The Native Heath, page 7
This absent-mindedness, Julia thought, was a good sign, since it showed that Francis accepted them and was no longer troubling to be formally attentive. Probably that was how he ate his meals at home, solitary and unhurried, brooding over remote historical problems while the tea grew cold in his cup.
It was a good sign; but that did not mean that absent-mindedness and a solitary aimless existence were good in themselves. Francis had possibilities, and he must be encouraged to lead a fuller life. After all, he was a Heswald, and there had been plenty of distinguished Heswalds in the past—not scholars, certainly, but important people in the county and even beyond it. There had been the Cavalier who got his head cut off, and the judge who was accused of taking bribes (but triumphantly exonerated), and Uncle James, who was a general, and probably many others unknown to her.
It was too late for Francis to become a judge or a general—or a Cavalier—but it was not too late for him to begin to lead a fuller life. Julia’s lively interest in her neighbours often led her to the conclusion that they ought to lead fuller lives, and also compelled her to listen to their troubles. She listened very sympathetically; though her late husband had sometimes complained that she was too eager to listen, and that strangers in railway carriages ought not to be incited to reveal their secret sorrows, no matter how sad their faces looked. But then her late husband, a true Dunstan, believed in keeping himself to himself.
Her interest in Francis, however, was warmer and more personal than this generalized benevolence. He was her cousin; he was the head of the family; and he had been the first man to admire her. She had never been in love with Francis, but she had always been fond of him—or so she now told herself—and she looked forward to presiding, like a modern Egeria, over his concerns.
Something which she called intuition informed Julia that Francis, like the Dunstans, would reject encouragement and good advice if they were proffered too lavishly or too soon. Her married life had taught her that good intentions—even the best—were not enough; they were liable to be misunderstood. And Francis, of course, was a bachelor, and probably set in his ways; he would not welcome cousins who threatened to interfere with his aimless, but peaceful, existence. Though she cherished good thoughts towards humanity in general, Julia could not rid herself of the knowledge that men—and especially mature bachelors—were dreadfully selfish.
The afternoon, however, could be counted a success, and she was fairly certain that Francis liked her. He seemed to like Dora too; although Dora had clearly done the wrong thing by badgering him to bring plants and cuttings, whenever he was passing, to fill up the neglected garden.
“Yes, you must come again,” Julia said, when Francis took his leave. But she said it lightly, without emphasis; there was no demand, in the gentle voice, that he should drop in ‘whenever he was passing’. She stood at the door for a brief moment as he got into his car, and then turned back to the house, leaving Dora to wave energetic farewells. This friendly but casual parting was quite to his taste; it mitigated a lurking fear, which had assailed him during tea, that with any encouragement she might become possessive and sentimental.
He felt that he had misjudged Julia; and, perversely, he felt that a little more warmth, an invitation more definitely phrased, would not have been out of place between cousins so lately re-united.
CHAPTER VI
In the days that followed Julia was too busy to think much about Francis and her plans for his future. There was still a great deal to be done to Belmont House; she had moved in as soon as the builders and decorators had finished their tasks, and now she was blissfully ‘making a home of it’. This meant spending a good deal of money; for no house, in Julia’s eyes, could be looked on as a home until it had been luxuriously equipped with handsome carpets and curtains, pictures and china, and linen and towels to match the colour schemes of the various bedrooms.
Because her married life had been spent in foreign parts, and her widowhood in furnished flats, Julia had few household possessions. She was able to indulge in an orgy of buying. She made expeditions to the county’s largest city, she made a flying visit to London for some special curtain material which could not be found elsewhere, and she frequently drove over to Reddrod in search of little things, such as door-mats or extra ash-trays, which had somehow been overlooked.
“I call it awfully extravagant,” Dora declared, surveying the two dozen hand-painted dessert plates with which Julia had returned that morning. “You’ve got a dessert service. And anyway, who uses them nowadays?”
“Well, perhaps it was just a wee bit extravagant,” Julia admitted. “I saw them in the antique shop, when I was looking at the knife-box, and I realized at once how lovely that deep blue would look in the dining-room.”
“What knife-box?”
“Not to use, Dora—they’re much too precious for that. To stand in a row along the back of the sideboard. They’ll look marvellous against that dark oak. Such a heavenly colour!”
The plates had wide blue borders, and in the middle of each was a picture of a bird. “All different,” Julia cried triumphantly. “Look! The robin, and the bullfinch, and the—what’s this bird, Dora?”
“A sparrow.”
“Oh no, not a sparrow, they wouldn’t put sparrows on a hand-painted dessert service. I think it’s a—a falcon.”
“Or possibly a black-browed albatross; it certainly looks rather bad-tempered,” Dora said lightly.
Julia might have resented this mockery of her newest and most beautiful acquisition. But she remembered that Dora had had a hard life, had always had to work for her living and probably had never been able to afford pretty things such as these. She couldn’t help feeling envious, poor Dora, and it was natural enough that her envy should lead her to disparage Julia’s purchases and to suggest that they were a waste of money.
Thinking this, Julia wondered if Dora was really happy at Belmont House. She had already learned that Dora was proud of her independence; reminiscences of her former hard life were sometimes phrased like reminiscences of a better, nobler existence, and she seemed to have the curious idea that comfort could be demoralizing if it were not the result of one’s own endeavours. Perhaps she felt that the comparatively unearned comfort in which she now lived was corrupting her.
Or perhaps, on the other hand, she was not comfortable enough. This seemed to Julia more probable; and later in the day she became involved in an emotional scene with Nanny, whose marked partiality for herself must be curbed lest it left Dora, physically as well as mentally, out-in-the-cold. With veiled references to her cousin’s hard life she begged Nanny to treat Dora and herself exactly alike, and in particular to draw Dora’s bedroom curtains at night and fill her hot-water bottle. But Nanny, whose devotion allowed no margin for rivals, took the request in quite the wrong spirit.
“You know very well, Miss Julia, that I’ve got my hands full,” she retorted. “One of me isn’t enough for a house like this, and I thought Miss Duckworth was here to help.”
“So she is,” Julia said hastily, remembering the careful explanations she had given Nanny to account for Dora’s coming. “But it isn’t as if—well, you see, she’s my cousin—”
“And no help at all, if she’s to be waited on hand and foot. No doubt you’re very fond of her, Miss Julia, but you might spare a thought for your poor old nurse.”
Julia gave a soft, reproachful cry and begged Nanny not to misunderstand her. But it was too late; for Nanny, bristling with annoyance, had begun to talk about her rheumatism and the way her knees clicked when she ran up and down stairs, and the time it took to get all round the house doing the work she was there to do, without doing extra jobs for those that could well wait on themselves.
“Then leave my room,” Julia said with misguided kindness. “I can easily do my hot-water bottle myself. I’ll get an electric kettle.”
“The idea! Anyway, what does Miss Duckworth want with a hot bottle this weather? It’s different for you, Miss Julia dear—you that have lived in those foreign places and miss the hot climate. But she never seems to feel the cold—always going round opening all the windows as if to say I didn’t air the rooms properly!”
This was clearly a grievance. There were several other grievances, and they all came pouring out; for Nanny, as the weeks went by, was becoming more and more like the tyrannical, privileged old nannies of fiction and less and less like a well-trained house-parlourmaid. Julia listened and sympathized, and told herself hopefully that this was a demonstration of Nanny’s devotion to herself, for which she ought to be grateful. Nanny’s resentment of Dora was perhaps a form of jealousy; and although she found it difficult to be grateful she managed to feel sorry for her grumbling, hard-done-by retainer.
“I didn’t realize, when we first came here, that there would be so much for you to do,” she said.
“It’s not the work I do for you, Miss Julia, that I mind. It’s—”
“But now I see that it’s far too much for you. We must get someone to help,” Julia said quickly.
Nanny sniffed, and said—with evident reference to Dora—that there was help and help, and some sorts were no better than a hindrance. But after some discussion she more or less agreed to allow another paid domestic in the kitchen, if one could be found, and Julia thankfully retreated.
True, she had not won her point—for no appeals to her kind heart would persuade Nanny to fill Dora’s hot-water bottle—but she had done her best and satisfied her conscience.
News travels fast, and it soon became known in Goatstock that Mrs. Dunstan was furnishing Belmont House with prodigal splendour. Except for the Wilmots at Canal Lodge, who were said to be rich, but who were also notoriously stingy, no one in Goatstock had much money; and therefore the arrival of this Croesus in their midst caused a considerable stir. The owners of small shops hoped for her patronage, and the champions of deserving causes hoped for handsome subscriptions. It was generally felt to be a good thing that Belmont House should be occupied by someone who was qualified to play a leading part in local affairs, and those of Julia’s neighbours who believed in social customs hastened to pay calls.
Some, accomplished in the formalities, produced cards. Others, for whom the technique of paying calls was a lost art, simply introduced themselves on the doorstep to Nanny; like Francis Heswald they had come to accept it as probable that the door would be opened by the lady of the house, but unlike him they were impulsive friendly creatures who burst into speech without waiting to make sure of her identity.
Mrs. Minnis was one of these. In impetuous goodwill she outdid her neighbours, and she contrived to seize Nanny by the hand and to utter words of ardent greeting, before she could be checked. The discovery of her mistake so unnerved Mrs. Minnis that when, a few minutes later, she found herself face to face with the real Mrs. Dunstan, everything she had meant to say—and had, in point of fact, already said—went clean out of her head.
“Of course you’ve seen me before, well, sort of,” she blurted out. “Only you weren’t meant to. I felt quite awful about it.”
Julia looked at her visitor, who was wearing a pink-and-white merry-peasant dress with puffed muslin sleeves, and a small pink hat perched on top of a mass of shaggy grey curls. Something about her seemed dimly familiar; but surely she could not have forgotten a previous meeting with this distinctive figure.
“Have I?” she said. It seemed unkind to probe for details of an encounter that had left Mrs. Minnis feeling awful. “Perhaps on board ship,” she murmured vaguely, and without waiting for an answer she went on to say how glad she was that never again would she be forced to take long sea voyages.
Mrs. Minnis regretted her hasty words, for it was clear that Mrs Dunstan had not recognized her. At the same time she felt piqued; it was slightly mortifying not to be recognized. Her feelings were too much for her, and she burst into a loud, nervous giggle.
“I got stuck in the railings,” she announced abruptly.
As Julia said afterwards, that broke the ice; one cannot remain on formal terms with a woman who positively glories in getting stuck in other people’s railings. Now that she had confessed it, Mrs Minnis overcame her initial nervousness and settled down to establishing herself as a tomboy character, a gay and friendly person who, despite an old-fashioned up-bringing, had never been a slave to convention.
“I’m afraid I shock people dreadfully,” she confided. “I shocked Mrs. Prentice, that day—though really it was just as much her fault as mine.”
Julia and Dora had heard of Mrs. Prentice from Miss Pope, who described her as such a nice woman and greatly respected in the village. They had wondered why this excellent creature had not been to call on them. Now, realizing that Mrs. Prentice must have been the stout, flustered lady who detached Mrs. Minnis from the railings, they understood her aloofness.
“Of course Mrs. Prentice is terribly conventional,” Mrs. Minnis went on. “But people in the north are, don’t you think? They’re all so—so stodgy and reserved.”
Julia was interested in this theory, but Dora said what about Lady Finch? Mrs. Minnis replied that Lady Finch didn’t count, because she was mad. She then proceeded to give them a sketch of local society, with brief accounts of Mr. and Mrs. Wilmot, Miss Daglish and her old brother, and that other brother and sister, the Popes, at the vicarage. Of course they were all nice people, but somehow—what was the word?—stodgy. Perhaps it was because they were mostly middle-aged or elderly. Really there were no young people in Goatstock, no one for Sonny, she meant her son Charlton, to talk to at week-ends, except Marian Prentice and Harriet Finch; and anyhow Marian was seldom available because she was engaged to a missionary and training to be a nurse, and Harriet wasn’t Sonny’s type.
Battered by this flood of information, Julia clung to a name she remembered and could identify. Mrs. Wilmot had called on her two days ago, and stood out in her memory as having beady eyes and a knowledge of etiquette. And in addition, hadn’t she claimed to possess a husband and a son?
“The Wilmots,” she hazarded. “I believe Mrs. Wilmot told me she had a son . . . but perhaps he’s not living at home?”
“Oh—poor James. Yes, he does live at home. But of course he doesn’t count,” Mrs. Minnis said. For a moment Julia and Dora took this to mean that poor James, like Lady Finch, was mad; but Mrs. Minnis went on to say that Mrs. Wilmot was ridiculously, absurdly possessive and ruled her son with a rod of iron, never allowing him to entertain his friends—not that he had any—or to join in local activities. He couldn’t call his soul his own.
“Why does he put up with it?” Dora asked.
“He has to. They have plenty of money, but she has the managing of it. He works in his father’s business and I believe he doesn’t get a penny for it except what she gives him. It’s odd, but he’s devoted to her. Of course, he’s got a very docile nature.”
She pronounced it dossle, but they knew what she meant. Julia’s kind heart went out to poor James, who at once became a candidate for a fuller life.
“He’ll never get married,” Mrs. Minnis said. “She’s so possessive that she’ll never let him. Now I just couldn’t behave like that to Charlton, but then we’re not like mother and son. We’re just good pals.”
“How wise of you.”
“And, of course, I speak frankly to him. I tell him right out that I expect him to get married one day. I think men being bachelors is a great mistake.”
The latter sentence was addressed to her present listeners rather than to the absent Charlton, but before they could reply Mrs. Minnis hastened to qualify it. She didn’t disapprove of all bachelors, only the affluent, idle ones who got set in their ways and fussed over their health.
“Worse than . . .” She was going to say worse than spinsters, but in the nick of time she remembered that Miss Duckworth was a spinster. “Worse than real invalids,” she extemporized. “Because there’s nothing the matter with them.”
“Don’t you feel sorry for them?” Julia asked. Mrs. Minnis shook her head vigorously, tilting the pink hat from its perch. Unlike Julia she did not cultivate sympathy.
“I don’t feel sorry for—well, look at Francis Heswald!” she exclaimed. “Why should one be sorry for a man like that?”
Owing to some curious failure in the local intelligence, or more probably to a failure on her part to listen to what other people were saying, Mrs. Minnis had not grasped that Mrs. Dunstan and Miss Duckworth were first cousins to Mr. Heswald. She did not take much interest in relationships and family pedigrees, and although she knew vaguely that they were connections of old General Heswald, the late owner of Belmont House, it had somehow never occurred to her that they might also be related to the Heswalds of Heswald Hall.
There was a short pause. Julia and Dora exchanged glances; it was perhaps their duty to enlighten her, but they longed to know more. Mistaking their silence for ignorance, Mrs. Minnis proceeded to tell them who Francis Heswald was, and what he was like.
He thought of nothing but his own comfort, gave himself airs, and was dreadfully snobbish. Although he lived so near Goatstock (and Heswald itself was nothing but a few cottages), he simply ignored the Goatstock residents. He had once left her, Mrs. Minnis, standing by the roadside in a shower of rain, when he might easily have stopped and offered her a lift. And another time, when she and Hugo and Sonny had been picnicking at the Roman Camp beyond Heswald Hall, he had popped up from nowhere and been abominably rude to them, telling them that they had no business to light a fire there and it might do a lot of damage, and even spread to the heather.
“As if we were trippers!” Mrs. Minnis exclaimed. “And, anyway, our fire was perfectly safe—it was on a bit of pavement where they’d been digging for Roman remains.”
After this outburst Julia and Dora did not dare to claim Francis as their cousin. Presently Mrs. Minnis decided that her call had lasted long enough, and departed with many promises of seeing them again soon.
“You must come to tea,” she said. “Or perhaps a little evening party. I’m afraid I’m awfully scatty—I never plan things in advance. It seems so much more fun when it’s all on the spur of the moment!”
