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 col
lection. 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 shore. 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.
An officer and a gentleman, if ever there was one, thought Ernest, gazing down at the greave. And how well he could tell a story! Particularly a story of his life in India. But he had not been intellectual. Sometimes Ernest wondered from whom he himself had inherited his intellect. Not from his mother. For though she was highly intelligent it was in an intuitive feminine way.… That look on her face hurt him. He wished they might leave the grave.
Dear old governor! thought Philip, and resolutely kept from his mind any sad reflections. He turned his eyes to where Mary stood, her wide-brimmed straw hat shadowing her face.
Adeline’s heart cried out, “My darling, oh, my darling!” For one blind instant she felt that she would throw herself on the grave, pressing it to her breast, as she had pressed him when he lay dying — he who only an hour before had left the house, sound and well! But she held herself together. She put up her hand and arranged the widow’s veil on her shoulder. She led the way from the grave with an unfaltering step.
Renny was left alone with the granite plinth. For a long while he had wanted to climb it. Now suddenly he felt strong enough. He hopped over the iron railing, put his arms around the monument, placed a foot on the lowest projection, hung on like a limpet, though the foothold was precarious. With his utmost effort he gained the highest ledge and clung there. He took off his sailor cap and placed it on the very pinnacle of the monument. He could not stop himself. He shouted, “Hurrah!”
The family turned, transfixed by the sight.
Philip strode toward his son. “I’ll warm his seat for this,” he exclaimed.
But Adeline held him back. “No, no,” she said. “Let the boy be. He means no harm. Indeed he makes a pretty picture. I like it.”
At the one o’clock dinner she was in great good humour. Whatever Mrs. Nettleship’s faults might be she was an excellent cook. To some people the meal might have seemed a little too substantial for such a warm day, not so to Adeline. She relished every mouthful. Her neighbours, the Vaughans, had joined the family and she enjoyed their company, particularly as Robert Vaughan had, as a youth, been in love with her, though she was already married, and had never quite got over it.
After dinner they repaired to the shuttered coolness of the drawing-room and there Adeline asked of Mrs. Vaughan:
“What about these people, the Craigs? The young woman is quite comely. She’s a good shape too.”
Mrs. Vaughan did not consider a young woman’s shape a proper subject for discussion in mixed company. She repeated:
“Yes, she is quite comely. She is very nice too. I feel sorry for her because she is cut off from the pleasures suitable to her age. There they are, in that big house, quite unable to entertain their friends, and only a trained nurse for company.”
“Miss Craig is quite an heiress,” added her husband. “One of your chaps should make up to her.”
Adeline’s eyes sparkled. “What a good idea! Nicholas is the man for it. That wife of his was an extravagant one to keep and to get rid of her cost quite a lot. He’s the man to marry Miss Craig.”
It had been painful for the Vaughans to hear Nicholas’ divorce mentioned. The suggestion that he should marry again was acutely embarrassing. How often in their long friendship with Adeline Whiteoak she had embarrassed them by her remarks! Both of them flushed but Nicholas remained imperturbable. He said:
“Once bitten, twice shy. I’ll never marry again.”
“What about Philip?” asked Sir Edwin.
“Philip has enough on his hands,” said Adeline tersely.
“It’s to be Ernest then,” said Nicholas. “He has a new suit that he’s irresistible in.”
Ernest tried not to look conceited. “What nonsense you talk, Nick. As for me, if ever I marry it will be for love. I am thankful to say that money is no longer any consideration with me.”
“Yes,” agreed Adeline complacently, “my son, Ernest, is quite a financier. There is nothing he doesn’t understand about investments. You had better get his advice, Robert, and double your capital.”
Adeline herself, though possessed of a respectab
le fortune of a hundred thousand dollars, invested in the most conservative manner, was quite satisfied with the low interest she received. She lived at Jalna without expense to herself, save in personal matters. She never referred to the fact that she had means of her own. Indeed she would sometimes speak of herself as a poor widow, dependent on her son Philip.
Philip, his father’s favourite son, had had the house and land bequeathed to him and enough money to live on without extravagance. A considerable part of his income was derived from the fertile farm lands of Jalna. In money matters he was generous to the point of extravagance. Dealings in money confused him. He spoke of himself as a farmer and horse breeder.
His two older brothers had inherited, in addition to what their father had given them, quite substantial amounts for their father’s sister in England. Nicholas, unknown to any save Ernest, had lost a good deal of money in the previous year, in Portuguese, Greek and Mexican Bonds. Nicholas, who from his mother had inherited a love for the foreign and picturesque, was drawn to these investments. He was thankful that he had kept these losses to himself, for he could imagine what Adeline’s caustic remarks would be, had she known of them.
Ernest too had had losses. Grand Trunk Railway shares had fallen. British Rails had suffered a fall. But these losses were as nothing compared to his gains. Standing with one hand in the breast of his coat, he talked fluently of his investments and of how his capital was doubled. It was a delightful sensation to him to boast a little.
Mr. Vaughan was greatly impressed. He was of a cautious nature but his ambition for his young son who had come too him late in life, was unbounded. He wanted him to be a noble man, to exert great influence for good in the country. Surely the possession of wealth would aid him in his great future, for undoubtedly his future would be great. He was such a serious and altogether remarkable child, a contrast to that harum-scarum little Renny.
Robert Vaughan said firmly, “I shall be glad of your advice, Ernest. Certainly Sunday is no day for the discussion of money matters, but if you are free tomorrow morning I should like to come over and have a talk with you.”
“Ernest will put you on the right track,” encouraged Sir Edwin.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 73
