03 Mary Wakefield

by Mazo de La Roche

  He suffered himself to be led but preserved a melancholy dignity. His tone became la-di-da.

  “I considah,” he repeated, savouring each syllable, “I considah…”

  He passed through the kitchen, looking neither to right nor left.

  V

  THE MOORINGS

  MRS. LACEY WHOSE father-in-law had been one of the first of the group of English naval and army officers to settle in the vicinity of Jalna and whose husband had reached the rank of Admiral in the Royal Navy sat beside the tea-table in a room which seemed scarcely large enough for the impressive Victorian furniture. The sofa and principal chairs were covered in horsehair of the best quality, their frames of ornate carved walnut. Unlike the Whiteoaks who had brought their furniture from England the Laceys had purchased theirs form the reliable Canadian manufacturers Messrs. Jacques and Hayes. So admirably was it made that it might well last for ever, but it was inclined to impart rather a sombre look to a room even though the sunshine poured in, as it was now doing. Mrs. Lacey and her daughters had made a number of gay-coloured antimacassars for the backs of chairs and the arms of the sofa, and had embroidered a pale blue silk drape for the square piano. Another drape, this one of rose colour, hung on the mantel and a third, of shell pink, decorated the picture of a square-rigger, in a storm at sea. One of the daughters of the house painted on china, and many examples of her work decorated the mantelshelf and the what-not. The floor was covered by a green carpet with pink flowers across which the June sunlight fell, through the small windows. Perhaps there was a little too much furniture in the room but the effect was one of long establishment and well-being. The daughters were the third generation of Laceys who had occupied the house, and that was a considerable time in this young country.

  The figure of Mrs. Lacey fitted in very well with the character of the room. She was short, plump and of pleasingly fresh complexion. Her greying hair was neatly parted in the middle and crimped above her smooth forehead. She wore a black dress with innumerable shiny black buttons down the front of the bodice, and a long gold chain on the end of which was a gold watch tucked inside her belt. A delicate white ruching brightened her collar and set off the pinkness of her cheeks. She always held herself upright in her chair and seldom sat down without a piece of needlework in her hand. Her expression was almost always cheerful. She was pleased with life in general. Admiral Lacey was just the sort of husband she had wanted; her daughters just the sort of daughters. Of course she would have been pleased if they had married. They had had their chances and, if they had not taken them, well, it was rather a pity but it left them at home to be company for their father. He was very fond of them and would greatly have missed them. And after all they were only in their early thirties.

  Now Ethel and Violet came into the room, their hands full of trilliums, for they had been gathering them in the nearby woods.

  “Look, Mamma, aren’t they heavenly?” exclaimed Violet. “I’ve never seen such large graceful ones.”

  Mrs. Lacey glanced at them approvingly but said, “Do put them in water and go and tidy your hair. Philip Whiteoak is coming in. Surely you didn’t forget.”

  “I’m afraid we did,” laughed Ethel. “It isn’t very exciting to have your near neighbour to tea.” It would have been truly exciting to her if it had been Nicholas who was expected. Years ago she had wanted to marry the eldest Whiteoak. He was the only man she ever had wanted. But Nicholas had known her all his life. To marry her would have been tame. So he had gone off to England and married there. After some years of marriage his wife had eloped with a young Irishman and Nicholas had divorced her. Ethel had not seen him since but occasionally, in the dreamings of solitude, she thought how strange it would be if, when Nicholas returned to visit his old home, they might still come up together.

  Violet held up the trilliums, admiring them.

  “I have a mind to paint them,” she said. “Wouldn’t they look too lovely, white on a pastel-blue ground?”

  “Violet, I do wish you wouldn’t use so many superlatives. Things are always too lovely or heavenly with you.”

  “Only flowers. One really can’t use too many adjectives to describe them.”

  “Well, well,” her mother smiled tolerantly, “call them what you like but do put them in something and come to your tea.”

  “Where is Father?”

  “He’s here, waiting as usual,” growled Admiral Lacey. He came in, looking much more good-humoured than his words sounded. “I’m always waiting for one of you three women. What are those things you’ve got, Violet?”

  “Wood lilies — trilliums — aren’t they ravishing? They seem to have gathered all the spring into their petals.”

  “Really,” declared Mrs. Lacey, “I can’t do anything with that girl.”

  “What I object to,” said her husband, “is the way those long skirts of theirs gather up dead leaves and twigs. Think of going to the woods in such a get-up!”

  “What would you have us wear?” asked Ethel.

  “Shorter skirts — bloomers! We men know you have legs. Why hide them?”

  “You’re an immoral old darling,” said Ethel, kissing him.

  “There is Philip to the door.” The Admiral himself strode to open it.

  “Now it is too late to tidy yourselves,” said Mrs. Lacey, in despair. She regarded her daughters as one might regard two mettlesome ponies, proud of their spirit, yet deploring their unmanageableness. This occasion was a fair example of her difficulties with them.

  Philip, in loose tweeds and rather sunburned, came in. Mother and daughters greeted him with dignified familiarity. When they were seated by the table and had bread and butter on their plates and tea in their cups Mrs. Lacey asked about the new governess.

  “Miss Wakefield?” returned Philip happily. “Oh, she’s a peach!”

  The word struck the atmosphere of the room like a blow. Then a woman laughed. And the woman was Ethel.

  Mrs. Lacey turned in her chair to take a good look at Philip.

  “A peach!” she echoed.

  “Well, what I mean is she just fills the bill. You liked her, didn’t you?”

  “The Admiral and I thought her quite a nice young woman.”

  “It was awfully kind of you to look after her on the voyage.”

  “It was a pleasure.” The Admiral spoke rather too heartily. His wife turned her head to look at him.

  He put an extra lump of sugar in his tea and stirred it stubbornly. “I quite agree with Philip,” he said, “The girl is a perfect —”

  Before he could utter the name of that fruit which had suddenly become obnoxious to Mrs. Lacey, she drowned him out.

  “Richard,” she said, “if you were to die would you like to think that a daughter of yours, only a few months after your death, would deck herself in such colours as Miss Wakefield wore?”

  The Admiral marked his words with his forefinger. “Her father made her promise faithfully that she would not put on black for him. I call it sensible. Who wants to see a pretty young woman trailing black garments?”

  “I do, when it is seemly, and I am sure that Ethel and Violet do too. Don’t you, girls?” But her daughters rather disconcertingly agreed with their father.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” Mrs. Lacey looked outraged, “that you would wear a spray of yellow poppies in a hat, with your father scarcely cold in his grave?”

  “By George, this is a depressing conversation!” exclaimed the Admiral.

  “If Father wished it,” declared Ethel, “I should wear yellow poppies.”

  “Good girl,” said her father. “It’s understood, then. You are to wear yellow poppies and Violet is to wear red.”

  “I dislike such foolish talk.” Mrs. Lacey was getting annoyed. “I will go into black and the girls will go into black.”

  “Who for?” demanded the Admiral.

  “For you.”

  “Well, I like that!” His colour was rising. “What makes you so sure I’m going to die
first?”

  “Men do,” said Mrs. Lacey. This was unanswerable. The Admiral looked downcast.

  “My mother,” said Philip, “put on the widow’s weeds after my father’s death and is never going to take them off.”

  “And quite right,” said Mrs. Lacey, and nodded several times as though affirming that she had every intention of doing the same, though she would not hurt her husband’s feelings by saying so.

  “After all,” Philip said reflectively, “men sometimes do outlive their wives. I’m a widower.”

  “Good!” exclaimed Admiral Lacey heartily, and realized almost at once that he should not have said that.

  Violet interrupted tactfully, “Do tell us how the children like Miss Wakefield, Philip.”

  “Very much indeed. Yesterday we all drove to a Mr. Craig’s along the lake shore and I bought a beautiful mare. We got along famously. Between threats and bribes I persuade the little rascals to behave.”

  Ethel asked, “Do tell us about these Craigs. I hear that they are very rich.”

  “I believe they are. By the way, Admiral, there’s another widower!”

  “Splendid,” exclaimed the Admiral, “and, by jingo, here comes a third!”

  Dr. Ramsey’s spare figure could be seen passing the window. Violet ran to let him in. He entered with a diagnostic look round, as if, though no one in the room was ill, they were, at any moment, likely to be. All three of the younger ones he had brought into the world. He had seen Mrs. Lacey through three accouchements. He had seen the Admiral laid low by sciatica. In humble postures all had lain on beds before him.

  He declined food but accepted tea. Philip took two more slices of thin bread and butter, turned them together and proceeded to eat them with relish.

  “I suppose,” said Dr. Ramsey to Ethel and Violet, “that you are delighted to have your parents home again.” He said this with a twinkle, as though it was understood that they had been up to tricks when authority was removed.

  “Oh, yes,” they answered.

  “It was the first time,” Mrs. Lacey remarked, “that we had left them alone and we did feel a little anxious.”

  “Not me,” said her husband, “I never gave them a second thought.”

  “Really, Richard, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” But Mrs. Lacey laughed.

  “I don’t know what it is to be ashamed.”

  “Come, come,” said Dr. Ramsey. “Don’t tell me you are never ashamed.”

  “Never. Are you?”

  “Many a time.”

  Those present looked at him incredulously. He paid no attention to their expressions but quoted:

  “‘God knows I’m no the thing I should be,

  Nor am I the thing I could be.’”

  He stirred his tea with gravity and even melancholy.

  It was one thing for him to express such a sentiment. Quite another for his friends to agree. All hastened to disagree.

  “Well,” said Philip, “I’ve spent a good part of my life in feeling or trying to feel ashamed of myself. With stern parents and two older brothers and a sister I’ve always been hearing someone say, ‘Philip, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’”

  “Your father doted on you,” said Mrs. Lacey.

  “And so does your mother,” added the Admiral.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” he answered. “I’m often a disappointment to her. I look so much like the governor, yet I can’t hold a candle to him.”

  “Ah, well,” sighed the doctor, “there is no doubt that man reached his highest point of excellence in morals, manners and intellect during the last two or three generations. From now on, there will be deterioration. If any of you are living fifty years from now you are likely to see a miserable world.”

  The two young women giggled.

  Dr. Ramsey turned abruptly to Philip. “I’ve been to your house,” he said, “to have a look at the governess but she was off somewhere. I hope she’s not one of the sort that is always gadding.”

  “It’s hard to say,” said Philip. “She’s only been with us three days.”

  “Is it possible,” exclaimed Mrs. Lacey, “that you, the children’s grandfather, haven’t seen her yet?”

  “I have not yet been invited.”

  “Come back with me,” said Philip, “and I’ll put her through her paces.”

  “Philip, you are disgraceful,” declared Mrs. Lacey. “But you must be prepared for one thing, Doctor Ramsey, and that is to see her in the gayest clothes, though her father has been dead only a few months.”

  Philip pushed out his lips. “All her clothes aren’t gay,” he said. “She was dressed very simply this morning.”

  “I should hope she would be.” Mrs. Lacey spoke with a little asperity. “Teaching two children their multiplication tables is scarcely a time for fancy dress.”

  “Come now, Mrs. Lacey, don’t be hard on the girl. That’s not like you.”

  Philip patted her knee and she took his hand with a coy look and held it a moment. She was more flirtatious than either of her daughters.

  “What like is she?” asked the doctor.

  “Tell him what you called her when you first came, Philip,” cried Ethel. “I dare you to.”

  “What was that?” asked Dr. Ramsey, sharply.

  “Come and see for yourself, sir.”

  “Why have an English governess?” asked Ethel.

  “Much better have a good Scotswoman,” said the doctor. “That is what I have always advocated.”

  “Why not a Canadian?” asked Ethel.

  “They don’t seem to go in for governessing,” answered Philip. “But I do think it would be a good idea. I think we have clung too much to Old Country ways in our neighbourhood.”

  Now the Admiral spoke. “The Whiteoaks, the Vaughans, the Laceys and the others who first settled here, promised each other to preserve their British principles, culture and —”

  “Prejudices,” put in Philip.

  “Very well. Prejudices. Prejudices against making a fetish of material progress — against all the hurry-scurry after money that goes on in the big American cities. They wanted to lead contented peaceful lives and teach their children to fear God, honour the Queen, fight for her if necessary. In short, behave like gentlemen.”

  “I’m not setting myself up to criticize you, sir. I only mean that this country is growing and it’s bound to grow in a new way. Why, we’ve got a population of about five millions. We can’t go on modelling ourselves on the Old Land. Now you went into the Royal Navy as a youth —”

  “There was no Canadian Navy and the sea was in my blood.”

  “I know. But the consequence is that you’re just as English as your father was. You married an English-woman.”

  “Oh, Philip, do you hold that against me?” Mrs. Lacey gave him a charming smile.

  “Never.” He smiled back. “But this is an English household, with two English daughters.”

  “We were born here,” said Ethel.

  “I love Canada,” said Violet.

  Philip ignored them. “Now there’s my mother. She’s just as Irish as she ever was. God knows she can’t help it! And my sister and two brothers live in England. When they come to Jalna they expect to see my children brought up exactly like children in England. It can’t be done. I think that, as time goes on, the people of this country will probably be a good deal Americanized.”

  “Heaven forbid!” said Admiral Lacy.

  Mrs. Lacey turned to the doctor who sat gazing at the ceiling with his arms folded.

  “What are your feelings about all this, Dr. Ramsey?” she asked.

  Without taking his eyes from the ceiling he declaimed, in sonorous tones:

  “‘My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here:

  My heart’s in the Highland’s a-chasing the deer.”

  VI

  GETTING BETTER ACQUAINTED

  LEAVING DR. RAMSEY in the sitting-room Philip ran upstairs to look for Mary and the chil
dren. At the foot of the second flight of stairs he stopped and listened. Then he called softly:

  “Meggie!”

  All was silent above. He went up and looked into the children’s rooms. They were empty. He went to the door of Mary’s room and tapped.

  “Miss Wakefield!” he called low.

  “Yes?” Her answer came quickly but she did not open the door.

  “Look here, my father-in-law’s downstairs and he’s anxious to meet you. He’s a stickler for convention — going into mourning and that sort of thing. I wonder if you could find a dark-coloured dress to put on. I hate to bother you, but you know what the Scotch are. I think we’d better make a good impression, don’t you?”

  There was a tone of a conspirator in his voice that filled Mary with a delighted eagerness to do his will. She said:

  “Thank you so much for telling me. If you’ll just wait a moment I’ll show you what I have.”

  Mary had lived in an unconventional atmosphere in London with her father. Now, slipping into a dressing gown she opened the door a little way and stood before Philip holding up a dark blue skirt in one hand and a white blouse in the other. He scarcely saw the garments. His eyes were held by the pearl-like whiteness of her arms and neck, the V-shaped bit of chest exposed.

  “Splendid,” he said. “Will you get into them then and come right down?”

  Philip did not know and could not learn how to behave toward a governess, any more than Mary knew how to behave like one. She gave a happy little laugh.

  “I’ll be down before you can count ten,” she promised.

  He turned away and almost ran into Mrs. Nettleship, her arms full of the children’s clothes freshly laundered. Her expression was a strange mixture of shock and the confirmation of her worst suspicions. She elaborately moved aside for Philip to pass, though the passage was not narrow.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said.

  “What for?” asked Philip.

  “Well, I have my felt slippers on and they don’t make a bit of noise. I thought I might have frightened the lady.” There was a faintly derisive lingering on the word “lady”.