Flint and Roses (63 page)

‘Does he, by God! And you reckon Mrs. Hobhouse and Mrs. Rawnsley might like their girls to get to know a duke's daughter?'

‘It's a start,' she told him firmly. ‘I have to make myself known. I have to make a reputation.'

‘Do you reckon you can make any money?' he asked, ‘I'll say good-night now, Prudence. You'd best be off in the morning.'

But she stayed another day, spent an hour or so walking with him on the sea-front, another hour in his study attempting to get her figures right, and came away with the satisfaction of knowing she had provided him with a great deal of amusement and some food for thought. She had also informed him that, since in her view it was unbusinesslike to make any kind of proposition unless one had more than expertise to offer, she was prepared to hazard her own savings in the venture, representing all she possessed. And she had been honestly delighted at his reaction to the figure she named.

‘You didn't save that out of your pin-money, my girl.'

‘No, uncle Joel. But it is mine just the same.'

She announced her engagement to Freddy Hobhouse a few weeks later, making his mother very happy, her own mother somewhat less so until Daniel Adair, being a gambling man who knew how to cut his losses with style, shrugged his generous Irish shoulders and wished her well.

‘He's not the one I'd have chosen for you, my girl, but if he's what you want—if you
do
want him?' And he appeared far less surprised than most of us when it became known that she had taken a lease on a substantial house at Elderleigh Hill, half a mile away from me, not, as was first thought, as a home for herself and Freddy, but as a school.

‘Oh dear!' my mother said, floating into my house at an unusually early hour. ‘You must talk to her, Faith, for I cannot understand it. Her dowry has not been touched, and the porcelain is all there, for Daniel has had it out of the boxes again, and checked it over. My goodness! He is not at all angry—he seems to think it a huge joke. It is simply that people are asking me, and I must have something to say. Does she mean to marry Freddy or does she not? For, if she does, and he has agreed to allow her to use her money for any purpose other than Nethercoats, then Emma-Jane Hobhouse will do her best to put a stop to it. Between ourselves I believe they were on the point of selling out and one cannot blame them for wanting to know where they stand. If they should lose their buyer and then Prudence should change her mind, I really don't see how we could be held responsible. But Emma-Jane Hobhouse is one of my oldest friends—and has quite the wickedest tongue of anyone I ever encountered when she is aroused. Do talk to her, Faith. Or ask Blaize. He will know.'

But Prudence was not forthcoming. Blaize, beyond a passing remark that Nicholas might not get Nethercoats so cheaply now, if at all, had nothing to say, and like everyone else I was obliged to wait a few weeks longer until Aunt Verity, paying a surprise visit to Cullingford, announced that she, having wished for some time to make a personal contribution to the town in which she had been born, had finally decided what that contribution should be.

‘It came to me,' she said, ‘quite suddenly, as if I could hear a voice positively begging me to do it. I had been thinking about it for an age, considering this and that, and then all at once there it was. Yes, I thought, we have our grammar school, which did so well for my boys, but when Caroline became too much for nanny there was absolutely nowhere to send her—nothing to do but fill the house with music teachers and dancing teachers and someone else for French and for drawing, which was such a bother. We had a French governess, I recall, who was quite temperamental and another I would not have cared to inflict on my worst enemy—and another who could hardly take her eyes off Blaize, if you'll forgive me for mentioning it, Faith dear. So, Elinor, I have decided to open a school for girls, and I am relying on you and Mr. Adair to allow it. Yes, Elinor—your permission is certainly required—for I have set my heart on having Prudence to take charge of it, and, if you refuse, then of course I shall not proceed—which will be such a pity. Joel thinks it an
excellent idea
, and although I am to use my own money I think we can rely on him to be generous.'

And when Lady Barforth made a request, which Sir Joel clearly expected to be granted, it would have been unwise on the part of any Adair—of anyone at all—to refuse.

‘Obviously he has lent her the money,' Blaize said, very much amused. ‘Good for her, although he will make her earn it. If she went to him with her tale of wanting some useful work to do, then work is exactly what she will get, for he will expect to be repaid. I can't imagine what private agreement they have made, and clearly she has my mother's blessing, which is more than half the battle with my father, but he will see to it that she keeps her side of the bargain. Well, he must be getting bored in his little paradise—it may do them both some good.'

‘And Freddy—was Freddy your idea, Blaize?'

‘Now why should you think that?'

‘Because her engagement to Freddy could annoy Nicholas—could keep him out of Nethercoats.'

‘Really?' he said, his grey eyes completely innocent. ‘Do you know, you are not the first person who has suggested that to me. Brother Nick was in my office just this morning, and even he—well, he didn't put it quite that way—he simply dropped into the pool of conversation the remark that Prudence's money could hardly be enough, and unless the Hobhouses stopped shilly-shallying around they might find themselves without a buyer—or with nothing to sell. He may have expected me to pass the message on.'

‘So Freddy
was
your idea.'

‘Faith—he offers excellent protection for Prudence. If she is engaged to marry him, then she'll have no cause to waste her time fending off anybody else—an end to the Irish cousins. And rather more than that, for if Freddy—her affianced husband, her future lord and master—doesn't object to her playing schoolmistress, then no one else can have anything to say against it. Naturally, if she went ahead and married him it would be a different story, since he'd be in honour bound to use every penny she has to try and stop the rot at Nethercoats. But then—will she marry him, or won't she? My bet is she won't.'

But Freddy Hobhouse was a good-natured, hardworking man, his own sound common sense hampered from boyhood by his easy-natured father. He had shouldered as many family responsibilities as he could, made personal sacrifices for his brothers and sisters, had waited a long time for Prudence, and the thought of him troubled me.

‘I believe you are using him, Prue,' I told her. ‘Is it fair?' But Prudence, these days, was no longer the frustrated woman who had frittered her time away in bickering with her step-father, and fussily, almost neurotically, counting her porcelain. Nor was she the girl who had devoted herself with such unflagging energy to the affairs of Giles Ashburn and Mayor Agbrigg. Now she had work of her own to do, her own decisions to make, being no longer obliged to content herself with carrying out the decisions of others, and, having demolished the objections of Sir Joel Barforth, was certain to make short work of mine.

‘Is it fair? Very likely not. But then, you can't be certain what my intentions are with regard to Freddy,' she said crisply. ‘If I should seem to be using him, then you must admit he has shown himself quite ready to use me. He may have been patient, but he has not been celibate, you know, all these years. He has made his little excursions to the Theatre Royal, when he could afford it, as they all do. And if he had encountered some other woman with a few thousand a year who had been willing to marry him, then I cannot believe he would have let her pass him by.'

‘I suppose not. So you have got everything you want, Prudence?'

‘Perhaps I have. I have got my independence at any rate, and, even if you are beginning to think me hard, the truth is that I am sorry to have been obliged to get it by stealth. It would suit me far better to come out into the open and say, ‘This is what I have done. This is what I intend. This is what I am—far better if I had been able to claim the money that is mine, instead of selling my vases clandestinely to your husband, and using his father and Aunt Verity as a screen, pretending the school is theirs, when really it is mine. Well—that is the way of it. And as to Freddy, you will have to wait and see, my dear—and so will his mother.'

Opinion, of course, in private was sharply divided, the Hobhouses themselves frankly suspicious, but, as matters stood, unwilling to do anything which could further jeopardize their position. It was not that Mr. Hobhouse had mismanaged Nethercoats, rather that he had not managed it enough, for the business, founded by his grandfather, improved by his energetic father, had seemed so secure when it came to him that his naturally easy-going disposition had not received the stimulus it required. Mr. Bradley Hobhouse, quite simply, had not been a hungry fighter, not really a fighter at all: a comfortable man of hearty appetites who had married a comfortable wife, both of them so accustomed to live in conditions of prosperity that they could imagine no other. Joel Barforth, until his sons were of an age to do it for him, had continued to descend on his mill every morning, to ensure that his orders were carried out to the letter. Mr. Hobhouse, when trade was good, had lingered at home, taken an afternoon stroll to the Piece Hall to enjoy the respect his name commanded, had spent a great deal of his time discussing the wool trade over the punch bowl at the Swan. Mr. Joel Barforth had known, at all times, exactly what his managers, and his sons, were doing. Mr. Hobhouse knew what they
said
they were doing. Mr. Joel Barforth had been the first man in the Valley to mechanize, had ruthlessly abandoned his handlooms for power-driven machines, had been the first man to stop producing the plain, well-nigh indestructible cloth for which the Valley was famous and to develop the lighter, fancier materials which a changing society required. Mr. Hobhouse, a heavy man who liked heavy worsteds had clung to the belief that his customers liked them too. And by the time it became clear to him that, with so many newcomers to the industry, the world was no longer clamouring for Hobhouse goods, no longer so ready to take whatever he supplied because it was obtainable nowhere else, it was too late.

Freddy alone, of course, could not halt the decline, nor, indeed, would Prudence's fortune be enough to restore his credibility at Rawnsley's bank, but a connection with the Barforths could only be seen as a step in the direction all at Nethercoats wished to take—it
might
suffice to tide them over until the miracle they had all been praying for made its mind up to take place—and it was hoped moreover, that it might soften the heart and loosen the purse-strings of the great worsted spinner, Mr. Oldroyd, whose late wife had been Mr. Hobhouse's sister, Freddy's Aunt Lucy.

Mr. Oldroyd, admittedly, was not a lonely man, for having failed to marry my mother he continued to find ample consolation in the scandalous Mrs. Delaney, whose charms and whose excellent cream teas were still readily available to him in Albion Place. But—although, provision would no doubt be made for her at his decease, as provision would be made for a young lady in Leeds one assumed to be his daughter—the Oldroyd fortune was one of the most important in the Law Valley, and if he approved the marriage of Freddy and Prudence there was no reason why a sizeable portion of it should not find its way to them, instead of to certain Oldroyd cousins who were officiously staking their claim. There was no reason, in fact, why Mr. Oldroyd—if suitably softened and impressed—should not take Freddy into his business, should not make him a partner, the beneficiary not merely of a portion but of the whole.

And so Mrs. Hobhouse was all love and kisses to Prudence, the desperate quality of her affection moving me to sympathy, and my sister to laughter.

‘Poor woman! She will do anything to get me, and if she manages it she will have the surprise of her life. If I ever do go to Nethercoats, then she will first have to move out of it, I do assure you, and take her sons and daughters with her, for I have no mind to play nursemaid and governess free of charge.'

‘Prudence, you
are
growing hard.'

‘I do hope so—for it is a hard world.'

Yet with Freddy himself she was exacting but occasionally quite tender, commandeering his services, most ruthlessly at the schoolhouse—‘Freddy, if you would just fetch me this, carry me that, lend me your carpenter, your glazier, your wagon'—but, since he had his share, of the warm Hobhouse temperament, she would allow him to hold her hand under my dinner-table, would go with him quite happily for moonlit strolls in my garden, returning with the air of a woman who had been heartily kissed and had not found the experience unpleasant.

She would be thirty that year, a fine-boned, elegant woman, crackling with energy, compelling in her excitement, her new zest for life. He was thirty-five, heavy and easy, a man, as she said, who had not been celibate, who knew what he wanted from a woman in the moonlight and was clever enough, perhaps, to realize that her brain was keener than his, not too proud to accept it. Would she take him, after all? Would she use him, as men had been trying all her life to use her—to use me—and then discard him? Would she dominate him, instead, and bully him into some compromise that did not include his troublesome family? I couldn't tell.

‘She's a joy to watch,' Blaize told me. ‘Do what you can to help her, Faith. I won't count the cost.' And I had no need to be told.

Help came to her from many sides.

‘Dear Prudence,' Georgiana told her, ‘I cannot think why you are doing this, for I believe if you were to shut me up in a house with several dozen children I would end by murdering them all—but do take my Venetia when she is older. Take her now if you like. She is only a girl, after all, and so I suppose I can have my way where she is concerned. They have sent Gervase to the grammar school, didn't you know? Yes, he goes there every morning with the younger Hobhouse boys to do his sums, so that he can work out his profit and loss, I imagine, when the time comes—except that it will not come, for he will not learn. Naturally I wanted to send him to Kent, where Perry and Julian Flood went to school, but I am not breaking my heart over it. In fact I am very much inclined to smile, or would be, if Gervase didn't hate the grammar school so much. Well, he will not have to dirty himself in a counting-house, for he cannot add two and two, poor mite, and it is quite useless for Nicky to stand over him and growl that he is not trying, when it is plain to everyone that it is simply not in his nature. He has only to look at a column of figures and his mind becomes quite blank, which I perfectly understand, since I am just the same. Well, you will not plague my daughter, will you, Prudence, with such things? If she is happy and has good friends, then I shall be content. I have had a word with Hetty Stone and I imagine you may have her relative whenever you like, since no one else wants her in the very least. And Caroline knows such masses of people—she is sure to help.'