Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny (111 page)

“I pity that gentleman if those two young rascals choose to make his life miserable. Lord, what a waist he has! Do you suppose he can put a solid meal out of sight?”

But Cousin Malahide, though his eyebrows all but disappeared when he saw the meal before him, displayed an unexpectedly good appetite. He vied with Adeline in second helpings, praised the sherry, and after a few glasses became so amusing that they wondered if, after all, they might not find him good company.

T
HE
V
ISITOR

I
N THE DAYS THAT
followed, the newcomer made himself thoroughly at home. He explored the house, from the basement kitchen, and what was rather pretentiously called “the wine cellar,” to the attic. He was never embarrassed, no matter where he was discovered, always proffering some glib explanation of his curiosity and drifting unabashed into further investigations.

He devoted at least two hours each day to gossip with his old kinswoman, raking up for her pleasure one scandalous happening after another, recalling almost forgotten members of her family to her mind with whatever was most disgraceful in their lives. He went to see her before she was up in the morning, when she still wore her befrilled nightdress, and sat by her bed, and flattered her and fed her parrot with toast.

He showed too that he could ride a horse, his incredibly long thin figure seeming to become a part of the spirited mare Renny had hoped would throw him.

To Adeline this unexpected visit, this revival of interest in her past, gave a renewed strength and vivacity. She had been feeling the weight of her eighty-odd years, moving slower, talking less, eating more often and less at a time, becoming slovenly at table. The fact that she could not properly chew her food was depressing to her. She would cast a gloomy look about the table at her descendants crunching the crisp rind of the roast pork and mutter: “All very well for you! But am I to live on potatoes and gravy?”

“The apple sauce is very nice, Mamma,” Philip would say, pressing his sister’s foot under the table and, as he had expected, sending his mother into a rage.

“Apple sauce! Apple sauce! D’ye think I can live on such slop? D’ye think I can keep my strength on pap? D’ye think I want to sit by and watch my children and my grandchildren gorge themselves while I starve! I that have carried great lumps of children in my body and eaten plenty for the two of us!”

“Perhaps you ate more than you needed, Granny,” suggested Meg.

“Ate — ate — ate —” mimicked old Adeline. “What a way to pronounce a decent word! I say
et
and my family says
et!
”

“I was taught to pronounce it
ate
at school, Granny.”

“Then unlearn it! I won’t have any silly finicking ways of speech in this house!
Et
it was and
et
it is, and I wish to God I could do it!”

She stared mournfully at the pork.

“Well,” said Philip, “as I have been saying for some time, what you need is two good sets of artificial teeth. Then you could chew in comfort.”

“Quite true,” agreed Sir Edwin. “Very true indeed.”

The old lady eyed her son-in-law disparagingly. “Yours don’t seem to do you much good. You mumble your food like a rabbit.”

“They have a way now,” said Malahide, “of sticking some sort of needle in the gum which deadens the pain. I had four out that way and it didn’t hurt at all.”

His kinswoman peered into his face.

“I don’t see any lacking,” she observed.

“They were my wisdom teeth,” he grinned. “That is why I came out here.”

Adeline struck the table with the handle of her fork.

“I’ll not bear it any longer,” she said. “I’ll have them out!”

Although, as Philip had said, he had been urging her to this step, he felt something like consternation at the sudden decision. He abhorred any distasteful activity, and his first thought was that his mother might demand his support in the operation. He defended himself at once. He leaned forward to pat her shoulder.

“Splendid!” he exclaimed. “It will be a great improvement. I know of an excellent dental surgeon. Edwin and Augusta shall take you to him.”

Augusta drew back her chin.

“Impossible!” she declared. “It would be too harrowing to me to see my mother suffer.”

“But I shan’t suffer! Malahide says I’ll not suffer.”

“Mamma, I beg you not to ask this of me!” said Augusta. “Philip is the one to take you. It is his suggestion.”

Philip looked suddenly sulky. “Let Nicholas do it. He is her eldest son.”

Nicholas leaned back in his chair. “I feel as Gussie does,” he said. “I could not do it under any circumstances. Ernest is the one to accompany Mamma. He has tact. He has a woman’s gentleness and a man’s fortitude.”

Ernest’s expression was bitter as he listened to this eulogy of himself.

“I suppose,” he said, “that you quite forget that I was sick when I saw the vet extract only six teeth from a mare.”

“I have sixteen,” said his mother. “You will never do.” She looked almost pathetically into the faces about her. “Am I to go to the dentist alone?” she asked.

“If you will have me,” said Malahide, “I’ll be charmed to accompany you.”

The family turned to him with their first and last expressions of gratitude. Grandmother stretched out her hand and took his. She said: —

“Well, that’s handsome of you, Malahide. It’s a good thing I have you to lean on. It is indeed.”

“Mamma, you know how it is,” said Ernest. “We cannot bear to see you suffer.”

“Suffer!” she retorted. “I will not suffer! And, if I must, it won’t be the first time. I suffered enough when I brought your miserable little carcass into the world.”

Ernest gave a chagrined smile, while his brothers burst into laughter and Augusta frowned in sympathy with him. Sir Edwin remained, as he always did, unruffled in their midst.

“Shall you have them all out at once?” he asked.

“We’ll see, we’ll see,” she returned easily. “Malahide and I will use our own discretion.”

Malahide smiled under his long nose, and Renny pinched Meg’s thigh beneath the table.

In the two days that followed, Adeline showed no depression in the ordeal awaiting her. Rather she seemed exhilarated, and her preference for the company of her kinsman tended to exclude all others.

On the third day she ordered Hodge to bring round the carriage at ten o’clock. At a quarter past nine, she was dressed in her velvet dolman and heavy widow’s veil, thrown back from her strong old face. She sat waiting in the drawing room by a window that overlooked the drive, her parrot on his perch at her side. She stroked him with a hand that trembled a little.

“Poor old Boney,” she murmured. “Soon I’ll be like you. Not a tooth in me head!”

He undulated his neck to rub his beak against her palm. “
Dilkhoosa
…
Mera lal,
” he muttered softly.

Five minutes before the hour of departure Cousin Malahide appeared.

“Ready and waiting, eh?” he said.

“I’m always prompt,” she returned tartly. “I’ve been sitting alone for nearly an hour.… Look at that son of mine! Does he care how I sit alone?” She nodded toward the window past which Philip was strolling, rod in hand, an old coat sagging on him, his hair dishevelled.

“Where are your other sons?” asked Malahide, in a tone that emphasized their neglect.

“Nicholas is still in bed. Ernest is buried in a book. I should go to my trial alone but for you, Malahide. Ha — here come the horses!”

Hodge brought them up before the door with a flourish. Adeline entered the carriage rather heavily, her veil falling forward about her face. Hodge tucked the rug solicitously about her knees. Malahide patted her hand.

“It will be over soon,” he said, soothingly.

The first brilliance of summer was undimmed. Noonday had not yet violated the freshness of the morning. The young leaves unfolded to their utmost and the fields generously spread themselves on either hand. Where there had been one blade a week ago, there were now a hundred. Adeline thought: —

“The land is at the time of increase, but I am at the time of decrease. H’m — well, I’m not done yet. I’ll get new teeth and I’ll hold my own at the board. I wish I had one of my own children with me instead of Cousin Malahide.”

She straightened her shoulders and looked past Hodge’s back at the fine flanks of the chestnuts. Malahide took her hand in his.

He was still holding it when they returned to Jalna. Ernest hastened to the carriage door to open it for his mother. He looked anxiously into her face. Its colour was heightened, but, when she smiled at him, he saw, with a mixture of relief and dismay, that she still had her teeth.

“Why — why,” he stammered, “Mamma, you have not had them out!”

She returned haughtily: “Did I say that I was going to have them all out at once? I did nothing of the sort. I said I was going them out. And I am. One a day, till they are gone! I had my first one out this morning. Look!” She opened her mouth wide and displayed the gory cavity left by a large double tooth.

Ernest peered at it squeamishly. “It looks very sore. Did you have the injections, Mamma?”

Still with her finger at the corner of her mouth, she answered: —

“Not I! The surgeon showed me the instrument, but I didn’t like the looks of it at all. ‘I’ll not have it.’ I said. ‘Pull my teeth in the old-fashioned way,’ I said. ‘One a day till they’re all out,’ I said.”

“She was positively Boadicean,” said Malahide.

She was in great good humour. She talked throughout the one o’clock dinner of the skill, the kindness, the efficiency of the dentist. She had a word of praise for Malahide and his timely support.

“How many teeth has she?” Philip said gloomily of his elder brother.

“Sixteen,” growled Nicholas. “She’ll go on like this for sixteen days.”

Philip hunched a broad shoulder. “Well, we must just put up with it.”

“We should be thankful,” observed Augusta, “that she can extract pleasure from the extractions.”

But it was pleasure mixed with apprehension. Adeline was in a state of exhilaration from the time of her return home till she went to bed, but the next morning there was a different tale to tell. She woke with a cloud hanging over her. By the time she had taken her porridge and mumbled her toast, she was in a state bordering on panic. By the time she was dressed she was in a villainous temper. Fully an hour before the moment when Hodge was due to appear with the bays, she was established in her chair in the drawing room, staring gloomily between the folds of her widow’s weeds. Alternately she compressed her mouth in iron determination or with caressing tongue dolefully sought the familiar surfaces of those well-worn grinders.

Her parrot, always sensitive to her mood, would ruffle himself on his perch, peck at the grey scales on his legs, and now and again, in a metallic whisper, give vent to Hindoo curses.

At this hour Philip was never to be seen. Nicholas had developed a timely attack of lumbago and spent his mornings in bed. So it was Augusta and Ernest who did what they could to help their mother through this trying period. They got small thanks for their sympathy. The hour never passed without some shrewd dig from her that made them wince. It was with deep relief that they saw Cousin Malahide enter and offer her his arm.

But the return! The fine hilarity of the return! The bays, eager for their noontime feed, would have broken into a gallop if it had not been Hodge’s tempering rein. Their hoofs scattered the clean gravel of the sweep on to the freshly shorn grass. Hodge beamed as he sprang down to open the door. All the family were gathered to see her then. She opened her arms wide to the one who was nearest, and clasped him to her breast. “I’ve done it again!” she would exclaim. “And a rare old monster it was, with roots like serpents! I tell you the surgeon had nigh to lift me out of the chair to draw it! Malahide will tell you. He had it wrapped up in a bit of paper to show.”

And Malahide, with a smirk of satisfaction, would produce the sanguine relic.

On and on for sixteen days, sparing the intervening Sundays, till she owned no tooth in her head! She and Boney sat together, he on her shoulder, rubbing his arched beak against hers.

“
Dilkhoosa
…
Dilkhoosa
…” he murmured caressingly; then, “
Nur mahal
…
Mera lal
.”

“Love names!” she would exclaim. “Beautiful Eastern love names! Ah, they know how to make love to a woman in the East!”

She was toothless and triumphant. She looked forward to having the dental plates installed in time for the wedding. They loomed before the family equally with Meggie’s trousseau. She revelled in the thought of the good food she would eat then. Now she was reduced to little more than pap. But she did not starve. She unearthed from the depths of a chest of old-fashioned silver a marrowbone holder. A marrowbone was ordered and simmered for hours. Three times she descended the stairs to the kitchen to test its progress. She could scarcely endure the waiting till it was served at table. Then, with it thrust firmly into the holder, she dug out spoonfuls of the smooth dark meat.

“It’s good,” she declared. “It’s very good. It will help to sustain me till I have my plates.”

She called Eden from his place and thrust a spoonful into his mouth. “This will be good for him,” she said. “It will give him bone and muscle.”

But the little boy made a grimace of distaste and spat out the morsel to the floor, whence it was snapped up by Philip’s spaniel, which sat up in front of Adeline and barked for more.

“No more, you disgraceful fellow!” she said, delving deep with her spoon, “but when I have finished, you may have the bone.”

The new teeth were a miracle of efficiency. It was a brilliant day when Malahide and she drove home with them. If ever they caused her discomfort, she denied it. The teeth were strong, well shaped, and of a colour neither too light nor too dark. She spent well-nigh an hour grinning before her glass. But this display of them came near being disastrous, for Boney, seeing the unaccustomed glitter in her mouth, flew suddenly to her shoulder to investigate, and gave one of the front incisors such a peck that he almost dislodged it. For a moment she was afraid to look, afraid to probe the spot with her tongue, but when she discovered the tooth safe and sound she was overjoyed and said: “Thank God for that!”