Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny (108 page)

“Yes, yes,” urged old Mrs. Whiteoak, agreeing for once with her daughter-in-law, “leave off your snuggling, Meggie, and tell us about the town.”

Philip put his daughter from him and turned to his tea. “This wedding,” he said, “is going to put me on the rocks.”

“It was such fun!” cried Meg. “And what do you suppose Vera did? She went up to a customer in Murdocks’ and began to examine her dress, thinking she was a dummy! You should have seen the customer’s face!”

“The shops are amusing after London,” said Vera. “But let me tell you what Meggie did.”

Meg interrupted her, and the two went into peals of laughter. Exhilarated by their bursting health, Adeline helped herself to more jam and demanded another cup of tea.

“You should have seen my trousseau,” said old Mrs. Whiteoak. “There was elegance for you. I took it all the way from Ireland to India in eleven large trunks. My father hadn’t got it all paid for, they said, at the day of his death.”

Agreeable talk was at its height when the chenille curtains that hung at the folding doors which led into the library were pushed aside and Philip’s eldest son, Renny, surveyed the group about the table. He was two years Meg’s junior and was just entering manhood.

“Come in, come in,” said Ernest testily. “You are letting an abominable draught on the back of my neck. I have been overheated playing tennis.”

“Why is he always late for tea?” growled Nicholas.

“Please don’t bring that muddy dog with you!” cried his sister, and the two girls shrieked as the cocker spaniel padded about the table, his fringed tail waving.

With a grimace, half-deprecating, half-impudent, Renny disappeared behind the curtains, put his dog outside, and reappeared at the door leading from the hall.

He was a tall thin youth with a look of wiry strength, whose arrogant features already bore a striking resemblance to his grandmother’s. His skin, which in young boyhood had been creamy, was now becoming weather-beaten by exposure to sun and wind in all seasons. His vivid brown eyes flashed beneath brows so expressive that already a horizontal line across his forehead marked their animation. His hair, brown in shadow, flashed into burnished red when the light touched it. This rather extraordinary hair covered a head of definite, statuesque modeling of which Meg had once observed that if it came to beating it against a stone wall, the wall might get the worst of it. As growing boy and heir to Jalna he had been the object of so much criticism from his grandmother, parents, aunts, and uncles; his doings had been the focus of such constant speculation, encouragement, and reproof, that he carried himself with an air of wariness as though always prepared to face attack.

With his entrance the attention of the two girls was fixed on him, and Nicholas was forced to raise his voice and repeat to Meggie that he had had a letter from his sister and that she and her husband were sailing the following week for Canada.

“That will be nice,” said Meg, vaguely, then added, with more warmth, “I do wonder what they will bring me for a wedding present!”

“Some cast-off bit of jet or pinchbeck of your aunt’s,” said old Mrs. Whiteoak, scraping the jam pot.

Meg pushed out her pretty lips. “They ought to bring me something really handsome.”

“I am sure Augusta and Edwin will bring you a charming present,” said Ernest.

“I don’t see what makes you think so,” said his mother. “Their presents are always tarnished or stink of moth balls…. More tea, Molly! Have you gone to sleep behind the teapot? Ha — that’s right — plenty of sugar.”

Nicholas put in — “They are bringing something more interesting than a present for you, Meggie. They are bringing a wedding guest, your cousin, twice or thrice removed — Mr. Malahide Court.”

Meg stared. “I’ve never heard of him. What a name!”

Her grandmother glared across the table at her. “Don’t you dare to poke fun at that name, miss!”

“I wasn’t! I only said what a name!”

“You jeered! You know you did! I won’t have it! I was a Court and there’s no finer family living. And Malahide is a good old Court name. The Malahides married the Courts and lived in their castles when the Whiteoaks were yeomen, let me tell you! Perhaps you’ve forgotten that I am the granddaughter of an earl, hey? Have you forgotten that?

Grandmother was working herself into a temper. She rapped the table with her spoon to punctuate her sentences.

“Keep your hair on, Mamma,” soothed Philip. “We all know about our noble ancestors and realize that we’re only poor Colonials ourselves. There’s no need of getting upset about it.”

“Malahide Court,” said Ernest sententiously, “must be well past forty. I remember that he came to my school in England just as I was leaving.”

“What was he like?” asked Nicholas.

“A miserable little shaver.”

“Had he the Court nose?” demanded old Mrs. Whiteoak.

“H’m, well, I don’t remember that, but I know he was no beauty.”

“I am anxious to see him. I hope he will stop the summer.”

Philip raised his eyebrows. “Let us see him before we hope that, Mamma.”

Small feet were heard running in the hall and Mary’s face turned, all alight, toward the door. It opened and her elder son, Eden, pranced in.

“I’m a pony,” he declared, and galloped round the table. Mary stretched out her hand to catch him as he passed. She had lost three infants before his advent and felt no security in her passionate possession of him. He eluded her hand, but was seized by Meg and rapturously kissed. Both she and Renny evinced a demonstrative affection for their little half-brothers, taking, as Mary saw it, a perverse pleasure in coming between her and them.

Now Meg asked of him — “What do you suppose I have brought from town?”

“I don’t know. A little engine for me?”

“You silly, no! But I have bought your page’s suit. White satin with a lace collar.”

“Oh.” He was impressed. “May I try it on, now?”

His mother spoke sharply. “No, Eden, you must wait till tomorrow. Your hands are probably dirty and it will soon be your bedtime.”

“See, my hands are clean!” He spread them out for inspection.

Meg took him on her knee. She put her lips close to his ear and whispered something which apparently satisfied him. He took the piece of cake Renny offered and, with a daring glance at his mother, began to eat it. The older people were still talking about Malahide Court and speculating on the reasons for his visit.

After tea the two girls took Eden to Meg’s room and locked the door.

“The idea of Mother saying he must not try on his page’s suit!” exclaimed Meg. “That is always her way — to spoil our pleasure if she can.”

“It must be horrid,” said Vera, “having a stepmother.”

“It’s abominable! Especially when she was once one’s governess. She attacks one from both angles. But Renny and I don’t knuckle under.” She dipped the corner of a towel in her ewer and wiped Eden’s face and hands. He looked very earnestly into her face.

Vera unfolded the suit from its wrappings. “It’s nice,” she said, “that you are so fond of her children.”

“Please don’t ever call them hers! She had them, — the best thing she’s ever done, — but they are perfect Whiteoaks.”

“This one looks like her, doesn’t he?”

“H’m, he has her colouring, but he’s just himself.”

She had taken off his sailor suit and he stood in his vest before them, white, fragile, yet proudly built. Meg began to dress him in the white satin garments.

When they went down they found that the family had moved out to the lawn to enjoy the late sunlight. Philip, Nicholas, and Ernest stood together admiring the house. It faced the sun serenely, as though conscious that everything about it was in exemplary order. No crumbled brick or rotted shingle or sagging shutter was there to take from its air of solid well-being. The bulk of the stables was concealed by a group of stalwart evergreens, and stretching far behind it were spread the six hundred acres of farm and woodland, pasture, ravine, and winding stream that had been, half a century before, reclaimed by Captain Whiteoak from the wild.

Renny had picked up a tennis racket and was sending balls into the net. Old Mrs. Whiteoak possessed herself of the other racket and faced him.

“Now then! Now then!” she challenged. “A ball to your grandmother, young cock!”

Renny, laughing, sent one softly bouncing toward her. She ignored it and stood with the racket foursquare to her shoulder, formidable-looking in her large ribboned cap.

“You call that a ball! D’ye think I’m so weak as that? Come now — a good one!”

Renny eyed her menacingly.

“Renny!” cautioned Ernest, “be careful.”

“Mind your own business, Ernest!” she ordered. “Am I playing this game, or are you?”

A ball shot straight at her cap.

She caught it on her racket and returned it over the net with no mean blow, but she could not risk another. She grinned triumphantly.

“Well, now, do you say I can play tennis?”

“You’re a marvel, Gran!”

He laughed across the net and came to her. She took his arm and squeezed it.

“The girls are coming. See what they’ve done?”

Meg and Vera descended the steps to the lawn with Eden between them.

“Look, Daddy!” cried Meg. “A rehearsal!” She put the hem of her dress in Eden’s hands and moved sedately across the lawn, followed by Vera.

“Splendid!” exclaimed Nicholas.

“By Jove, the child looks beautiful!” said Ernest.

Philip met his daughter and she laid her hand on his arm. “Now then, Mamma, you’ll have to be the parson. Renny, can’t you produce the groom?”

“I don’t like rehearsals of solemn things,” said his mother. “They bring bad luck. Come to Granny, darling, and show her your fine new suit.”

But Eden kept fast hold of Meg’s skirt, bearing himself with dignity.

Renny gave a shout. “Hello, there’s Maurice! Come along, Maurice! What price the laggard groom!”

Maurice Vaughan advanced through a small wicket gate set in a hedge of cedar. He had crossed the ravine which divided his father’s property from Jalna and had picked on the way a bunch of white trilliums.

“Good man!” exclaimed Philip, delighted. “He’s here — nosegay and all!”

Nicholas began to boom the “Wedding March.”

“What’s it all about?” asked Maurice.

“A rehearsal,” said Mrs. Whiteoak, “and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I’ve a superstition about it.”

Maurice came to his fiancée and put the lilies into her hands. He made a little old-fashioned bow, but there was a gravity in his face, a heaviness in his eyes, that took the light from Meggie’s. She held the flowers to her, and asked: —

“Is anything wrong?”

He shook his head. “No. Well, my father is not very well. Mother and I are worried about him.”

“I’ve known your dad all my life,” said Philip, “and I’ve never known him well. Don’t you worry about him. He’ll outlive us all.” He tossed up Eden. “Now what do you think of this for a page?”

Maurice smiled and Meg’s face cleared.

Mary now came out of the house carrying her younger child, a boy of twenty months whom they called Peep. He sat very straight on her arm, determined not to be sleepy, though he knew he was being brought out to say goodnight. He had a skin of exquisite pink and whiteness, thin fair hair, and intensely blue, rather prominent eyes.

“Oh, I call it a shame to have put that suit on Eden!” she said angrily. “He will be getting a spot on it.” But she smiled in delight at his beauty when he darted to her side.

“See me! See me!” he cried.

Renny followed him. “Give Peep to me,” he said. “Then you can look after Eden.”

Half reluctantly she surrendered the baby. He leaped, crowing, into Renny’s arms. Renny carried him to where Maurice had moved apart.

He thrust the child’s downy head against Maurice’s face. “Take him,” he laughed. “You’ll be dandling a kid of your own one day. Let me see how it becomes you.”

Maurice drew back as though struck.

“For Christ’s sake, keep it away from me!” he said, thickly. “Renny, I must see you alone! You must get rid of those girls and come with me into the ravine. I’ve something terrible to tell you.”

I
N
T
HE
R
AVINE

T
HE TWO BOYS
passed through the wicket gate and descended the path into the ravine, just as the sun was sending its last rays there. The young grass and unfolding bracken fronds had taken on an unearthly green, while the trees, still caught in the sunlight, glistened and quivered in the light breeze. The trunks of the pines showed a distinct purple tone, while those of the silver birches diffused through their whiteness a pale inner glow.

The contrast between the movements of Maurice and Renny was indicative not only of the moods that possessed them, but of their very natures. Maurice plunged down the path, sending small stones rolling before him, scarcely seeming to see where he was going. Renny moved freely as a wild creature and nothing escaped his brilliant gaze. He stopped once or twice and appeared to be on the point of turning aside into the wood, when Maurice called back to him: “Are you coming?” and he returned to the path.

The river which flowed through the ravine, and which, in later years, became only a small stream through the building of a dam in an enterprise by which the family endeavoured to counteract the extravagances and bad investments of Nicholas and Ernest, was now in the fullness of its strength. It made a distinct murmuring sound as it moved through its thickly wooded curves, breaking into clear gurglings when it encountered the dark opposition of a boulder or urge of smooth ledges of rock.

Renny made toward a bridge which spanned the river at its narrowest point, but Maurice drew him to the shelter of some wild cherry trees.

“Come in here,” he said, “where we can’t be seen. You never know when someone may cross the bridge. Why, look now! There comes my father! When I think what I may be bringing on to his head, I could drown myself in that river.”

Renny fixed his eyes on the figure of the man crossing the bridge. He wished he could escape from Maurice. He said: —