03 Mary Wakefield

by Mazo de La Roche

  “Goodness knows.”

  “I saw Miss Wakefield, with her shoes and stockings off, running about on the grass. She was holding her skirt up to her knees. It was a feckless sight and a wanton one. I came away.”

  “You did well,” said Adeline, with a mischievous look.

  “Then one day I found her in and I had a short talk with her. I must say that my suspicions were allayed, for she showed an intelligence I had not expected. During our conversation I happened to mention the poet Burns, and she expressed a keen desire to read some of his poetry. I promised to lend her a volume. About a week ago I brought it. I had made a professional call on the Vaughans, and I left the buggy there and walked to Jalna through the ravine where it was fairly cool. The day had been almost unbearably hot. I was crossing the bridge when I espied them.”

  Adeline turned her head and looked into his face.

  “Yes?” she breathed.

  “They were reclining. Mrs. Whiteoak, in attitudes of complete abandon. She was reading aloud to him. A love poem by Lord Tennyson. I heard some of the words. I strode up to where they were. I gave her the book, with what disapproval I could put into my demeanour, and left them. I have not seen them since.”

  “Well,” said Adeline, drawing a deep breath, “it’s bad enough but I’ve heard of worse things.”

  “Doubtless no one has seen the worst, Mrs. Whiteoak. When I think of that girl as successor to my daughter, my spirit draws back in dismay.”

  “Men don’t always marry the women they make love to,” said Adeline, testily. “Now let us go and see what Mrs. Lacey has to tell us.”

  They found Mrs. Lacey and her daughters sitting in rustic chairs beneath an old apple tree. Mrs. Lacey was sewing and Ethel and Violet were shelling peas. All three jumped up to embrace Adeline and ask her questions about her journey. Violet galloped to the verandah to fetch a rocking chair for Adeline. Doctor Ramsey intercepted her and forcibly took it from her.

  “What a harum-scarum that girl is!” exclaimed Mrs. Lacey.

  Violet tossed her curled fringe out of her eyes, reseated herself and scooped the contents of a pea-pod into her mouth. Her mother gave an expressive look at Adeline.

  “I’ll wager,” said the doctor, “that you haven’t sat in one of those all the while you were away.”

  “I have not. And very soothing they are.” She seated herself and rocked as hard as she could considering that the rockers rested on grass.

  “The ground is still dry,” said Doctor Ramsey. “It’s so hard from drought that the rain ran right off it.” He lingered a little and then reluctantly went indoors to see his patient.

  A silence fell.

  Then Mrs. Lacey asked, “Are you pleased with the new importation?”

  “You mean Miss Wakefield?”

  “Of course. She’s the most exciting thing that’s happened here in many a day.”

  “She’s very good to look at. A little too smartly dressed, perhaps.”

  Mrs. Lacey nodded with solemnity. “If that were all! But, Mrs. Whiteoak, the girl paints her lips. Mrs. Pink discovered it first. Ethel and Violet can’t deny it, even though they are on her side. Indeed they seem quite fascinated by her.”

  “Oh, no, Mother,” denied Ethel, “it is simply that she is an oddity. Someone so different.”

  “She’s good fun when you get her alone,” added Violet. “I mean away from Mrs. Pink and Mother.” She laughed daringly.

  “Really, Violet, you are incorrigible. Now that you two have the peas shelled, you had better take them to Cook. Mrs. Whiteoak and I want a little private conversation.”

  “Very well, Mother,” said Ethel, “but don’t be too hard on Miss Wakefield.”

  When her daughters were gone Mrs. Lacy exclaimed, “Really, those girls are incorrigible.”

  “They are sweet creatures.”

  Mrs. Lacey tried to conceal her pride in them. “I’m glad you think so. But they do so easily get carried away.”

  Adeline ceased rocking and stretched out her long legs in a manner which Mrs. Lacey found very unladylike.

  Adeline remarked, “I am a woman of the world. I say if a girl in London wants to paint, to smoke, to be fast, let her. But I do not want her at Jalna tempting my youngest son. I don’t want any new mistress there. You know what a time I had with Philip’s first wife. We didn’t get on very well, you remember.”

  Mrs. Lacey did indeed remember.

  “Do you say,” she asked, “that this girl smokes?”

  “Yes. Mrs Nettleship found cigarette ends on the ground beneath her window.”

  “It’s unbelievable!”

  “It’s true. I saw them.’

  “Mrs. Nettleship had saved them to show you?”

  “She had. Now, if Philip must marry, let him marry a woman of means. Someone who will be an asset. I will not endure him marrying this flibbertigibbet girl.”

  “You haven’t spoken to him?”

  “No, no, not yet. In truth he may have no notion of marrying her. But it’s plainly to be seen she’s setting her cap at him. Poetry! Reading Lord Tennyson’s poetry, if you please.”

  Mrs. Lacey’s eyes were shining. “Talk of Lord Tennyson’s poetry! The things that young woman reads! My girls took her into our orchard and sat there under the trees. They came out different. They’ve never been quite the same since. But I believe in keeping their confidence and I encouraged them to talk. They told me that Miss Wakefield has read all of Rhoda Broughton’s books, and not only that, she’s read all of Ouida’s. Did you ever read her horrible novel, Friendship? I’m ashamed to say I have, and it’s the height of immorality. She has copies of The Yellow Book, with quite crazy illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, and a magazine with an article by Oscar Wilde, called ‘The Decay of the Art of Lying’. I think that is significant, don’t you, Mrs. Whiteoak? She raves about the little restaurants in Soho, where she says ‘the atmosphere is colourful.’ Really, my husband almost exploded when I repeated the expression to him. Men who write for newspapers, took her. She met actors and actresses several times. She says she longs to see the life of Paris and Vienna. Well, we all know the immorality of those cities. The three girls spent the whole afternoon under the apple trees talking of things like that.”

  Adeline grinned. “No wonder Ethel and Violet have never been the same since,” she said.

  X

  THE MEETING WITH MISS CRAIG

  MARY WONDERED IF she would be required to go to church, now that the children’s grandmother and aunt were at home to superintend their behaviour. She had not seen Philip alone since the arrival of the family two days before. Now she sought him out to ask him. If she were not required to go she would spend the morning in the pine woods by herself.

  She saw him standing on the lawn outside the door that led from the hall at the top of the basement stairs. He stood there with his pipe in his mouth, wearing such an expression of tranquil good will that she wondered if ever he were ruffled. She shrank from disturbing him. For some reason she had a feeling of constraint toward him.

  However, as she hesitated in the doorway he saw her and took his pipe out of his mouth.

  “Good morning, Miss Wakefield,” he said. “I hope you have recovered from the effects of the storm. You were frightened, weren’t you?”

  “A little. Nothing to speak of. You see I’m not used to them.”

  “But you will be. You’ll get used to everything.”

  “Oh, I have. That is, practically everything. What I wanted to ask is if I should go with the children to church, as usual, this morning.”

  “Don’t you want to go?”

  She looked him straight in the eyes.

  “Mr. Whiteoak, that is not the question. I must find out just what is expected of me.”

  He smiled amiably. “To enjoy yourself, of course.”

  “Then,” she returned firmly, “it would be quite all right, if I were to wear my oldest clothes, take the dogs, and go tramping through the woods?
”

  “So that’s what you’d prefer?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head. “That wouldn’t do at all. My mother wouldn’t like it. You’ll have to go to church, I’m afraid.”

  “Thank you. That is all I want to know.”

  Instantly she felt that she had spoken curtly. But how was she to speak to him? She never seemed to know.

  “There’s a lovely cool breeze,” he remarked.

  She had noticed the breeze but only because of the way it lifted the thick fair lock on top of his head. His spaniels rose from where they had been stretched in the sun and came to him, touching his legs with their noses.

  “They know it’s Sunday,” he said ruefully.

  “Yes. Sunday seems more Sunday here than anywhere I have ever been. It’s restful. I like it.”

  “And you don’t too much mind going to church?”

  “Of course not. I love the little church. Now I must find the children and get them ready.”

  She left him, her spirit suddenly elated. “Whatever is the matter with me?” she thought. “I’m not in the same mood for two minutes together. …” Then she remembered all she had been through just a few months before and thought it no wonder if she were a little odd.

  She put Renny into his white man-o’-war suit and helped Meggie with her hair ribbon. They chattered all the while.

  “Gran has twelve pairs of silk stockings.”

  “Uncle Nick has a stop watch.”

  “You are not to call him Uncle Nick. It’s rude.”

  “I don’t care. I’ll say Uncle Ernie, too.”

  “It’s rude, isn’t it, Miss Wakefield?”

  “Miss Wakefield doesn’t care,” he declared.

  “Aunt Augusta says our manners get worse and that it’s your fault, Miss Wakefield. It is true, isn’t it?”

  “Miss Wakefield, do you get paid for teaching us?”

  She answered, while brushing his hair vigorously, “I certainly do.”

  Renny’s dark eyes opened wide with shock.

  “Paid!” he repeated. “With real money?”

  “Certainly. Did you think I came all the way across the ocean to teach you, just out of love for you?”

  “Yes, I did.” He looked at her, seeing her in a new light. “And were Miss Cox and Miss Turnbull paid money, too?”

  “Of course.”

  He turned up his face to have his scarf adjusted, with a subdued look. It was shocking to him to discover that people were paid, actually paid, to do what should be only a pleasure.

  From an old but well-polished carriage and a roomy phaeton nine people stepped decorously, descended nimbly, were assisted, or lifted down, according to their sex and age, in front of the church. They were an impressive array to have come from one house. Mary was astonished to see Philip in a Prince Albert coat and top-hat. As though in protest he wore the hat slightly to one side. Under pretext of speaking to Renny he whispered to Mary:

  “Isn’t it ridiculous dressing up like this to go to church in the country? But my mother will have it.”

  Mary had never before seen him looking well-groomed; now, in this splendid array, he drew her unashamed admiration. All she could say was:

  “I don’t blame her.”

  “Do you say that because of conventions or because I look so beautiful?”

  “You all do.” And her eyes rested on Nicholas, Ernest and Sir Edwin, similarly attired.

  As they mounted the steps the sonorous ringing of the bell made speech impossible. Adeline, wearing her widow’s bonnet, with the long veil falling about her shoulders, was a familiar figure to all who attended the church. When she was away they missed her. Now it was good to see her back again. As for her she drew a deep breath and hesitated midway up the steep steps, not because of the exertion of climbing, but because she felt, as always when returning after an absence, the nearness of her husband, by whose side she had watched this church being built, stone upon stone, and whose bones now lay in its graveyard. The bell ceased its ringing.

  “My Philip,” she murmured, and let out the deep breath between her lips with a whistling sound.

  “Did you speak?” asked Sir Edwin at her side.

  “No, no. Just grunted.”

  “It is quite a climb in warm weather.”

  “Not to me. The heat feels good — after England.”

  They were in the vestibule now. Philip had left them to go to the vestry. Renny saw the bell rope dangling and, before he could stop himself, he sprang up, caught it and began to swing on it. As he hung there Nicholas administered a sounding whack on his seat, lifted him down, placed one hand over his mouth to stifle a possible outcry, then took him by the hand and led him up the aisle.

  “That boy,” said Augusta, in a whisper to her husband, “will come to a bad end.”

  “Most boys do,” he returned amiably.

  With an offended air she swept into her seat.

  Mary sat with the two children in a pew in front of that occupied by Adeline, her two sons, her daughter and her son-in-law. She felt that five pairs of eyes observed her every movement. She felt so conscious of this observation that she trembled as she found places in their prayer books for the children.

  The volume added to the singing by the newcomers was tremendous. They had good voices. They knew the hymns by heart. They let themselves go. From the first Sunday in the church Mary had noticed the weakness of the choir. Now she saw it submerged, rendered helpless. Its members sang away, opening and shutting their mouths unheard. The service seemed unconscionably long. Mary kept her face turned from where Philip sat, waiting to read the Lessons. When at last he mounted the lectern she let herself look at him. To her his head, the shape of his shoulders beneath the folds of his surplice, were more moving than the words he read.

  His brothers exchanged a look. They had forgotten how badly Philip read.

  Renny dropped the ten-cent piece that was his contribution and it rolled far into the aisle. Mary did not know whether she should allow him to get it. But he was uneasy till she did. Then, in a grasshopper jump he retrieved it and threw a triumphant look at his grandmother behind him. She leant toward him, the smell of her heavy crêpe veil enveloping him. “Be a good boy,” she whispered, “or it will be the worse for you.” The scent of the crêpe came to him.

  He grasped the coin and stared at his Uncle Nicholas helping to take up the collection. When Nicholas held the alms-dish in front of him he planted his offering in the middle of it with a flourish.

  “He is completely out of hand,” observed Augusta to Ernest who nodded agreement.

  Nicholas and Chalk, the blacksmith, a fine-looking young man, stood shoulder to shoulder at the chancel steps and presented the alms-dishes to Mr. Pink, whose complexion was but inadequately described by his name. The best that could be said of his sermons was that they were brief; the worst, that they never were to the point. He always appeared about to make some profound observation but always it eluded him or possibly, as Nicholas said, was never there.

  At last the congregation trooped down the aisle. Renny managed to get next to little Maurice Vaughan, two years his senior and a schoolboy on his holidays from Upper Canada College.

  In the porch Adeline was surrounded by friends to welcome her home. She stood like a queen with courtiers encircling her, a pleased smile curving her full lips. Mr. Vaughan brought a newcomer to her.

  “This,” he said, “is Miss Craig who lives quite a long way off and drives the ten miles to come to our church.”

  “Now I call that a compliment,” said Adeline, taking her hand and looking her over approvingly. “Tell me why you come so far to our insignificant little church?”

  “Your son told me about it and how you and Captain Whiteoak had built it in the wilds. I came first, because I was curious, and several times since because I like it so much.”

  “You are newcomers in this part then?”

  “Yes. My father built a house on the lake shor
e. Unfortunately he has had a stroke and goes nowhere.”

  “Well, well, that’s sad.”

  She turned to greet a neighbouring farmer and his wife.

  “This is our wedding anniversary, Mrs. Whiteoak,” the man said. “Forty years married.”

  “Six children and eighteen grandchildren,” added his wife.

  “Good for you! Well, you’re lucky to have your man still with you.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Whiteoak, I remember the Captain and you dancing at our wedding. What a grand-looking gentleman he was!”

  “He was that. I must go now and see his grave.”

  She led the way into the churchyard, her family, now joined by Philip following her. Mary also followed but at a little distance. She saw them gather about a plot marked by a massive granite plinth and enclosed by an ornamental iron fence. There were two graves in the enclosure, that of Captain Philip Whiteoak, the other of the younger Philip’s young wife, Margaret. A small marble cross bore her name.

  Adeline’s tall black-robed figure halted by the grave of her husband, the summer breeze spreading her veil. Augusta bent her head. The four men removed their hats.

  There came into Augusta’s mind the image of her father carrying her on his shoulder when she was a little girl in pantalettes, and she smiled tenderly at the recollection of that tiny girl. “Dear Papa,” she murmured in her deep voice.

  Sir Edwin remembered how he always had felt especially insignificant when standing beside that stalwart military figure, how Captain Whiteoak had stared at him out of his prominent blue eyes, as though in wonder at his being there at all. “Yet,” thought Sir Edwin, “he could be very agreeable, very agreeable indeed — when he chose.”

  Into the mind of Nicholas there suddenly flashed the remembrance of an especially severe tanning his father had given him. He’d had a good many, but he could recall the smart of that particular one to this day, though he’d forgotten what it was for. Yet how generously the hand that had administered the tanning, had been in giving money! And that hand now … Nicholas felt a contraction of the heart as he, for an instant, pictured that hand now. How many bones were there said to be in a hand? Twenty-eight? Twenty-eight small bones — dry — perhaps disjointed — in that box, beneath the summer grass! Instead of the large handsome hand he remembered.