spring and the morning could mean to her. Some polyanthuses, velvet-brown and wine-purple, had joined the daffodils in the coarse grass at the foot of the old wall, and Mona, made sensitive by her illness, stood and looked at them. Dew sparkled on every grey blade of the dry winter grass, the heavy dew left behind by late frosts, and the little velvety faces of the polyanthuses looked up through it unharmed. The sky was the pale blue of early spring and ear
ly morning; a little mare’s tail of clouds to the south showed the way of the wind, which came in soft breaths, blowing away the chill of the dawn. Dark gorse with yellow bloom dotted the unthrifty pasture, silver birches rising among it made a fine lace of twigs against the sky, shot through as the light caught them with a faint haze of new green. The dark firs stood against the skyline as they had stood the year through, unchanging. Against the winter grey of the pasture broad stretches of bracken lay tawny; unfenced, the field stretched away and dropped into a wood with the fall of the ground. The sylvan Pan held his own here, and gave no inch to Ceres.
A hand through her arm made her jump nearly out of her skin, and she turned round to see Hugh looking down on her from his ungainly height. He smiled, and gave her arm a squeeze. ‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Very lovely,’ said Mona, and they stood together silently. A clop-clop on the drive attracted their attention, and they saw Mr Pinker arriving in an old-fashioned gig with a most extraordinary load on board, which included Mrs Pascoe, Bill Pascoe, the foreman, a boy, a quantity of planks, and in Mrs Pascoe’s motherly arms a steaming glue-pot.
Jelkes, who had left his dressing-gown behind out of politeness, ambled down in his Inverness cape and lent a touch of picturesqueness to the assemblage. Mona, whose neutral-tinted clothes seemed so drab in London, looked here as if she had risen from the grey winter pasture like Aphrodite from the foam of the sea, so perfectly did she match her surroundings.
They set the door of the living-room wide open and carried the table into the patch of sunshine that came streaming in. Mona picked some of the polyanthus and set them in a rough little earthenware jar she found on a shelf in the scullery, and placed them on the table among the gay cottage crockery, and a bee came bumbling in and got the honey from them. Hugh suddenly realized that there was a kind of happiness that had almost the quality of inebriation.
It was a great joy to them both to show Jelkes all there was to see of the interesting old buildings. Jelkes, for his part, was amused to observe that Mona was quite as possessive as Hugh in her attitude towards them.
Mona had not seen them since the general clearance of partitions and other impedimenta had taken place, and she was now able for the first time to appreciate the possibilities of the two beautiful big rooms with their fan-arching and fine fire-places. Ambrosius had evidently been a gentleman of taste who had done himself well — within the limits of ecclesiastical architectural conventions.
Returned to the dwelling-house, they were confronted by Mrs Pascoe, who had rallied all her forces with a view to planting upon them the prize skivvy, whom she was determined they should have. It appeared that there were wheels within wheels in this matter, and it gradually transpired that Miss Pumfrey was in the habit of running her establishment with the help of girls from ‘Homes’. In varying periods of time, however, these unhappy fledglings became full-fledged, realized how they were being imposed upon, and gave in their notice. Consequently they had to be replaced. Miss Pumfrey, therefore, ran her establishment with a steady succession of ignorant orphans, which the village took a malicious delight in educating in the ways of the world, for Miss Pumfrey was not popular.
The latest orphan, however, had stuck. She had been with Miss Pumfrey over a year, and in all this time she had never been out alone, but always in the company of either the elderly parlour-maid or Miss Pumfrey herself. According to Mrs Pascoe the girl was a deserving girl, being imposed upon, who wanted to better herself. After she had withdrawn, the three of them looked at each other.
‘If you take that girl, you’ve made an enemy for life of Miss Pumfrey,’ said Jelkes.
‘Do you know,’ said Mona, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone I’ve disliked quite as much as Miss Pumfrey. I’d love to snitch her skivvy.’
Mona went to tell Mrs Pascoe they would have the girl, and see what arrangements could be made for her transference, to learn that arrangements had already been made, and the girl was waiting to be fetched, and Hugh drove off with Mrs Pascoe in the Rolls forthwith.
Left alone, Jelkes cocked a sandy eyebrow at his ewe-lamb, and said: ‘Well, Mona, what are you brewing?’
‘I had been going to tell you, Uncle, only I haven’t had the chance. Mr Paston was talking to me just before you came down, and he suggested that if I had this girl with me, I could stop on here after you had gone back. It would be far handier like that while I am getting the place shipshape.’
Jelkes sat in thought for a few minutes. ‘Well, Mona,’ he said at length. ‘It’s your funeral.’
‘Are you against it, Uncle?’
‘I don’t know what to say. I don’t see what other alternative you’ve got. I suppose, providing you keep your head and handle things shrewdly, you’ll be all right, but I can’t say I’m happy about Ambrosius, and the girl would be no protection to you. Look here, why don’t you work up a job for Bill here? He’s been sounding me about it. He’d be very useful as handy-man, gardener, and general roustabout. I’d be happy, at least, much happier, about you, if you had Bill round.’
‘You do amuse me, Uncle, proposing a regular cut-throat like Bill as protection from Hugh, who’s the mildest of souls.’
‘Not so damn mild, Mona. And anyway, the milder Hugh is, the bigger handful Ambrosius will be.’
‘It strikes me that one would obtain an awfully nice result if Hugh and Ambrosius were melted and mixed into one man.’
‘That is exactly what wants doing, but how it is to be done is more than I know. We’ll just sit tight for a fortnight and see how things pan out.’
‘What are you scared of, Uncle?’
‘I’m scared of two things, child. Ambrosius is either a previous incarnation of Hugh’s or a split personality. For all practical purposes it doesn’t matter which. Everything that’s shut down in Hugh is in Ambrosius — unchecked. Hugh is pecking his way out of his shell, and as he comes out, Ambrosius is coming out too — with a rush. If you don’t handle Ambrosius just right, there’ll be the devil to pay.’
Meanwhile Hugh was waiting in the car in the village for Mrs Pascoe and the servant girl. Finally they came staggering along with a tin trunk between them. Hugh wondered what might be the reason for all this secrecy. Surely the girl could walk out at any moment provided she did not mind abandoning the wages due to her. But the moment they came alongside, he knew. He had only to take one look at the pair of vague brown eyes gazing up from that moon-like face to know the kind of Home that Miss Pumfrey, in despair, had got her latest servant from. He wondered what were the penalties for kidnapping idiot orphans, and his heart sank into his boots.
But it was too late to back out now. Mrs Pascoe hurled the trunk into the car, hurled the girl in after it, and then scrambled in herself. Hugh sighed, and drove back to the farm by a devious route, as instructed.
Leaving Mrs Pascoe and her protégée to dispose of the tin trunk, he stalked into the living-room and announced:
‘Mona, she’s loopy!’
Mona leapt to her feet. ‘What, my new skivvy?’
‘Serve you jolly well right, the pair of you,’ said Jelkes. A knocking at the door caused Hugh to stand aside and open it, and there was Mrs Pascoe.
‘Now it’s all right, Mr Paston, sir, you’ve nothing to trouble about. I see’d by your face what you felt. I know she comes from the Silly Home, but you’ve nothing to worry about. Them sort make the best kind of servants provided you get ‘em with just the right amount of silliness. They do as they’re bid.’
‘I see,’ said Hugh, who was in internal fits at the débâcle, and the faces of Mona and Mrs Pascoe. ‘Well, you’d better settle it between you,’ he said, and headed for the door, feeling he would disgrace himself if he stopped a moment longer. He was followed equally precipitately by Jelkes. Safely out in the yard, they leant up against the wall and exploded. Bill sauntered up.
‘Ullo?’ he said. ‘Has Ma stuck you with Silly Lizzie?’ and joined shamelessly in the laughter.
/> Presently Mona joined them. ‘You’re not to laugh,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a word with her, and she’s a nice, well-spoken little thing. I think she’ll be just what we want.’
The three at the farm settled down into peaceful domesticity. To everyone’s surprise, for Mona had only been singing her praises to save her own face, Silly Lizzie turned out, within limits, to be the paragon for which she was vaunted. She did everything she was told. The only drawback to her was that she did nothing she wasn’t told, however obvious. Told to roast a leg of mutton for an hour and forty minutes, she roasted it for an hour and forty minutes, and very good it was. But left alone with the chops for supper, she roasted them for an hour and forty minutes also, with results that can be guessed. However, provided she got the supervision she needed, she was the perfect servant.
Jelkes was watching over Mona intently. She was entirely absorbed in regulating the menage. Before she broke out and took to art, she had had a thoroughly sound North Country upbringing, and now that she found herself responsible for the running of a household, all her old house-craft, so resented in the learning, returned to her. Jelkes knew that the household machine Mona was so laboriously getting into running order would fall to bits the moment her hand was removed. Lizzie and Bill would do anything for her, but without her they would slow up, come to a standstill. Monks Farm would be chaos when Mona left it.
Mr Pinker was getting towards the end of his activities for the moment. There were no internal decorations to do because everything was plain worked stone. When the muck was excavated from the cloister garth, they came, eighteen inches below the surface, upon the broken flag-stones of what had once been a paved courtyard. These, re-laid, made a fine crazy paving. Once the gutters were up Hugh had an inspiration, and led the rain-water from the roof to a lily-pool in the centre of the garth. Then they all packed into the car and went off to a near-by nursery, and if Mona had not been exceedingly firm, not to say a trifle caustic, Hugh would have had the entire stock sold to him, including all the old shrubs too big to move. Jelkes watched it all, and wondered where the pair of them were going to end. Hugh leant his weight on Mona, and Mona watched over his interests with the eye of a hawk. As Jelkes could see, Hugh and Mona were settling down to platonic domesticity. All the same, he had his doubts. He knew his Mona. She had no delusions, even if Hugh had.