Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny (138 page)

“I don’t mind,” answered Eden, and pressed his small hand into Renny’s. “Where are we going?”

“To have a look at Cousin Malahide.”

He wanted to be alone, but he could not bear to send the child away. He liked the feel of his clinging hands and dependence on him.

They went along the path till they came to the bank overlooking Malahide’s tent. It was the hour when he usually made his first appearance. A brilliant change had come over the landscape in the past few days. The quiet tones of autumn had been transformed to scarlet and gold. Against these splendid hues of the maples and birches, the green of pine and spruce was richly intensified, the wild creepers that draped themselves along the very fence being like a vivid tapestry. The river appeared to move more quickly, and there on its surface was spread the proud reflection of a crimson branch. The swan, his mate, and the cygnet were floating in a tiny cove at the end of Malahide’s path. Now and again the male arched his neck and looked expectantly toward the tent. It was from this point that he had for days been harried.

Renny, Eden, and the spaniel settled themselves on the short grass that clothed the sandy soil. Eden amused himself by attacking a densely populated ant hill with the heel of his sturdy brown shoe. Keno buried his nose in a small burrow, snuffling in complete absorption. Renny took from his pocket a snapshot of Vera Lacey and gazed at it intently. Yet, while so occupied, each was alert for the most delicate sounds in the world about him.

They all turned at the faint clink of Malahide’s kettle, as it struck against a stone of the improvised stove. Three pairs of eyes bent their clear gaze full on him as he came languidly down the path: Eden’s blue, wondering; Renny’s brown and lighted by a malicious hope; Keno’s, above his earth-covered muzzle, showing a feckless curiosity in their hazel depths.

Malahide was not aware of the presence of the swans till he had sunk his kettle to the brim. Then he saw the male, with upraised wings and gaping beak, poised for attack. As Malahide scrambled to his feet on the slippery stone, he flung his kettle at the swan, which rushed at him, churning the water with powerful strokes of his wings and uttering a trumpet call to battle. His sudden change from pale immobility to dread commotion was comparable to the breaking of a spell.

Possibly because of the slime on the stones, Malahide lost his foothold and was plunged into the stream. In a second the swan was on top of him, and such a confusion of beating wings, contorted neck, and threshing legs and arms ensued that, for a space, nothing could be distinguished through the sheet of upthrown water.

The immobility of the swan’s mate was in striking contrast to his convulsive energy. She sat the water at a little distance, watching the struggle with a sidelong, haughty glance, while the cygnet, with tilted head, regarded the scene in roguish detachment.

Gathering all his force, Malahide was able to free himself for a moment and scrambled frantically to the shore. The swan, however, with the air of being master of all the elements, rocked ferociously in his wake. Malahide leaped to gain the trunk of a tree, but the swan, with a grand spread of his wings, leaped too and bore him to earth.

At the beginning of their struggle Eden had given a scream of fright and almost fallen from the bank. Renny caught him by the arm and held him fast while, with his other hand, he gripped Keno’s muzzle, and stayed his barking. He sat between the captives, his features fixed in a grin as elemental as that of some playful satyr.

But as he saw Malahide getting the worst of the struggle the grin changed to an expression of human concern.

He released the spaniel, who tumbled down the bank in a frenzy of excitement. Now his great ears lay on the water, his feet trod it, and his wide mouth gaped in eagerness. He was on the opposite shore barking into the snowy depths of the swan’s stern. Malahide, half fainting, had dragged himself on to the branch of a tree.

“Let me go! Let me go!” screamed Eden. “I want to go home!” Released, he flew toward the house.

Renny then scrambled down the bank and waded across the stream. He caught up a stick and threatened the swan, which, finding the forces against him trebled, retreated heavily into the water and swam, a great bundle of ruffled plumage, toward his mate and the cygnet. The former showed evident pride in his prowess, the latter tranquil pleasure in his return.

Renny, dragging Keno by the collar, went to where Malahide crouched in the tree.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

Malahide snarled — “Hurt! Hurt! You ask if I am hurt! I tell you I am killed!”

“You must have angered the swan.”

“Can one breathe the air of Jalna without enraging someone or something! You or your family or your damned pets! Your ugly-tempered horses — your biting curs — your vile-tongued parrot — your horrible swan!
Who
are you?
What
are you? You think you own the earth — it’s not safe for civilized people to live with you! You tire them out. You assault them — body and soul! Help me out of this tree — if you have the decency.”

He held down his hands. Renny took them and stiffened his body under Malahide’s weight. He slid to his feet and stood, battered, drenched, and shaking with mingled outrage and relief.

“I have died in this shambles,” he said, “and been born again. I’m a different man. If I could live with this visit over again you’d sing a different song.” He turned staggering toward his tent.

“Will you take my arm?” asked Renny.

With a surly air Malahide took his arm, but leant on him heavily. They went into the tent with its grassy smell and its flickers of sun on the canvas. Malahide dropped to his couch and said: —

“Get that bottle of brandy from the cupboard. That cursed bird! His wings were like flails! I haven’t a whole bone in me!”

Renny brought the brandy and poured a glass. Malahide’s teeth knocked on its brim as he drank. Puddles formed about him on the floor and the bed. He tossed off the entire glass, except what escaped down his chin. He wiped this on his fingers, and held them to his nostrils and sniffed.

“Thank God,” he said, “that you arrived when you did! That monster would certainly have had my life.”

“He has lost three young ones,” said Renny “You can’t blame him for being fussy.”

“Was I to blame if he hadn’t the sense to rear his young? Was I to blame if I rode better than you at the Show? Or because you were justly expelled from your school? Or because young Maurice begot a hedgerow child? Or Robert Vaughan had a stroke? Or that you went to bed with a gypsy? No! Yet all these calamities — if they were such — have been heaped up and cast on my innocent shoulders. I have been the scapegoat for both your houses. I have been insulted in yours, and the Vaughans will scarcely speak to me.”

Keno had been investigating every corner of the tent. He had discovered a jar of
pâté de foie gras
and now began to devour it in plebeian gulps. A little bird, perched on the ridgepole of the tent, chanted its farewell to this cold country and its plans for flight to the South. Eden’s clear voice could be heard chattering in the distance.

Holding tightly to his father’s hand, he appeared in the doorway. Philip demanded: —

“What’s this I hear about the swan attacking Malahide?” He looked with concern on Malahide, who had sunk into a posture of apathy and made no reply.

“It’s lucky I was about,” said Renny. “He got a bit of a mauling.”

Malahide raised his head. “Your son has saved my life,” he answered. “The first act of kindness I have had from one of you. And that only common humanity. Yet I have done everything to make myself agreeable. Even to accompanying your mother sixteen times to the dentist, which you were all cowardly or too lazy to do.”

“You got a diamond pin out of it,” observed Renny.

“I’m sorry,” said Philip, “that you think so badly of us.” He looked uneasily at a yellow envelope in his hand, and then added — “I have a cablegram here for you, Malahide. It had just arrived when Eden came. Do you feel up to reading it?”

Malahide held out his hand and took the paper. One of his eyes was closed by a swelling. With the other he read: —

YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY PEACEFULLY THIS MORNING AFTER SHORT ILLNESS AWAIT YOUR INSTRUCTIONS

BATES — SOLICITOR

After taking in the meaning of this message, during which moments the only sound was the rasping of Keno’s tongue in the
pâté de foie gras
jar, Malahide read it aloud in a grandiloquent tone.

Philip, although he had never heard any good of Malahide’s mother and only bad of the relations between them, was filled with concern. He said sympathetically: —

“It’s sad news for you, Malahide. I’m very sorry, for your sake. It will comfort you to know that she passed away peacefully.”

“It is the first peaceful thing she ever did,” said Malahide. “My life has been given over to keeping the peace. You can judge, from my stay in your house, what an adept I am at it. But I shall miss her.”

“I am sure you will,” said Philip. “What was she like? Would you care to talk about her?”

Malahide sighed. “It would be impossible to describe her. She lived like a queen in a house of which the roof is falling in, the stables are empty, and the garden overgrown by weeds. But she had money in the bank. It will be necessary for me to go home at once.”

“In the meantime,” said Philip, “you must let bygones be bygones and return to Jalna. As a matter of fact Nicholas and I shall require the tent for our hunting trip. We leave in a day or two.”

“You are welcome to it. I shall return, at your invitation, to Jalna.”

“You had better come with us now, if you feel able to walk.”

“I think I shall stay here today.”

Eden came to him and laid his hand on his knee. “The swan may come back,” he said.

“True,” said Malahide, putting his arm about him. “This is the flower of your flock, Philip, and I hope you will live to appreciate him. Give him to me and I will take him back to Ireland and make a civilized gentleman out of him.”

Philip laughed. “What about it, Eden? Would you go to Ireland?”

“Would Renny come too?”

Malahide answered — “There are limits to my civilizing influence.”

“What does he say?” asked Eden.

“He says,” answered Renny, his hand on the little boy’s neck, “that you are safer here, with your big brother.”

“Whatever you do,” said Malahide, “you’ll not make him into a Whiteoak. Mark my words.”

“We’ll do our best,” returned Philip. “Take your hand off his neck, Renny. How often must you be told that?”

T
HE
E
NGAGEMENT
R
ING

T
HE NEWS OF MALAHIDE'S
altered circumstances, of his imminent departure, created a pleasurable stir at Jalna. There was a general desire, after the long-continued rift in the family’s solidarity, to draw together again. As the evenings now closed in early, Adeline liked her family gathered about her in warm, if sometimes bickering, converse, the dark red curtains drawn, a bright fire blazing, and herself as the centre of their life’s pattern.

She acknowledged openly that she felt no regret at Malahide’s going. The passing of his mother, Bridget Court, could be regarded only as a blessing, since it rid the world of a tyrannical, two-faced old woman and left her son in a position to govern his own life. Adeline was ready to discuss these subjects by the hour, and, after Malahide was put to bed in his old room, liniment applied to his bruises and a hot-water bottle to his feet, she settled down to the most tranquil hours she had contemplated for a long while.

With a glass of barley water, flavoured with lemon juice, at her side, she sat herself at the writing bureau in the library to compose a voluminous letter to Ernest. She wished very much that he was here, because no one was more satisfactory than he in a prolonged dissection of family affairs.

Seeing her so established, Keno plumped down from the pyramid of cushions Meg had arranged for him and came to her feet. Across her long black kid slippers he laid his long liver-and-white muzzle and gave himself up to somnolent intercourse with her.

On and on her pen, held parallel with her breast, moved across the mauve-tinted pages bearing her initials, from a box given her on her birthday by Sir Edwin. Sometimes her mobile lips were thrust forward or her shaggy rust-coloured brows were raised as she wrote. Occasionally she scratched her head with her pen handle and pushed her cap to a rakish angle. But, in all her movements, satisfaction with her situation was evident, and this being subtly conveyed to the spaniel by gentle movements of her foot, he roused himself sufficiently to thud his plumed rail on the rug.

When she had finished the letter she pressed it to the blotter, the edge of which was decorated with the heads of horses drawn by Philip during his reluctant letter writing. She finished her glass of barley water and called to Mary, who was potting geraniums outside the window, to come and hear the letter.

“Find Philip and Nicholas too,” she said. “And Renny and Meg. They’d like to hear what I’ve writ.”

Mary looked at her hands. “I shall have to wash them first.”

“Wipe them on the grass. It’s clean dirt.”

“No — really, I must wash them.”

“You’re always washing. You’ll wash yourself away.”

“I’ll only be a moment. Then I’ll find the others.”

The time of waiting seemed long to Adeline. She arranged herself in front of the bureau and fixed her eyes on the door. Meg appeared first, then the two men, who had been already overhauling the tent which had been carried on to the lawn. Last Mary came with Philip’s heavy hunting socks to darn.

He brought his gun and settled down to clean it while he listened. His mother regarded this proceeding doubtfully.

“D’ye think you can give proper heed to me, if you do that?” she asked.

“Of course I can, Mamma. I’m all ears.” He laid his cleaning cloths beside him and peered along the shining barrel of the gun. Keno sprang up with a glad bark and circled about Philip in delighted agitation.