Eden spoke for almost the first time. “Never met so many orderly people in my life as I met in New York.”
“How nice,” said Meg. “I do like order, but I find it so hard to keep, with servants’ wages high, and so many boys about, and Granny requiring a good deal of waiting on.”
The sound of her own name must have penetrated Mrs. Whiteoak’s consciousness. She wobbled a moment as though she were about to fall, then righted herself and raised her still handsome, chiselled nose from its horizontal position and looked about. Her eyes, blurred by sleep, did not at once perceive Alayne.
“Dinner,” she observed. “I want my dinner.”
“Here are Eden and Alayne,” said Ernest, bending over her.
“Better come over to her,” suggested Nicholas.
“She will be so glad,” said Meg.
Eden took Alayne’s hand and led her to his grandmother. The old lady peered at them unseeingly for a moment; then her gaze brightened. She clutched Eden to her and gave him a loud, hearty kiss.
“Eden,” she said. “Well, well, so you’re back. Where’s your bride?”
Eden put Alayne forward, and she was enfolded in an embrace of surprising strength. Sharp bristles scratched her cheek, and a kiss was planted on her mouth.
“Pretty thing,” said Grandmother, holding her off to look at her. “You’re a very pretty thing. I’m glad you’ve come. Where’s Boney, now?” She released Alayne and looked around sharply for the parrot. At the sound of his name he flapped heavily from his ring perch to her shoulder. She stroked his bright plumage with her jewelled hand.
“Say ‘Alayne,’” she adjured him. “Say ‘Pretty Alayne.’ Come, now, there’s a darling boy!”
Boney, casting a malevolent look on Alayne with one topaz eye, for the other was tight shut, burst into a string of curses.
“Kutni! Kutni! Kutni!” he screamed. “Shaitan ke khatla! Kambakht!”
Grandmother thumped her stick loudly on the floor. “Silence!” she thundered. “I won’t have it. Stop him, Nick. Stop him!”
“He’ll bite me,” objected Nicholas.
“I don’t care if he does. Stop him!”
“Stop him yourself, Mamma.”
“Boney, Boney, don’t be so naughty. Say ‘Pretty Alayne.’ Come, now.”
Boney rocked himself on her shoulder in a paroxysm of rage. “Paji! Paji! Kuzabusth! Iflatoon! Iflatoon!” He glared into his mistress’s face, their two hooked beaks almost touching, his scarlet and green plumage, her purple and pink finery, blazing in the slanting sun-rays.
“Please don’t trouble,” said Alayne, soothingly. “I think he is very beautiful, and he probably does not dislike me as much as he pretends.”
“What’s she say?” demanded the old lady, looking up at her sons. It was always difficult for her to understand a stranger, though her hearing was excellent, and Alayne’s slow and somewhat precise enunciation was less clear to her than Nicholas’s rumbling tones or Ernest’s soft mumble.
“She says Boney is beautiful,” said Nicholas, too indolent to repeat the entire sentence.
Grandmother grinned, very well pleased. “Aye, he’s beautiful. A handsome bird, but a bit of a devil. I brought him all the way from India seventy-three years ago. A game old bird, eh? Sailing vessels then, my dear. I nearly died. And the ayah did die. They put her overboard. But I was too sick to care. My baby Augusta nearly died, poor brat, and my dear husband, Captain Philip Whiteoak, had his hands full. You’ll see his portrait in the dining room. The handsomest officer in India. I could hold my own for looks, too. Would you think I’d ever been a beauty, eh?”
“I think you are very handsome now,” replied Alayne, speaking with great distinctness. “Your nose is really—”
“What’s she say?” cried Grandmother.
Ernest murmured: “She says your nose—”
“Ha, ha, my nose is still a beauty, eh? Yes, my dear, it’s a good nose. A Court nose. None of your retroussé, surprisedlooking noses. Nothing on God’s earth could surprise my nose. None of your pinched, sniffing, cold-in-the-head noses, either. A good reliable nose. A Court nose.” She rubbed it triumphantly.
“You’ve a nice-looking nose, yourself,” she continued. “You and Eden make a pretty pair. But he’s no Court. Nor a Whiteoak. He looks like his poor pretty flibbertigibbet mother.”
Alayne, shocked, looked indignantly toward Eden, but he wore only an expression of tolerant boredom, and was putting a cigarette between his faintly smiling lips.
Meg saw Alayne’s look and expostulated: “Grandmamma!”
“Renny’s the only Court among ‘em,” pursued Mrs. Whiteoak. “Wait till you see Renny. Where is he? I want Renny.” She thumped the floor impatiently with her stick.
“He’ll be here very soon, Granny,” said Meg. “He rode over to Mr. Probyn’s to get a litter of pigs.”
“Well, I call that very boorish of him. Boorish. Boorish. Did I say boorish? I mean Boarish. There’s a pun, Ernest. You enjoy a pun. Boarish. Ha, ha!”
Ernest stroked his chin and smiled deprecatingly. Nicholas laughed jovially.
The old lady proceeded with a rakish air of enjoyment. “Renny prefers the grunting of a sow to sweet converse with a young bride—”
“Mamma,” said Ernest, “shouldn’t you like a peppermint?”
Her attention was instantly distracted. “Yes. I want a peppermint. Fetch me my bag.”
Ernest brought a little old bead-embroidered bag. His mother began to fumble in it, and Boney, leaning from her shoulder, pecked at it and uttered cries of greed.
“A sweet!” he babbled. “A sweet—Boney wants a sweet—Pretty Alayne—Pretty Alayne—Boney wants a sweet!”
Grandmother cried in triumph: “He’s said it! He’s said it! I told you he could. Good Boney.” She fumbled distractedly in the bag.
“May I help you?” Alayne asked, not without timidity
The old lady pushed the bag into her hand. “Yes, quickly. I want a peppermint. A Scotch mint. Not a humbug.”
“Boney wants a humbug!” screamed the parrot, rocking from side to side. “A humbug—Pretty Alayne—Kutni! Kutni! Shaitan ke khatla.”
Grandmother and the parrot leaned forward simultaneously for the sweet when it was found, she with protruding wrinkled lips, he with gaping beak. Alayne hesitated, fearing to offend either by favouring the other. While she hesitated Boney snatched it, and with a whir of wings flew to a far corner of the room. Grandmother, rigid as a statue, remained with protruding mouth till Alayne unearthed another sweet and popped it between her lips, then she sank back with a sigh of satisfaction, closed her eyes, and began to suck noisily.
Alayne longed to wipe her fingers, but she refrained. She looked at the faces about her. They were regarding the scene with the utmost imperturbability, except Eden, who still wore his look of faintly smiling boredom. A cloud of smoke about his head seemed to emphasize his aloofness.
Meg moved closer to him and whispered: “I think I shall take Alayne upstairs. I’ve had new chintzes put in your room, and fresh curtains, and I’ve taken the small rug from Renny’s room and covered the bare spot on the carpet with it. I think you’ll be pleased when you see it, Eden. She’s a perfect dear.”
Brother and sister looked at Alayne, who was standing with the two uncles at a window. They had opened the shutters and were showing her the view of the oak woods that sloped gradually down to the ravine. A flock of sheep were quietly grazing, tended by an old sheep dog. Two late lambs were vying with each other in plaintive cries.
Meg came to Alayne and put an arm through hers. “I know you would like to go to your room,” she said.
The two women ascended the stairway together. When they reached Eden’s door Meg impetuously seized Alayne’s head between her plump hands and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m sure we can love each other,” she explained, with childish enthusiasm, and Alayne returned the embrace, feeling that it would be easy to love this warm-blooded woman with a m
outh like a Cupid’s bow.
When Eden came up, he found Alayne arranging her toilet articles on the dressing table and humming a happy little song. He closed the door after him and came to her.
“I’m glad you can sing,” he said. “I had told you that my family were an unusual set of people, but when I saw you among them I began to fear they’d be too much for you—that you’d get panicky, perhaps, and want to run back to New York.”
“Is that why you were so quiet downstairs? You had an odd expression. I could not quite make it out. I thought you looked bored.”
“I was. I wanted to have you to myself.” He took her in his arms.
Eden was at this moment inexplicably two men. He was the lover, strongly possessive and protective. As opposed to this, he was the captive, restless, nervous, hating the thought of the responsibility of introducing his wife to his family, of translating one to the other in terms of restraint and affection.
She said, stroking his hair, which was like a shining metallic casque over his head: “Your sister—Meg—was delightful to me. She seems quite near already. And she tells me she had this room done over for me—new chintz and curtains. I am so glad it looks out over the park and the sheep. I can scarcely believe I shall have sheep to watch from my window.”
“Let me show you my things,” cried Eden, gaily, and he led her about the room, pointing out his various belongings from schooldays on, with boyish naïveté. He showed her the ink-stained desk at which he had written many of his poems.
“And to think,” she exclaimed, “that I was far away in New York, and you were here, at that desk, writing the poems that were to bring us together!” She stroked the desk as though it were a living thing, and said, “I shall always want to keep it. When we have our own house, may we take it there, Eden?”
“Of course.” But he wished she would not talk about having their own house yet. To change the subject he asked, “Did you find Gran rather overpowering? I’m afraid I scarcely prepared you for her. But she can’t be explained. She’s got to be seen to be credible. The uncles are nice old boys.”
“Do you think”—she spoke hesitatingly, yet with determination—“that it is good for her to spoil her so? She absolutely dominated the room.”
He smiled down at her quizzically. “My dear, she will be a hundred on her next birthday. She was spoiled before we ever saw her. My grandfather attended to that. Quite possibly she was spoiled before ever he saw her. She probably came into the world spoiled by generations of tyrannical hot-tempered Courts. You will just have to make the best of her.”
“But the way she spoke about your mother. I cannot remember the word—flibberty-something. It hurt me, dearest.”
Eden ran his hand through his hair in sudden exasperation. “You must not be so sensitive, Alayne. Words like that are a mere caress compared to what Gran can bring out on occasion.”
“But about your dear mother,” she persisted.
“Aren’t women always like that about their daughters-in-law? Wait till you have one of your own and see. Wait till you are ninety-nine. You may be no more sweet-tempered than Gran by then.”
Eden laughed gaily, but with an air of dismissing the subject, and drew her to the chintz-covered window seat. “Let’s sit down here a bit and enjoy Meggie’s new decoration. I think she’s done us thundering well, don’t you?”
Alayne leaned against him, breathing deeply of the tranquil air of Indian summer that came like a palpable essence through the open window. The earth, after all its passion of bearing, was relaxed in passive and slumbrous contentment. Its desires were fulfilled, its gushing fertility over. In profound languor it seemed to brood; neither on the future nor on the past, but on its own infinite relation to the sun and to the stars. The sun had become personal. Red and rayless, he hung above the land as though listening to the slow beating of a great heart.
She became aware that Eden was observing someone in the grounds outside. She heard the sound of a horse’s hoofs and, turning, saw a man leaning from his horse to fasten the gate behind him. Her beauty-loving eye was caught first by the satin shimmer of the beast’s chestnut coat. Then she perceived that the rider was tall and thin, that he stooped in the saddle with an air of slouching accustomedness, and, as he passed beneath the window, that he had a red, sharp-featured face that looked rather foxlike beneath his peaked tweed cap.
The two clumber spaniels had rushed out to greet him and were bounding about the horse, their long silken ears flapping. Their barking irritated the horse, and, after a nip or two at them, he broke into a canter and disappeared with his rider behind a row of Scotch firs that hid the stables from the house.
“Renny,” murmured Eden, “back from his porcine expedition.”
“Yes, I thought it must be Renny, though he is not like what I expected him to be. Why did you not call to him?”
“He’s rather a shy fellow. I thought it might embarrass both of you to exchange your first greetings from such different altitudes.”
Alayne, listening to the muffled sound of hoofs, remarked: “He gives the impression of a strong personality.”
“He has. And he’s as wiry and strong as the Devil. I’ve never known him to be ill for a day. He’ll probably live to be as old as Gran.”
“Gran—Gran,” thought Alayne. Every conversation in this family seemed to be punctuated by remarks about that dreadful old woman.
“And he owns all this,” she commented. “It does not seem quite fair to all you others.”
“It was left that way. He has to educate and provide for the younger family. The uncles had their share years ago. And of course Gran simply hoards hers. No one knows who will get it.”
“Gran” again.
A gentle breeze played with a tendril of hair on her forehead. Eden brushed his lips against it. “Darling,” he murmured, “do you think you can be happy here for a while?”
“Eden! I am gloriously happy.”
“We shall write such wonderful things—together.”
They heard steps on the gravelled path that led to the back of the house. Alayne, opening her eyes, heavy with a momentary sweet languor, saw Renny enter the kitchen, his dogs at his heels. A moment later a tap sounded on the door.
“Please,” said Wake’s voice, “will you come down to dinner?”
He could not restrain his curiosity about the bride and groom. It seemed very strange to find this young lady in Eden’s room, but it was disappointing that there were no confetti and orange blossoms about.
Alayne put her arm around his shoulders as they descended the stairs, feeling more support from his little body in the ordeal of meeting the rest of the family than the presence of Eden afforded her. There were still Renny and the wife of young Piers.
Their feet made no sound on the thick carpet of the stairs. The noontide light falling through the coloured glass window gave the hall an almost church-like solemnity, and the appearance at the far end of old Mrs. Whiteoak emerging from her room, supported on either side by her sons, added a final processional touch. Through the open door of the dining room Alayne could see the figures of Renny, Piers, and a young girl advancing toward the table. Meg already stood at one end of it, surveying its great damask expanse as some high priestess might survey the sacrificial altar. On a huge platter already lay two rotund roasted fowls. Rags stood behind a drawn-back chair, awaiting Mrs. Whiteoak. As the old lady saw Alayne and her escorts approaching the door of the dining room, she made an obviously heroic effort to reach it first, shuffling her feet excitedly, and snuffing the good smell of the roast with the excitement of an old warhorse smelling blood.
“Steady, Mamma, steady,” begged Ernest, steering her past a heavily carved hall chair.
“I want my dinner,” she retorted, breathing heavily. “Chicken. I smell chicken. And cauliflower. I must have the pope’s nose, and plenty of bread sauce.”
Not until she was seated was Alayne introduced to Renny and Pheasant. He bowed gravely, and murmure
d some only half-intelligible greeting. She might have heard it more clearly had her mind been less occupied with the scrutiny of him at sudden close quarters. She was observing his narrow, weather-beaten face, the skin like red-brown leather merging in colour into the rust-red of his hair, his short thick eyelashes, his abstracted, yet fiery eyes. She observed too his handsome, hard-looking nose, which was far too much like his grandmother’s.
Pheasant she saw as a flower-like young girl, a fragile Narcissus poeticus in this robust, highly coloured garden of Jalna.
Alayne was seated at Renny Whiteoak’s left, and at her left Eden, and next him Pheasant and Piers. Wakefield had been moved to the other side of the table, between his sister and Uncle Ernest. Alayne had only glimpses of him around the centrepiece of crimson and bronze dahlias, flowers that in their rigid and uncompromising beauty were well fitted to withstand the overpowering presence of the Whiteoaks. Whenever Alayne’s eyes met the little boy’s, he smiled. Whenever her eyes met Meg’s, Meg’s lips curved in their own peculiar smile. But when her eyes met those of Mrs. Whiteoak, the old lady showed every tooth in a kind of ferocious friendliness, immediately returning to her dinner with renewed zeal, as though to make up for lost time.
The master of Jalna set about the business of carving with the speed and precision of one handing out rations to an army. But there was nothing haphazard about his method of apportioning the fowl. With carving knife poised, he shot a quick look at the particular member of the family he was about to serve, then, seeming to know either what they preferred or what was best for them, he slashed it off and handed the plate to Rags, who glided with it to Meg, who served the vegetables.
To one accustomed to a light luncheon, the sight of so much food at this hour was rather disconcerting. Alayne, looking at these enormous dinner plates mounded with chicken, bread sauce, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, and green peas, thought of little salad lunches in New York with mild regret. They seemed very far away. Even the table silver was enormous. The great knife and fork felt like implements in her hands. The salt-cellars and pepperpots seemed weighted by memories of all the bygone meals they had savoured. The long-necked vinegar bottle reared its head like a tawny giraffe in the massive jungle of the table.
Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna Page 71
