by Dion Fortune
“I thought as much,” exclaimed Mona bitterly. “I felt certain Mrs Macintosh had been messing things up.”
“Well, Mona, she knows Hugh pretty thoroughly, and she knows his kind of world pretty thoroughly. I've told you from the beginning that it doesn't do to take Hugh seriously in his present condition. As soon as he steadies, he'll go back to the life he's used to, you can make up your mind to that. As long as you do make up your mind to it, it will be all right, but what I've been afraid of all along was that you'd take Hugh seriously, and get hurt.”
“I don't take Hugh seriously,” said Mona. “He wouldn't amuse me. He's much too neutral. If it were Ambrosius, now, it would be a different matter.”
“Mona, you're absolutely shameless. If! didn't know you were talking nonsense I should say you were an abandoned hussy.”
“Yes, Hugh and Ambrosius, mixed in equal parts, would really be rather nice; but I wouldn't take Hugh neat if he were the last man on earth. I know my own nature better than that. I am not surprised his wife played him up, I'm not, really. I'm awfully sorry for Hugh, and all that, but—well, being sorry for a man won't hold a woman that's got any guts in her.”
“Well, my dear, may be you're right, but I lament your language.”
Hugh, meanwhile, was waiting beside an ominouslooking mound, like a prehistoric pit-dwelling, out of which stuck a length of stove-pipe. Luckily for him, he had not long to wait, for that stove-pipe was not a pleasant neighbour. Hugh had just begun to speculate upon its analogue at Monks Farm, and the amenities of country life in general, including the opportunities for feuds in a circumscribed society, when he heard a crackling in the undergrowth, and there appeared Mrs Pascoe and a girl, 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. In fact, he had always understood that the thing to do in such circumstances was to get your wages and then walk out, together with anything you could lay your hands on. At least, that was Frida's idea of the modern domestic. Why, therefore, the secretive get-away?
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. It was a judgment on them for being so spiteful as to snitch Miss Pumfrey's skivvy; there might be something after all in the Christian ethic of returning good for evil—at any rate, it prevented one from saddling oneself with weak-minded servant-girls.
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 protegee to dispose of the tin trunk, he stalked into the living-room and announced:
“Mona, she's loopy!”
Mona leapt to her feet in horror. “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. There isn't a better servant to be had than a silly girl who ain't too silly. They do as they're bid, and none of the others does.”
“I see,” said Hugh, who was in internal fits at the debacle, and the faces of Mona and Mrs Pascoe, and Mrs Pascoe's viewpoint. “They're like medlars, are they, not ripe till they're rotten?”
“I couldn't say about that, sir, we don't grow medlars round this way. But she's a real good girl, and that respectable, you wouldn't believe.”
“Well, you'd better settle it between you,” said Hugh, and headed for the door, feeling he would disgrace himself if he stopped a moment longer. He was followed equally precipitately by Jelkes, who appeared to be in the same predicament.
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 guffaws.
Presently Mona joined them.
“You're not to laugh,” she said. “It's very naughty of you. I've had a word with her, and she's a nice, wellspoken little thing. I think she'll be just what we want.”
“That's what I sez,” said Bill. “Only Ma don't think so when I'm about.”
Jelkes went off in fresh fits. Here was an additional complication. Mrs Pascoe had evidently not contemplated a shore job for her son when she laid her plans. It was a judgment on the lot of them. A special Providence evidently watched over Miss Pumfrey.
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. What she knew, she knew. But what she didn't know, she left severely alone, regardless of the gaps occasioned in the domestic service. 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.
CHAPTER XIX
JELKES and Hugh were both watching Mona from their different viewpoints. She was entirely absorbed in regulating the ménage. Before she broke out and took to art, she had had a thoroughly sound North Country up-bringing, 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. Hugh watched her with interest. The kind of housekeeping he was accustomed to see done in his household was a very different affair to this, and consisted mainly in snatching up the inter-house telephone and saying how many people would be coming to dinner. This absorbed interest, this joyous pride, was something quite new to him. Incidentally, it was new to Mona also. She would never have believed it of herself. But she found it to be a very different matter, running her own show. to helping her mother. Which is one of the reasons, perhaps, why the totally undomesticated maiden is not always a sloven when she marries.
Jelkes also watched proceedings with interest, for he 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, and then get into every sort of reverse. Monks Farm would not merely be chaos, but Hades when Mona left it, thought Jelkes. Now if Mona played her cards cleverly—thought he—But would she? He was pretty certain she wouldn't. Mona valued all sorts of imponderables, and like most women with ideals, could be extraordinarily stupid where her own interests were concerned. He sighed. Mona was neither to hold nor to bind by any male. He could manage Hugh, however, Hugh was easy. So he made up his mind to slip into the background and bide his time.
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. Guided by that expert in ancient buildings, Hugh had not subjected the old priory to the indignity of central heating, but had contented himself with putting an enormous stove in the cellar where Ambrosius had met his end.
“There's some,” said Mr Pinker, “as would have run ye into hundreds of pounds, sir, to warm the place, and then it wouldn't hev' bin warm. Ye can't shove central heatin' into a place that ain't built for it. It don't do no good. It's ag
ainst nature. But you spend ten pun' on a big stove for the cellar, and leave the cellar door open, and you're all right. Heal's bound to rise. Can't help itself.”
Hugh thanked the old craftsman, and admired his honesty. Perhaps, however, if Mr Pinker's plumber son had been a better hot-water engineer it would have been a different story.
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—Miss Pumfrey scorned gutters—on her tenants' houses, anyway—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. But even so, as Mona had truly remarked, that wasn't enough for a woman with—Jelkes would not avail himself of the word ‘guts' and was at a loss for another.
So far 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.
And the sands were running out. Jelkes couldn't stop on indefinitely. As he truly said, “I don't believe in spending too much energy on money-making, but a business is like a baby—you've got to attend to it sometimes, or you have trouble with it.”
But into their Eden the Serpent irrupted, and his name was practically legion, for from a big Daimler descended Lady Paston; her eldest daughter, Lady Whitney; her younger daughter, the Hon. Mrs Fouldes, and an urbane. professional-looking gentleman who was not Dr Johnson. That fact alone filled Jelkes with profound uneasiness. For if it had merely been Hugh's health they were concerned about, the person in whom they would have trusted would have been the family physician who knew him. Two signatures, and only two, are necessary on the certificate that loses a man his freedom for life. Jelkes had heard what Mrs Macintosh had had to say about the kind of doctor that ministers to Mayfair. with its drugs and its abortions, its imaginary ailments and its by no means imaginary venereal disease. If he had had his way, he would not have permitted the new-comer to set eyes on Hugh, for a man may only certify on what he sees, but Silly Lizzie showed the whole party in on top of them without demur. Miss Pumfrey's parlourmaid never having succeeded in teaching her how to answer the door.
Hugh looked distinctly annoyed. but was polite after the first surprise. Mona was introduced, and received with freezing coldness; Jelkes was introduced, and repaid the coldness with interest. The three women sat round like small boys at a pig-killing, and the doctor began to chat to Hugh, getting him onto the subject of Ambrosius almost without preamble. Jelkes wondered how he knew what to look for. Had Mrs Macintosh been indiscreet or unfaithful? Hugh, on his absorbing topic, opened up and forgot his constraint, and Jelkes marvelled at his unsuspiciousness.
They all professed themselves as exceedingly interested, and asked to view the scene of Ambrosius' death, and Hugh led them down into the sweltering cellar where Mr Pinker's ten pun' stove was putting in overtime to dry out the building. Jelkes, determined that they should not linger here unduly, surreptitiously opened the coal-hopper and pushed in the damper.
Lady Paston, coughing, commented on the unhealthiness of stoves.
“It'll be all right when the chimney gets warm,” said Jelkes, determined they should have nothing to use against Hugh; but as the stove-pipe already glowed a dull red, he appeared to be setting an exacting standard.
Hugh not having risen to the bait of Ambrosius, Lady Paston, on their return to the upper regions, suggested a family conclave on business matters. Hugh sighed, but agreed.
Jelkes rose. He couldn't very well do anything else. He looked at the only other person present who wasn't a member of the family, and said: “Perhaps Dr Hughes would care to join me in a stroll while family matters are being discussed?”
Dr Hughes blinked at this mode of address, for he had been introduced as plain Mr Hughes. He bowed politely, however.
“I am afraid I shall be needed,” he said, “if you will excuse me.”
His manners were perfect Mayfair, and Jelkes did not love him any better on that account. Sulkily he withdrew, and walked up and down outside the window so that he could hear if voices were raised in altercation; for he knew that if, having turned his mind on-to Ambrosius, they baited Hugh up with a family row, they would probably get Ambrosius, which he guessed was what they wanted. Profoundly uneasy, he walked up and down, glancing in through the lighted window each time he passed.
Hugh was uneasy too; quite apart from the fact that his family always made him uneasy when they descended on him in bulk for the purposes of a family counsel; the peculiar sensitiveness that is the heritage of all negative natures told him that something out of the ordinary was afoot today, and that the presence of Mr Hughes, or Dr Hughes as Jelkes had chosen to call him, was as much a danger signal to him as the arrival of a butcher at the farm is to the calf. Dr Hughes was very kind in his manner, not wishing to deteriorate the veal, but Hugh could almost see him surreptitiously trying the edge of his knife with his thumb. Altogether, Hugh was in much the frame of mind of a frightened horse, and was showing the whites of his eyes in much the same manner. He saw Dr Hughes watching him, and began to get his head back like a horse getting ready to rear. Dr Hughes edged his chair round little by little, till the table was between them.
The ladies of the party, however, seemed quite indifferent to the tension in the atmosphere. They were used to Hugh and his ways, and knew that these symptoms of impending trouble never ended in anything worse than a profound attack of depression. Frida had been warned that Hugh might commit suicide some day in one of these bouts of the blues, but nothing ever came of it. Hugh had been too well brought up by his old Scotch nurse even to commit suicide.
“Won't you sit down, Hugh?” said Lady Paston with that acid sweetness that had taken the place of authority since he had got too large to be smacked. Hugh sat down, not being able to think of any excuse for refusing on the spur of the moment. In some curious way he felt he had lost a point in the game by so doing, although he had yielded out of nothing save politeness.
“We have been very worried about you, Hugh,” went on his mother.
“You had no need to be,” muttered Hugh sulkily, shuffling his feet and not meeting her eyes. “I was quite all right.”
“We are very uneasy about these people you have got in with. We have had enquiries made about them, and they are not at all satisfactory.”
Hugh muttered something that he couldn't even hear himself.
“I suppose you know that the old man is an unfrocked priest?”
“No, he isn't,” said Hugh. “He just didn't go on with his training.”
“We have heard otherwise. And they don't do that to them for nothing.”
Hugh sat miserably silent, knowing the uselessness of argument, and quite unable to argue, even if it had been any use.
“I wonder whether you also know that the girl has got a very dubious reputation?” Hugh sat up and looked her in the eye
“I know nothing whatever about her history,” he said. “I have always found her straight to deal with, and that is good enough for me.”
“What terms are you on with these people, Hugh? It seems to us a most extraordinary menage.”
That was a facer. What terms was he on with them? He didn't know himself. He loved old Jelkes. He worshipped Mona. He was utterly dependent on the pair of them, jointly and separately: but he had the melancholy certainty that he meant nothing to them; that they were doing him a kindness for the sake of common humanity, and that they would expect him to get onto his feet and stop there after a reasonable time, and
would not allow him to hang on-to them indefinitely. How could he explain all this to his family? How, for the matter of that, could he face it himself? He fell back on the bare truth, which was quite inexplicable enough to baffle anybody.
“Jelkes is just a pal of mine,” he said. “Miss Wilton is a kind of adopted daughter of his whom he looks after as she's got nobody else. She's a designer and house furnisher by trade and has been doing this job for me. Mrs Macintosh was to have come to take charge here, but she let me down at the last moment, and Miss Wilton stepped into the gap temporarily. It's only temporary,” he added desperately, feeling his heart sink within him at the words.
“I'm not so sure of that,” said Lady Paston. “You may find it a lot easier to get her in than to get her out.”
Hugh mumbled a disclaimer, wishing to God that she were right.
“What does she get for whatever it is she is doing for you?” pursued Lady Paston.
“Three pounds a week,” said Hugh.
“And the old man?”
“He gets nothing. He's here on holiday.”
“And what are you going to do with the girl when he goes home after his holiday?”
Hugh didn't know. He stared blankly into space, his mind distracted from all other problems by the contemplation of the problem thus presented.
“Is she going to stop on here with you?”
Hugh knew no more than she did, and continued to stare miserably into space.
“That is a matter on which I have no comment to make,” said Lady Paston. “The day is long past when one even pretends to be shocked at such things. I have no doubt it is much better for you than sitting and brooding—isn't that so, Dr Hughes?”
“Oh, yes, yes, much better,” said Dr Hughes hastily. “Never repress, always abreact your complexes.”
“What we are troubled about, however, and very troubled about indeed,” continued Lady Paston, “is what will happen to you, Hugh, in the hands of these harpies.”
“They haven't shown much sign of being harpies,” said Hugh.