Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny (36 page)

“I have seen your wife,” he announced.

“Yes?” Wilmott spoke quietly. “You know, Kate and I went to New York on our honeymoon. We had been there only a few days when Mrs. Wilmott discovered me, looking in at the window of a bookshop. She was coming out with a book she had bought. It was almost a year since I had seen her and my first thought was how well she was looking. Really like a different woman.”

Wilmott just stared.

“She is not worrying over your whereabouts any longer. She is immersed — literally up to her neck — in the anti-slavery campaign!”

Wilmott’s jaw dropped. He uttered an incoherent sound.

“You see,” continued Brent, “she is by nature a woman with a mission. She is completely carried away by this. She never reached Mexico, for she made friends with people who warned her what a precarious and almost hopeless expedition it would be. These friends are anti-slavery enthusiasts. She became one. She travelled with them through the South. Now she is on a lecturing tour in the North, arousing feeling there. She is returning to England to lecture.”

“
Lecture
” ejaculated Wilmott.

“Yes. Lecture. She pointed out a card in the window of the bookshop, advertising the one she was giving that night. She begged me to attend it. Fortunately Kate was a little indisposed, so I was able to go alone.”

“And Mrs. Wilmott mounted a platform and lectured!” cried Adeline. “Eh, but I should have liked to hear her. Was there a crowd?”

“The hall was not very well filled but those who were there could not have been more enthusiastic. She roused them to a really vindictive anger. They would have marched forth and set fire to the house of any slave owner — if they could have found one.”

“It puzzles me,” said Wilmott, “how she could have kept to the one subject. Her tongue has a fashion of running away with her.”

“It did run away with her!” exclaimed Brent. “That’s just the point. Words literally poured from her. She submerged the audience with words. She gave us statistics and tortures in the same breath. For my part, if it hadn’t been for Kate I was almost ready to join in the campaign. In a small clear penetrating voice — ”

“Ah,” said Wilmott gloomily. “I know that voice. It used to beat on my brain for hours after we had gone to bed and something had started her lecturing.”

“Lecturing — ah, there you are! She’s a born lecturer. In your day, she had an audience of only one. Now she has hundreds and it
will not surprise me if, before this controversy is finished, she has thousands. After the lecture she was besieged by people who were interested. Then I escorted her to her hotel and we had a long talk. That is to say, I listened and she talked.”

“Did she speak of me?” asked Wilmott.

“She did that. She said your leaving her had been the greatest mercy of her life. She said that, with the exception of giving her Hetty, it was the one good thing you had ever done for her.”

“She said not a word of my having crippled myself financially to leave her in security.”

“Not a word. She even spoke of your independence, your lack of ambition. She said that, having dedicated herself to her great mission, she never wanted to hear of you again and that if you should, in time to come, seek her out and beg for forgiveness, she would cast you off.”

“She did, did she, eh?” said Wilmott, with a savage grin.

Adeline sprang to her feet. She embraced Wilmott.

“Oh, James,” she cried, “what glorious news for you!”

She then turned to Brent and embraced him.

“How splendid you have been!” she exclaimed. “Have you breathed a word of this to Kate?”

“Not a word — and never shall. As a matter of fact, dear Mrs. Whiteoak, there are so many little incidents in my own past which I must conceal from Kate that
this
from
Wilmott’s
is imperceptible.”

“Oh, you rogue!” said Adeline, kissing him.

No one could call Wilmott a rogue. He stood glowering at them.

“Aren’t you delighted?” asked Brent.

“Yes. I am delighted. Did Mrs. Wilmott speak of my daughter?”

“Hetty! Ah, yes, Hetty! Her mother is very pleased with Hetty. That girl is transformed. She too has thrown herself into the work. She has grown tall and strong and serious. She was seated at a small table inside the door of the lecture hall. She was distributing pamphlets against slavery. Selling autographed copies of a booklet
written by her mother, at fifty cents each. The proceeds to go to the Cause. I bought one for you. Here it is.”

He unbuttoned his coat and took the booklet from his inner pocket. Wilmott accepted it gingerly.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, very much.”

“You know,” said Brent, “if ever this affair should leak out — as so help me God it never will through me — you can say quite simple that you and your wife separated because of her views on slavery. You can express a profound sympathy with the South.”

“He could say nothing that would make him more unpopular here,” said Adeline. “We’re all against slavery.”

“Then say,” continued Brent, unabashed, “that she would never stay at home as a wife should but was always gallivanting over the country, lecturing. Say you parted by mutual agreement which I can certify you have.”

“Thank you,” said Wilmott, turning over the booklet in his hands.

“Splendid,” Adeline agreed. “The very thing.”

Kate Brent came seeking them.

“There are strawberries and cream!” she called. “Do come, everybody! The berries are monstrous big and the cream as thick as Michael’s brogue.”

“My treasure,” said Brent. “I will follow you to the ends of the earth — if you offer me strawberries.”

“Will you kindly give my excuses to Mrs. Lacey,” said Wilmott. “I have to go home.”

They could not dissuade him. Adeline lingered a moment. It’s ended better than we could have hoped for, hasn’t it? And you think I did well in making Michael Brent our confidant, don’t you?”

“I think you did superbly well. But, all the same — in spite of my relief — I feel that I cut a comic figure in all this.”

“That is the trouble with you!” she cried. “You are always thinking of people’s opinion. Now I never consider what people will think.”

“It is part of your charm that you don’t. But I have no charm.”

“James, you are one of the most charming men I know. And you ought to be one of the happiest.”

“So I shall be. I promise you.”

They parted and he followed the path through the luxuriant growth of July, to his own house.

Whenever he had been away, his first thought on returning was to wonder what Tite was doing. Now he found him by the river’s edge, painting a wheelbarrow bright blue from a new pot of paint.

“Well, Tite,” he said, “what are you up to?”

Tite made a graceful gesture with the paintbrush.

“Boss, my grandfather gave me this wheelbarrow because he is old and had no more use for it. But I do not like a red wheelbarrow, so — I paint it blue!”

“And a very good wheelbarrow it is. Tite, are you sure your grandfather gave it to you? You told me he was very poor.”

“So he is, Boss. That is why he has nothing more than a wheelbarrow to leave me. He guesses he’s soon going to die.”

“And where did you get the pot of paint.”

“Boss, I found it floating on the river.”

Wilmott sighed and went into the house. There was an ineffable sense of peace in it. He sat down by the table and took out Henrietta’s booklet. He read it through. Then he laid it on the hearth and touched it with a lighted match. In an instant it was blazing. One word stood out from the printed page.
Slavery
.

A quiet smile lighted Wilmott’s face.

“Well,” he said, aloud, “she’s set me free, thank God. I can begin again — in peace.”

Tite put his head in at the door. “Boss,” he said, “I want to say something.”

Wilmott raised his head. “Yes, Tite?”

“Boss, the folks where the garden party is gave me a basket of strawberries. I’ve a dish of them ready for your tea. There’s cream from our own cow.”

“That sounds appetizing, Tite. I’m hungry. Bring the strawberries along.”

Tite draped himself gracefully against the side of the door.

“Boss, the servant girl at the place they call Jalna gave me a slab of plum cake.”

“She did! Well, that was handsome of her. Let’s have tea.”

Tite made a sudden leap forward, like a young animal galvanized by pleasure. He pulled off the red felt table cover and in its place laid a square of clean white linen. He began to place the dishes in orderly fashion. Wilmott put on the kettle. At first he had eaten his meals alone but he had grown so fond of Tite that he had enjoyed his company at table. The boy was slim, clean, well-behaved. Physically he was beautiful. Wilmott had ambitions for him. As they sat eating their strawberries and cream, Wilmott said: —

“I am going to each you many things, Tite. History, geography, mathematics, English literature and even Latin.”

“That is good, Boss,” answered Tite, cutting the plum cake carefully in half. “I am always ready to learn.”

“T
HESE CROQUET AND
archery parties are all very well,” said Conway, “but I should like to see you give something more spirited in the way of entertainment. Now, where Mary and I were in the South of France, we went to some delightful parties on the seashore where the diversions were drinking champagne and bathing.”

He raised his greenish eyes to his sister’s face, from where he sat on the floor at her feet, his head resting against her knee. Sholto sat in an identical position with his head against her other knee. Mary sat in a straight-backed chair opposite, crocheting fine lace for a border on a cambric nightcap. She said: —

“Yes, indeed, dear Adeline, we had the most heavenly time you can imagine. Some of the bathing costumes were as pretty as pictures and when we were tired of the water we lay on the sands and sang.”

“I can’t picture it taking place here,” said Adeline.

“It can take place quite simply,” said Conway, “if only you will let me engineer it. First of all we must eliminate those oldsters who carp at the licence the young take. You need only get together a congenial party, provide the refreshments, and I shall look after the rest.”

“This lake is not the Mediterranean,” said Adeline. “It’s likely to be cold.”

“In this torrid weather! No — it will be deliciously cool. Come along, Sis, say you will!”

“Do say you will,” repeated Sholto, turning Adeline’s rings about on her fingers.

“We have no bathing costumes.”

“Conway and I have,” said Mary. “The rest of you can easily buy or make them. Lydia Busby tells me she has a pattern for one. Do say yes!”

“There really is nothing to do,” said Sholto. “We might as well be in Ireland.”

“The moon is at the full,” said Conway, “and would give us all the light we should need.”

“You intend to stay after sunset, then?” asked Adeline.

“Assuredly,” said Mary. “We’d die of the heat if we went before late afternoon. Oh, if only you knew the pleasure of such a party! The freedom from long skirts and tight shoes and — above all — convention!”

“I didn’t know that convention had ever troubled any of you,” returned Adeline.

“We feel it here,” said Sholto. “We hate being hampered.”

“Then go home,” retorted his sister.

“What a beast you are, Sis,” he returned, kissing her hand.

She took a handful of hair on each of their heads and gave it a tug. “Have your way, then. But there will be no champagne. A good claret cup must suffice. Make out your list, Conway. Get the pattern of the bathing costume, Mary. If we’re to have the party before the dark of the moon, we must make haste.”

They did make haste — the principal obstacle to overcome being lack of covering for their bodies. Those bidden to the party included Robert and Daisy Vaughan, the Brents, the three young Busbys, Dr. Ramsey and Wilmott. Including the five from Jalna there were to be fourteen at the bathing party. A sewing bee was held at Jalna where, with great speed and small consideration for the peculiarities of figure, costumes were produced. There was a singular likeness among them all. A bolt of dark blue flannel had been bought, along
with several bolts of white braid, for the female costumes. The males were to wear their own white shirts but, for their nether parts, white flannel knee-length trousers were made. The cutting out of these, the sewing together of the two halves, produced such extraordinary results that shrieks of hysterical laughter resounded through the house. Mary laughed till she cried so that water had to be thrown on her and work was at a standstill for some time.

Finally Sholto, as the youngest and most innocent of the males, was made to dress in the first costume completed. His shirt of course fitted admirably but the trousers, reaching midway between knee and ankle, had such a comic effect that the work was once more held up by unrestrained laughter. Sholto capered about the room shamelessly, his pale red hair on end, his thin legs flashing. Whether the trousers should be lengthened or shortened, trimmed with braid or left plain, was the subject of excited talk. It was a blessing that neither Mrs. Vaughan nor Mrs. Lacey was present.

When Philip tried on his in the privacy of his bedroom, he found he could not sit down in them.

“Adeline,” he shouted, “come here at once!”

She came expectantly.

“You may have the damned party without me,” he said. “I can’t sit down in these.”

She walked round him, examining him critically.

“You don’t need to sit down,” she said. “They’re for swimming in, not sitting in. You can swim, can’t you?”

“Certainly, I can. But do you expect me to swim about continually while the rest of you sit on the shore drinking claret? Also, I doubt very much if I could swim in them. They are extraordinary tight and a most evil shape.”

“Faith, they are,” said Adeline. “I shall give them to Wilmott and make you another pair. He’s much thinner in the thigh.”

Another pair was made of the very last of the flannel and, though from scarcity of material they had to be made rather shorter than the others, Philip did not object, for now he would be able to both swim and sit down.