Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny (114 page)

But before long she had been too much in love with Philip to worry over the delinquencies of his children. For six months she had had him to herself before his mother and older brothers, made suspicious by a remark in a letter from him, had hastened from England to put a spoke in her wheel. But they had not been able to do it. Philip had been as stubborn in his love for her as he was in all else. They had married within the year.

Now he and his brothers were on their way to Vaughanlands. It was not yet half-past eight. It was characteristic of them that, though they were accustomed to a solid breakfast, they gave no thought to food when business such as this was on hand. They rode abreast, Nicholas and Ernest on dark bay geldings, Philip on a bright chestnut mare with a white blaze on her face. The two elder were dressed with care in London-made riding clothes. Ernest had placed a flower in his buttonhole, but had later taken it out as unsuitable to the occasion. Philip rode bareheaded, in his disreputable fishing suit. Keno trotted close to the heels of the mare.

Robert Vaughan saw the three horsemen approach along his drive. They rode abreast and the sleek flanks of their horses now and again touched, giving the animals that sense of companionship they loved. Robert Vaughan looked out on them as one of his ancestors may have looked from his bleak house on the Welsh borders at a band of galloping marauders. But he came to meet them with a firm step.

In the dining room, where an untouched breakfast was laid, Philip broke out: —

“Well, this is a hell of a mess your son has got into! By God, I’d like to have brought a horsewhip with me!”

“I don’t wonder you are upset,” said Robert Vaughan. “It has been a terrible blow to me.”

“Upset!” exclaimed Nicholas. “Upset! That’s putting it mildly.”

“How did you find it out?”

“That worm Binns told me,” answered Philip. “You didn’t expect him to hold his tongue, did you?”

“Where escapades materialize into squalling infants, they can’t be concealed,” said Ernest. “The whole affair is a dreadful insult to my niece.”

Philip added loudly — “Yes — an insult to Meggie! Where is he? I must see him!”

“He has gone off to the wood,” said Robert Vaughan. “He is completely crushed, poor boy!”

“Poor boy!” shouted Philip. “What about my poor girl?”

“Yes,” growled Nicholas. “what about her? She’s shamed before the countryside. An innocent young girl — and a Whiteoak.”

He had added fuel to the flame.

Ernest’s voice was thick with rage when he said: —

“Not a woman of our family was ever treated like this before. Maurice has behaved like a scoundrel.”

“I know it. I know it,” Robert Vaughan agreed distractedly. “But you know what a loose girl can do with a young man.”

“If he is weak enough,” said Nicholas.

“Where were your eyes?” demanded Philip. “The trouble is that you have utterly spoiled Maurice.”

“Do you know everything your son does?” asked Robert Vaughan, goaded to anger.

“I’d like to see him make a mother of a village girl and get away with it! If he did what Maurice has done I’d break every bone in his body!”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t! You’d —”

“You say I lie?”

“No, no, but —”

“If my son, I repeat —”

“But listen, Philip —”

Ernest put in — “Mr. Vaughan expects us to be calm.”

“Picture yourself in our place,” said Nicholas.

“How can he?” exclaimed Philip. “He has no daughter!”

“No niece,” added Ernest.

“He has a son,” said Nicholas, “who has ruined Meggie’s life. Humiliated us all.”

Robert Vaughan looked about to faint again.

“Is there no possibility,” he asked, “of hiding this from Meg? A home can be found for the child at a safe distance from here. Maurice tells me Elvira and her aunt have given up their cottage and are going to relations somewhere.”

“I’ll wager,” said Nicholas, “that the woman is the girl’s mother and no aunt. I’ve heard things about her.”

Philip moved to Robert Vaughan’s side. “Do you imagine,” he said, “that I will let my young daughter marry a man who has made a mother of a village slut?”

“If my father were living,” declared Ernest, “nothing short of a horsewhipping for Maurice would have satisfied him.”

Philip turned a dark red. “Fetch the boy in here! I have something to say to him!”

They raged about Robert Vaughan, they in their prime, he beginning to feel the weight of his years, till he staggered and took hold of the back of a chair to steady himself. He managed to say: —

“I’m afraid I can’t talk any longer about it. It’s been a terrible morning. If it’s all over — if nothing can be done — but — I can’t stand any more.” He looked ghastly.

“If only Noah Binns did not know of it!” said Ernest.

“We could never hush it up,” said Nicholas, “Not with the servants here in the secret.”

“The whole affair,” Philip added, “makes me sick.”

“It makes me sick too,” Nicholas growled. “And what I don’t understand is how things could have reached such a point and neither Robert nor Mrs. Vaughan suspected anything.”

“Were you never able to conceal your doings from your parents?” retorted Robert Vaughan.

“Not to that extent.”

“No,” agreed Ernest, “and we never took up with village girls … excepting Philip once — and he was stopped in time.”

Philip looked resentfully at Ernest. He went to the sideboard and poured a drink for Robert Vaughan. He saw the table laid for three.

“I apologize,” he said, “for keeping you and Mrs. Vaughan so long from your breakfast.”

Robert Vaughan gulped down the brandy. “Help yourselves,” he said, “I’m sure you need something.”

The three brothers moved in unison to the sideboard. A more temperate atmosphere prevailed. Talking the affair over more quietly, they agreed that such things had happened before; that marriages with inauspicious beginnings had been known to turn out very well. It seemed to Robert Vaughan’s ears too good to be true when Philip Whiteoak said, with an almost friendly ring in his voice: —

“Well, the marriage is too important to our two families to be shelved. We must try to put this unfortunate happening behind us and go on with the preparations.”

“Thank you,” said Robert Vaughan, “I can promise that Maurice will never again — why, he did not care two straws for the girl — she tricked him into it.”

“H’m — what is she like? Pretty?”

“Why — I’m sure — I don’t know. I dare say.”

“I’ve seen her,” said Nicholas, “Rather an elfin creature.”

“The aunt is attractive too,” said Ernest, “in a sharp gypsy way.
Yellow hair.”

Philip laughed — “Old Ernie knows all about them!”

He took his brother by the shoulder. “Are you sure you are not the guilty father of the infant?”

Nicholas chuckled. Mr. Vaughan gave a wry smile. Upstairs the child cried.

“What is it?” asked Philip. “Not a boy, I hope.”

“No. A girl.”

“Good. Call her Pheasant.”

Robert Vaughan thought — “Shall I ever understand these people — know how they will take things?” He repeated, rather petulantly: “Pheasant! Why Pheasant? It’s a very strange name for a little girl.”

“I’ll tell you why I chose it. As I was riding here a pheasant rose out of a clump of bushes and showed herself in the sun. She was lovely and bright and it occurred to me what a pretty name for a girl.”

Nicholas poured himself another drink. “You’re a most extraordinary fellow, Philip. Fancy choosing a name for your prospective son-in-law’s bastard at a time like this!”

“But I do choose it,” returned Philip stubbornly.

“It shall be as you say,” said Vaughan, who cared little what the child should be called.

Philip drank his second whiskey and water at a gulp. “Let’s see her,” he said, almost genially. “I like babies.”

“My God!” exclaimed Ernest. “Not newborn babies! Above all, not this one!”

“I like them all. Can’t you fetch her down, Robert?”

“Won’t it look very suspicious to the servants?” said Ernest. “We’re going to face the thing out, aren’t we?”

Robert Vaughan answered — “I will simply say that a poor woman left the child on my doorstep with a note asking me to succour it. We have been charitable people, I think, so the plea will not seem unnatural. I will say that we have agreed to provide for the child. Our housekeeper is leaving to live with her invalid mother. She would be glad, I am sure, to take it into her care. She will be going quite a long way off.”

“That sounds possible,” said Ernest. “The principal thing is to deny any intimacy between Maurice and Elvira.”

“The same story will do for Meggie. She must never hear the truth,” said Nicholas.

“Poor girl,” groaned Robert Vaughan.

“I’d like to see the child,” said Philip again.

Nicholas gave Robert Vaughan a look that said: —

“We may as well humour this strange brother of mine.”

Robert Vaughan objected — “I agree with Ernest that it will look very suspicious to the servants — my bringing the child to you.”

“Rot!” said Philip. “It will put them off the scent.”

Robert Vaughan acquiesced. He went slowly out of the room, a thin drooping figure, his sparse hair brushed smoothly across his increasing baldness.

“Looks old, doesn’t he?” observed Nicholas.

“He is old,” said Philip laconically. His eye was on his spaniel, who now raised himself against the breakfast table and drew a slice of meat from the platter.

“Keno — you brute — drop it!” ordered Nicholas.

“Too late to stop him,” said Philip. “He’s hungry. So am I.”

Ernest moved nearer the table and looked down at the neglected viands spread there. “Cold ham — looks very nice too. Egg cups — they’ll be having boiled eggs as well. No porridge spoons — sometimes I think I’d be as well without it. It’s really too filling.”

Nicholas was pouring himself another drink.

“Well,” he said, “this has been a ghastly business. But, thank God, we’ve been able to patch it up! It’s a lesson for young Maurice. He’ll likely run straight for the rest of his days. There’s the comport Mamma and Papa gave Robert’s parents on their silver anniversary.”

Ernest came to examine it. Philip had seated himself on the broad window sill. He was watching his spaniel meticulously cleaning with his tongue the spot on the floor where the ham had lain. His face looked downcast, yet not unhappy. He accepted life as it came, with only an occasional outburst of protest.

Mr. Vaughan returned to the room with the child on his arm. He had felt confused coming down the stairs, had even thought for a moment that this was the infant Maurice he held. Mrs. Vaughan had taken off the plaid shawl and the baby appeared in a clean white dress. Its tiny head was misted with dark hair. Nicholas, with a sardonic smile, Ernest, with a deprecating grimace, came at once to inspect it. Philip made no haste to move from where he sat. He had lighted his pipe and was enjoying the first fragrant puff. He held one of Keno’s ears between his fingers, handling it gently as he smoked.

“How old would you say it is?” asked Nicholas.

“Between two and three weeks — my wife thinks.”

“It’s much better looking than they usually are at that age,” observed Ernest. “Tell me, did Maurice know of its birth before this morning?”

“No. He had had word from the girl that she and her aunt were leaving. He had been certain that the child would be born in the place where they are going.”

“Disconcerting for him — this!” said Nicholas grimly.

Robert Vaughan turned toward Philip.

“You asked,” he said sternly, “to see the child.”

Philip rose and came almost nonchalantly and bent over it. “Nice little thing! A pretty little girl. I hope that housekeeper will be kind to her. How does it feel to be a grandfather, Vaughan?”

Robert Vaughan shrank from the words as from a menacing hand. “I can scarcely be called a grandfather — in the ordinary way,” he said in a shaking voice.

“Damned ordinary, I should say,” observed Philip. Through pouted lips he gently blew a cloud of smoke into the infant’s face. It drew its features together in a comical way and sneezed.

Philip smiled amiably.

“I always do it to my own,” he said. “It’s amusing to watch them.”

His elder brothers were anxious to return to Jalna. They wanted their breakfast, and there was the business of breaking the news to their mother. It had been agreed that it would not be safe to keep it from her, for she would have been suspicious at once and never ceased with questioning and probing till the truth would out. She and Mary and Augusta, combined with their men, must shield Meggie.

They rode away, as they had come, in the warm sunshine, their horses’ flanks sometimes touching, Keno trotting close to the mare’s heels. Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan watched them from their bedroom window. “Thank God,” he said, “that’s over! Now you must come and try to take a little breakfast, my dear.”

But she was not interested in her own breakfast. A feeding bottle that had once been used for her son had been filled with warm milk, and she held the rubber nipple encouragingly to the child’s mouth. But it turned away its face, whimpering, and sought, with nuzzling head, for the young breast to which it was accustomed.

M
EG

N
OW SHE MINDED
the sharpness of the stone sill against her breast. She minded it very much. It seemed to cut into the tender flesh, to cut into it cruelly, right to her very heart. She was sure that the sharpness and chill of the stone had penetrated to the core of her heart. She pressed her hands there and crept back into the bed. She crept into it and drew the covers, first up to her chin, then quite over her head. All she thought at first was — “How cold I am! How cold and sharp the sill was!” Then she saw, before her tightly shut eyes, Keno’s face turned up toward her window with his fixed spaniel’s grin. As she pictured it, the grin became more and more terrible to her, till she shook like a leaf with fear of it.

She opened her eyes wide. She saw nothing but the dim paleness beneath the bedclothes. She smelt the delicate fragrance of her own body. She remembered the warm bath she had had the night before, how she had sat in the old bath from which the enamel was peeling, and scrubbed the firm whiteness of her flesh with a flannel well lathered with Windsor soap. She had been so happy she had scarcely known what to do with herself, but had lathered and splashed and only half dried herself, and left the huge bath sheet in a heap in the middle of the floor.