Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny (107 page)

For Edward and Anne Dimock.

Remembering the summer of 1934

and much before and after.

T
HE
R
EHEARSAL

E
VERYTHING ABOUT THE
house had been put in perfect order. Workmen had been there to mend the roof, tighten the supports of the shutters, and give the woodwork a glossy coat of new paint. They had cut back the Virginia creeper which, in its exuberant growth, would have completely covered the windows and so excluded even the peering sun from the doings of the Whiteoaks in this early summer of nineteen hundred and six.

The gravel sweep had been raked into a pattern by the gardener and Philip Whiteoak hesitated for a moment before crossing it. It seemed a pity to disarrange it, though he considered the making of the pattern rather a waste of time. Still, he could not deny that the house looked very spruce, somewhat like a man with a close haircut and shave, and a new cravat about his neck.

Philip himself looked the very reverse of spruce. A stained corduroy coat covered his broad shoulders and muddy top boots his powerful legs. He carried a fishing rod and a basket in which glistened a dozen speckled trout. One of these had life in it still and now and again drew itself into a sharp contortion above the bodies of its fellows.

As Philip lounged across the gravel and up the shining steps into the porch, he wondered lazily which of his family he would see first when he entered the house. He rather hoped it would not be his mother, with whom he had had words this morning, or his wife, who would make him feel that he should have come in by the side entrance with his mud and his fish.

As a matter of fact it was his wife whom he now saw descending the stairs in a white embroidered dress with a wide flounced skirt. He went toward her, smiling a little sheepishly, yet really unashamed.

“Hello, Molly,” he said. “You look as pretty as a picture.”

She stood, just out of his reach, critically looking at his fair, flushed face and disreputable clothes.

“Oh, Philip,” she exclaimed, “your boots
are
muddy! You might have gone —”

“No, I mightn’t,” he interrupted. “I wanted to bring my catch straight in to show it you. Aren’t they beauties?”

She ran down the steps that separated them.

“Pretty things!” She clasped her hands on his shoulder and peered into the basket.

“We’ll have them for breakfast. One is still living! I hate to see it gasp like that.”

“He feels the heat, just as I do. I always suffer in the first warm days.” He set down the basket and put his arms about her. “Give me a kiss, Molly!”

She drew down his head and pressed her cheek to his.

“I say, Molly, your cheek is just like a flower.”

“And yours is like a grater! You have not shaved today.”

“If you scold me I’ll grow a beard and do the heavy patriarch. It might be a good idea. I don’t get the respect I should.”

“No wonder, with your mother so arrogant!”

“Never mind, never mind! She knows she can’t bully me — and never could!” He smiled magnanimously and his eyes, of a particularly fine blue, flashed amiably.

When he was with Mary she felt that nothing else mattered. Her tall delicate figure swayed beside his. The light from the stained glass windows on either side of the front door threw amber and green splashes over her, hardening her fair hair into a metallic brightness.

“What has been going on this afternoon?” he asked.

“Nothing in particular, except that Meg is in town shopping and Peep has got his new tooth through.”

He had a grunt of satisfaction for the last statement and for the first the exclamation: —

“I’ll be glad when this trousseau is completed! Meggie can’t get enough to satisfy her.” But, though his tone was complaining, he smiled complacently.

“I suppose she thinks it’s the last she’ll get from you.” Then she added quickly — “Of course, an occasion like this comes only once in a girl’s life. She’s bound to want to make the most of it.” In truth Mary Whiteoak was so glad that her stepdaughter was to be eliminated from the family circle that she was willing to condone all Meg did. The thought of being free of that stubborn girl, always making things difficult for her, always clinging about her father’s neck, filled her with bliss.

“Who took her in?” asked Philip.

“Renny drove them to the train. Vera Lacey went with her. She should be back at any moment.”

“H’m. I hope Vera comes with her. Charming girl.”

A severe-looking parlormaid appeared from the dining room and announced that tea was ready. At the same moment a door at the end of the hall opened and old Mrs. Whiteoak entered. She had passed her eightieth birthday, but she moved strongly and her broad shoulders were just beginning to stoop. Although the May day was summerlike, she wore a heavy black cashmere dress with a much shirred and pleated bodice and a wide band of black velvet on the bottom of the long skirt. A lace cap trimmed with rosettes of mauve baby ribbon added to her already commanding height. Her eyes, which had once been large, were still of an intense and brilliant brown. Temper and race were implied in the lines of her mouth, and her strongly arched nose defied her fourscore years.

“Late for tea, as usual, Philip,” she exclaimed, in a strong voice, with more than a hint of Irish accent.

“No, I’m not late, Mamma,” he returned, “I’ve been in for some time.”

“You are late,” she persisted. “You’re not ready. Look at your boots and your coat and your hands. Look at him, Molly! He’s a sight, isn’t he?”

“I like the way he looks,” said Mary contradictorily.

“Of course you do! You’re that sort of a woman.”

Philip handed the basket of fish to the maid.

“Here, Eliza,” he said, “take these to the cook.”

“Wait a minute, till I have a look at them,” put in his mother. She bent eagerly over the basket. “Fine catch, eh? I’ll have one for my supper, with lemon and parsley. Don’t forget about the lemon and parsley, Eliza.”

“No, ma’am.” The maid was about to descend the stairs to the basement kitchen when a side door giving on to the lawn opened and Philip’s two elder brothers came in and demanded to inspect the fish. Their mother took an arm of each and looked approvingly into their faces, flushed by exercise.

“Had a good game, eh? I could see you from my window. That’s the way to keep supple —” she pronounced it
soople —
“a good game of lawn tennis before tea.”

“I think,” said Nicholas, brushing back his thick greying hair, “that I’m getting a bit heavy for tennis. I get very hot. And I’m fifty-three, you know. I think I ought to go in for croquet or golf.”

His mother gave him a thump on the shoulder. “Get along with you! When you’re my age, you may talk of taking care of yourself.”

“I’ll never be what you are, Mamma. You’ll live to be a hundred.”

“We’ll see, we’ll see.” And, still clinging to her elder sons, she led the way to the dining room.

A substantial tea was laid on the mahogany table. A plate of scones had been split, buttered, and spread with grape jelly. There was a silver dish of toasted crumpets, and a glistening section of honey in the comb. There were mounds of fresh white bread thickly buttered. The old lady’s eyes lighted and her strong lips parted in a smile that showed teeth that had once been fine, but were now loose and discoloured.

“Tea, Mary,” she demanded, “and let it be strong. Three lumps of sugar.”

Molly Whiteoak raised the heavy silver teapot, and her white forearm curving below the elbow sleeve of her dress held the eyes of her husband. He did not at once see the cup of tea that Ernest handed to him.

“Wake up, Philip,” said Nicholas. “What are you dreaming about?”

“What should he be dreaming of, but his daughter’s wedding?” said their mother. “It’s going to be a great occasion, I can tell you. Nothing so fine has happened to this family for many a day. Very different from your marriage, Nick, that cost you a pot of money and landed you in the divorce court.”

“All that was fifteen years ago, Mamma,” observed Nicholas tranquilly.

“H’m — well —” she returned, with a snort, “there have been marriages since” — and she mumbled under her breath — “no better.”

Philip’s bright blue eyes were staring at her challengingly. He said: —

“There’s been our marriage, Mamma. Molly’s and mine. If Meggie and Maurice are half as happy, they’ll be lucky.”

“I’m not talking about any flibbertigibbet happiness,” retorted old Adeline, hotly. “I’m talking about a marriage that is uniting two good families and two large estates. Meggie is doing well. I’m glad she is staying in the neighbourhood, too.”

“Yes,” said Ernest, dubiously helping himself to a crumpet, for he had inherited his mother’s love of food without her digestion, “it would have been sad to lose our only girl. How our family runs to males! Mamma was an only daughter in a family of boys. She had three sons and only one daughter. She had three grandsons and only one granddaughter.”

A shadow fell across Mary’s face, for she had buried a five-month-old daughter. She cast a reproachful look at Ernest, which he interpreted as a warning against eating the crumpet.

“H’m, well,” he muttered. “After a strenuous game of tennis, I don’t believe one crumpet will hurt me.”

“Don’t come to me for sympathy,” said his brother, “if you have wind on the stomach.”

Ernest returned crisply — “I should never expect sympathy from you.”

“Listen to the hardy athletes!” said Philip, spreading clotted cream on his scone and introducing it in one bite into his mouth.

Nicholas and Ernest smiled good-humouredly. Philip, at forty-four, was very much the younger brother to them, and they could afford to be tolerant toward him, for his generosity never questioned the length of their visits in his home. They had had their share of their father’s fortune. His house and land, with a fair income, had been left to Philip, his youngest and favourite son. As long as their money had lasted, Canada had seen little of Ernest and Nicholas. London was their natural home, and they had only returned to Jalna when there was nothing else to do. Ernest still hoped, if some of his investments recovered, to spend at least a part of each year in England.

As for their mother, old Adeline, her feelings toward Philip baffled even herself. She loved him and sometimes almost hated him. She resented his being the master of Jalna, which, she felt, should have been left to her absolutely. How she would have brandished that ownership as a bludgeon and as a bait over the heads of her three sons! Unlike Nicholas and Ernest, she felt no tolerance toward Philip because of his hospitality. She was saving of her own fortune and established an air of mystery about it.

She resented Philip’s physical resemblance to her own Philip, the husband she had loved with all the force of her fiery nature. But perhaps it was less his resemblance than his differences to his father that irritated her. Captain Whiteoak had been a soldier, with a body as straight as a sword. Philip was an easygoing gentleman farmer with an incurably indolent slouch. Captain Whiteoak had rapped out his words with military explosiveness. Philip spoke indolently. Captain Whiteoak had been a martinet to his children. Philip indulged his children to the point of spoiling. Captain Whiteoak had thought a good deal of the importance of his position in the Province, for, though he had never gone into politics, his opinion had carried weight in public questions and it had been usually voiced with vigorous conviction. Philip did not care how unimportant he was.

Yet father and youngest son had one trait in common. That was their imperviousness to criticism. It was this trait that baffled Adeline. She stared fiercely at Philip in his ruffianly-looking fishing jacket, his dishevelled hair, and realized it was beyond her power to change him. He refused to tidy himself before coming to the tea table to please his old mother. Her cup trembled with anger as she raised it brimming to her lips, and some of the tea was slopped.

“Mamma,” Ernest said, nervously, “must you” — he hesitated.

“Must I what?” Her eyes moved from Philip’s face to his.

“Slop your tea?” He finished the question with an apologetic air.

“Yes, I must,” she retorted fiercely. “I must — I must — I must — and no wonder! If my son comes to table looking like a pig, is it any wonder I eat like one? I must get a trough. Philip and I will muzzle our food in a trough and grunt together, eh, Philip?”

“Yes, old lady,” agreed Philip. Not to be outdone in coarseness by his mother, he added — “Have some of the clotted cream. It takes a grand hold o’ the gob.”

Ernest and Nicholas chuckled, but Molly exclaimed: —

“Philip, you’re disgusting!”

There was a sound of horses’ hoofs on the drive and then a burst of young girls’ laughter in the hall. The door was thrown open and Philip’s daughter and her friend Vera Lacey came into the room. Vera, the young London relative of neighbours, was spending the year with her aunts. Her parents had sent her on this visit because of an undesirable love affair, and she had made up her mind to turn the punishment into a thoroughly good time. Her piquant face was powdered, in contrast to Meggie’s, which shone from heat and excitement. Meg cast herself on her father’s knee and threw her arms about his neck.

“M’m” … they cooed together, gazing into each other’s eyes.

“Isn’t Meggie a spoiled creature!” exclaimed Vera. “She should have my father for a while. She’d get no hugs from him.”

Mary Whiteoak threw an irritated glance at father and daughter. She had been Meg’s governess before she had married Philip, and the girl had the same power of tantalizing that had made the child a pupil to be dreaded. Mary said: —

“Your father’s tea will be getting cold, Meg. Aren’t you going to tell us what you bought? Did you have your fitting at the dressmaker’s?”

Meg ignored her and pressed little nibbling kisses against her father’s cheek.

Before the coming of the two girls Mary Whiteoak had appeared, in the company of the three middle-aged men and the old woman, as nothing more than a girl herself. Now, before the exuberance of their authentic girlhood, she paled into a fragile woman, worn by childbearing.