Aurelia had also married out of the family, but far more judiciously, as things turned out. Edmund Marshall was the general manager of the bottling plant, having a talent for practical administration every Hurlingford lacked. So Aurelia lived in a twenty-roomed imitation Tudor mansion set within four acres of parkland planted with prunus and rhododendron and azalea and ornamental cherry that transformed the place into a fairyland each late September and lasted for a month. Aurelia had servants, horses, carriages, even a motorcar. Her sons Ted and Randolph were apprenticed to their father in the bottling plant and showed great promise, Ted on the accounting side and Randolph as a supervisor.
Aurelia also had a daughter, a daughter who was everything Drusilla’s daughter was not. The two possessed only one fact in common; they were both thirty-three-year-old spinsters. But where Missy was as she was because no one had ever dreamed of asking her to change her single status, Alicia was still single for the most glamorous and heartrending of reasons. The fiancé she had accepted in her nineteenth year was gored to death by a maddened work elephant only weeks before their wedding, and Alicia had taken her time about recovering from the blow. Montgomery Massey had been the only child of a famous family of Ceylon tea planters, and very, very rich. Alicia had mourned him in full accordance with his social significance.
For a whole year she had worn black, then for two more years she wore only dove-grey or pale lilac, these being the colours referred to as “half-mourning”; then at twenty-two she announced the period of retirement was over by opening a millinery boutique. Her father purchased the old haberdashery shop that time and Herbert Hurlingford’s clothing emporium had made redundant, and Alicia put her one genuine talent to good stead. Convention demanded that the business be placed in her mother’s name, but no one, least of all her mother, was under any illusion as to whose business it was. The hat shop, called Chez Chapeau Alicia, was a resounding success from the moment it opened its doors, and drew customers from as far afield as Sydney, so delightfully attractive and flattering and fashionable were Alicia’s confections in straw and tulle and silk. She employed two landless, dowerless female relations in her work room and her spinster Aunt Cornelia as her aristocratic sales dame, confining her own share of the enterprise to design and banking the profits.
Then, just when everyone had assumed that Alicia was going to wear the willow for Montgomery Massey until she too died, she announced her engagement to William Hurlingford, son and heir of the third Sir William. She was thirty-two, and her prospective bridegroom was only just nineteen. Their wedding was set for the first day of this coming October, when the spring flowers would make a garden reception de rigueur; the long wait would finally be over. That there had been a long wait was the fault of the third Sir William’s wife, Lady Billy, who on hearing the news had attempted to flog Alicia with a horse whip. The third Sir William had been forced to forbid the couple to marry until the groom turned twenty-one.
So it was with no joy in her at all that Drusilla Wright marched up the well raked gravel drive of Mon Repos and applied the knocker to her sister’s front door with a vigour born of mingled frustration and envy. The butler answered, informed Drusilla loftily that Mrs. Marshall was in the small drawing room, and conducted her there imperturbably.
The interior of Mon Repos was as charmingly right as its façade and gardens; pale imported wood panellings, silk and velvet wallpapers, brocade hangings, Axminster carpets, Regency furniture, all perfectly arranged to show off the lovely proportions of the rooms to best advantage. No need to use brown paint here, where economy and prudence so patently did not reign.
The sisters kissed cheeks, more alike in every way than either of them to Octavia or Julia or Cornelia or Augusta or Antonia, for both of them possessed a certain brand of haughty frostiness, and their smiles were identical. In spite of their contrasting social circumstances they were also more fond of each other than of any of the rest; and only Drusilla’s implacable pride prevented Aurelia from assisting her financially.
After the greetings were over they settled on either side of a small marquetry table in velvet-covered chairs, and waited until the maid had served them from a tray of China tea and two dozen fairy cakes before getting down to business.
“Now it’s not a scrap of use being proud, Drusilla, I do know how desperately you need the money, and can you give me one good reason why all those lovely things should pile up in your spare room instead of in Alicia’s glory box? You can’t plead that you’re saving them for Missy’s glory box when we both know Missy said her last prayers years ago. Alicia wants to buy her household linens from you, and I am in full accord,” said Aurelia firmly.
“I am of course flattered,” said Drusilla stiffly, “but I cannot sell them to you, Aurelia. Alicia may have whatever she wants as our gift.”
“Nonsense!” countered the lady of the manor. “One hundred pounds, and let her take her pick.”
“She may have her pick gladly, but only as our gift.”
“One hundred pounds, or she will have to spend several times that buying her linens from Mark Foy’s, for I will not permit her to take anything like as much as she needs from you as a gift.”
The argument went on for some time, but in the end poor Drusilla was obliged to give in, her outraged pride warring with a secret relief so great it finally vanquished pride. And after she had drunk three cups of fragrant Lapsang Souchong and eaten her confection-starved way through almost the entire plate of perfectly iced pink and white fairy cakes, she and her sister had passed from the awkwardness of their social disparity to the cosiness of their social consanguinity.
“Billy says he’s a jailbird,” said Aurelia.
“In Byron? Good God, how did Billy let this happen?”
“He couldn’t do a thing to prevent it, sister. You know as well as I do that it is a myth, the Hurlingfords owning every acre of land between Leura and Lawson. If the man could buy the valley, which apparently he has done, and if he has paid his debt to society, which apparently he has also done, then there is nothing Billy or anyone else can do to drive him out.”
“When did all this take place?”
“Last week, according to Billy. The valley has never been Hurlingford land, of course. Billy assumed it was Crown land – a mistaken impression dating back to the first Sir William, it seems, so no one within the family has ever thought to verify the fact, more’s the pity. Had we only known, a Hurlingford would have bought it long since. Actually it has been a Master of Lunacy estate for donkey’s years, and then this chap bought it at auction in Sydney last week without our even learning it was for sale. The whole valley, if you please, and dirt cheap! Wouldn’t it? Billy is livid.”
“How did you find out about it?” asked Drusilla.
“The fellow arrived in Maxwell’s shop yesterday just on closing time – Missy was there too, apparently.”
Drusilla’s face cleared. “So that’s who he was!”
“Yes.”
“Maxwell found out, I take it? He could prise information out of a deaf mute.”
“Yes. Oh, the fellow wasn’t at all backward, he talked about it very frankly – too frankly, in Maxwell’s judgement. But you know Maxwell, he thinks any man a fool who advertises his business.”
“What I fail to understand is why anyone other than a Hurlingford would want to buy the valley! I mean, to own it would have significance for a Hurlingford, because it’s in Byron. But he can’t farm it. It would take him ten years to clear enough to put to the plough, and it’s so wet down there that he couldn’t keep it cleared. He can’t log it because the road out is too dangerous. So why?”
