The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche

by de la Roche, Mazo

  He and Mrs. Lacey were closeted together for a long while. Her romantic soul made her eager to forward his love affair. At the same time she shrank from incurring Adeline’s anger. Ever since they had first met, many years ago, she had done her best to keep on the right side of Adeline and had admirably succeeded. She did not intend to risk words with her now. She told her fears to Philip and promised to talk over the matter with her husband and let Philip know the result on Monday. He had to content himself with this half promise.

  He did not drive to church on the Sunday morning but took the winding path across the fields and, for the first time in months arrived in time to put on his surplice without hurry and an urgent look from Mr. Pink. The family always arrived in a body and their progress along the aisle was a spectacle of interest to the rest of the congregation which never palled. First came Adeline, her hand resting on the arm of her eldest son. They were followed by the Buckleys, Augusta’s hand resting on Sir Edwin’s elegantly crooked arm. Last came Ernest with a child on either side. The appearance of the group was that of the Old World rather than the New. Though they were so closely identified with the place were they lived they retained, in a remarkable degree, the atmosphere of the land from which they had sprung.

  Adeline seldom sat herself in the pew without a moment’s fresh shock at the realization that the husband she had so loved was no longer at her side. The years did not make it easier to understand or to bear. When she rested her head against the back of the pew in front, that moment was given to him. Then she would straighten herself and raise her eyes to the stained glass window she had had erected to his memory. She would draw a deep sigh, look for the number of the opening hymn and find it in her book. She would glance down at Renny and hold the hymn book so that he might follow the words with her. Not that she needed the words. Every hymn sung in that church she knew by heart, unless, as on rare occasions, it happened that Mr. Pink in an abandon of enterprise, chose a strange one. Then her eyebrows would shoot up incredulously, she would sharply close the book, as though that were the end of it for her, and watch the singing choir, as though they were performing some strange gymnastics which she neither understood nor admired.

  As the service progressed on this particular morning she watched her son Philip with concentrated interest. What was he up to, she wondered. Ernest had told her that he had gone to the Craigs’, where Mary was. Obviously he was trying to reach some understanding with that queer girl but, if it were marriage, why was he avoiding his family? And where was he last evening? Ade-line could only conclude that he was afraid to meet her, for fear she should guess his plans and frustrate them. More likely still, Mary could not bring herself to marry him after what had happened, and small wonder!

  But Philip did look comely this morning, with his fresh colouring, his clear blue eyes, and clean surplice. He read the Lessons in a way that Adeline liked, though his brothers were very critical of his style. There was warmth in his voice and a ring of conviction that he believed in what he read. On the whole Adeline thought he would come safely through this affair. Ernest had not told her of Philip’s stubborn attitude during their brief encounter, for he felt that, all too soon, the two must settle the affair between them. He quite dreaded the thought of it and yet, considering their mettle, felt a certain exhilaration in anticipating the climax.

  But the climax was to be silent. Neither Philip nor Adeline were to utter a word when the moment came. A religious calm was to pervade the scene.

  Philip had just read the Second Lesson. He returned to his seat at one side of the chancel. His surplice, to his mother’s eyes, had a defiant swing. To Ernest it looked jaunty. Mr. Pink rose and moved with dignity to take his place. Mr. Pink’s voice was resonant and the words which now came from his mouth might well in their volume have been uttered in a cathedral, instead of in this little country church.

  “I publish the Banns of Marriage between Philip Piers Whiteoak of this Parish and Mary Wakefield of the same. If any of you know cause or just impediment, why these two persons should not be joined together in holy Matrimony, ye are to declare it. This is the first time of asking.”

  Philip sat imperturbable, his hands clasped on his surpliced stomach, his eyes, looking unusually large and blue, fixed on some point above the heads of the congregation. A stir ran through the congregation and a whispering, as of a gust of wind over a little field of corn. The Vaughans, in their pew, cast sidelong glances across at Adeline. Admiral Lacey’s face grew crimson. Mrs. Lacey tried vainly to look innocent. Ethel caught Violet’s hand in hers and they sat clutched. The remainder of the neighbourhood, the farmers from the surrounding country, the people from the village, young Chalk, the blacksmith, craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the Whiteoaks, or scanned Philip’s face with curiosity. There were few who had not heard the story of what Noah Binns had seen in the orchard, at a time when everybody who knew anything knew the young lady was engaged to Clive Busby.

  Nicholas’ hand went to his moustache. He tugged it, as though he would tug away the smile that flickered on his lips. Ernest took out his white silk handkerchief and blew his nose. He felt it was a moment for action of some sort and that was all he could think of doing. The slight air of offence which was Augusta’s natural expression, though it had nothing to do with her really amiable disposition, deepened. Sir Edwin nibbled at some mute declaration which a mind-reader might have interpreted as “I forbid the Banns.”

  But it was Adeline that the scrutiny of the gathering was centred. From her black figure radiated the very essence of dissent. No envelopment of black stuff could hide its angry brightness. She rose majestically to her feet.

  A thrill of fearful anticipation ran through the little church. Was Mrs. Whiteoak going to forbid the Banns? Every eye but those of Noah Binns in the last pew, was fixed on her. Noah stared, hungrily inquisitive, at Philip. He saw Philip turn pale.

  Lily Pink should by this time have been playing the opening chords of the Jubilate Deo. The congregation be rising to sing. But Lily felt paralysed. She could not make her fingers press the keys but sat sideways on the organ seat watching the progress of that noble figure down the aisle. For noble Adeline looked, however lacking in nobility her impulse may have been, with her widow’s weeds floating from her fine head, and her features composed in the very mould of displacency.

  Looking neither to right nor left she walked slowly and firmly to the door. As she reached it young Hodge who had driven her to church, sprang forward and opened it. At the same moment Lily gained control of her fingers, the organ burst forth, the congregation rose, and Adeline departed to the sound of music.

  Ernest, on seeing his mother leave the family pew, had made as though to escort her, but a look from Adeline had quelled his intention and he had resumed his seat crestfallen.

  Now the service proceeded, with a kind of tremulous intensity, as though all present were determined to keep their heads. But when it came to the sermon, Mr. Pink found it difficult to introduce, with the spirit he had intended, those beautiful lines from Browning. It was not easy to assert that God was in His Heaven and all was right with the world, when Mrs. Whiteoak had vacated her pew.

  At last the Recessional hymn was sung and the congregation poured out. They gathered in knots in the churchyard to discuss what had happened. The Vaughans and the Laceys hurried away, so that the Whiteoaks would not have the embarrassment of speaking to them. Hodge had taken Adeline home and now had returned with the carriage to convey the Buckleys and the children. Nicholas and Ernest had driven together in a trap.

  Nicholas, untying the horse in the church carriage shed, asked of his brother, “Shall we wait for him?”

  “No,” answered Ernest, almost violently. “I could not possibly drive with him. But, if you wish to wait, I’ll walk home.”

  “Let him return as he came,” Nicholas said tersely, and climbed into the trap.

  As they drove out he greeted what acquaintances they met, touching his hat brim with t
he whip, genially, as though nothing had happened.

  But, when they were bowling along the road, on which every vehicle was carrying people home from church, Nicholas exclaimed, “Philip deserves to be thrashed for what happened this morning. It was an insult to all of us and, of course, particularly to Mamma.”

  “You’re sure Mr. Pink wasn’t aware that we knew nothing of the Banns?”

  “Pink aware! Nothing on earth would have tempted him to commit such an outrage.”

  Ernest declared solemnly, “It was enough to give Mamma a seizure.”

  “Gad, I’d hate to be in his shoes when they meet.”

  “Perhaps he won’t show his face till after dinner. He may go to the Laceys. I do hope he does. It’s a peculiar thing but disturbances during a meal give me a dyspepsia.”

  Nicholas grunted, then exclaimed, “Lord, you could have knocked me down with a feather when those Banns were read!”

  “I thought Mamma was rising to forbid them.”

  “Small wonder if she had.”

  “Nothing can stop the marriage now. We shall just have to put up with it.”

  “Well, after all, she’s a very attractive girl.”

  “Nick — would you willingly have Philip bring a girl of her loose character to Jalna, to be the mother of his children?”

  “He swears she isn’t loose.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Philip’s never been a liar.”

  “He might be, to save the reputation of the woman he loves.”

  “Possibly. But I think that if Mary Wakefield had acknowledged it and it were so, Philip would not have denied it.”

  “Then what, in the name of Heaven, possessed her to say such a dreadful thing?”

  “In my opinion she wished it were so.”

  “Nick, you are a confirmed cynic.”

  They turned in at their own gate, scattering the fine gravel beneath the wheels. At the stable Hodge took charge of the horse. He looked downcast and even guilty, as though he had had a hand in the morning’s doings. He was a sensitive young man and devoted to Adeline.

  Her two sons found her seated in her own particular chair in the drawing-room. Augusta and Edwin were there also, the sympathetic audience, it appeared, to a monologue by Adeline describing her shock, her outrage, at the church.

  Nicholas bent over her and kissed her.

  “Well, old girl,” he said, “That was a dramatic exit you made. I’ve never seen anything better — not on the stage.”

  She looked pleased with herself, though sombrely.

  Ernest kissed her from the other side. He said, “I wanted to escort you but I saw that you preferred to go alone.”

  “An escort would certainly have marred the effect,” observed Sir Edwin.

  “I showed the world,” said Adeline, “what I thought of the announcement.”

  “The point is,” smiled Nicholas, “that we can’t do a thing about it.”

  “Oh, to think,” cried Adeline, holding the hand of the son on either side of her, “that I should have brought my youngest child into the world to have him treat me like this! Eight years I waited after Ernest was born and then, when I was expecting another —”

  Sir Edwin interrupted, “Philip’s just at the door. If you care to repeat that, he will be in the hall to hear it.”

  Adeline gave him a withering look. Nevertheless she once more, and with even greater tragic emphasis, said:

  “Oh, to think that I should have brought my youngest into the world to have him treat me like this! Eight years I waited after Ernest was born and then — when I was expecting another I thought, this one will be like his father. He will have golden hair and blue eyes, and it’s him will be the prop of me old age.”

  Midway through this speech Philip appeared in the doorway. He had had a lift in a farmer’s buggy and had alighted at the gate soon after Nicholas and Ernest. He stood listening to Adeline without entering the room, his eyes steady on her face, his arms folded. There was something in the sunny warmth of his appearance that lightened the scale of disfavour weighting the room. Added to this, Adeline’s affectation of speech, at such a moment, seemed to Augusta, Edwin and Ernest, most unfortunate. Try as they would they could not feel quite the same sympathy toward her. Nicholas thought, “The old girl’s defeated and she knows it, hence the Irish.” He squeezed the hand he still held, and said sternly to Philip:

  “Well, and what do you have to say for yourself?”

  “I had to do it,” he answered. “I had to settle the thing at one blow.”

  “A blow! That’s what it was!” exclaimed Adeline. “A blow, in front of all the world.”

  “It was not in front of all the world but just one little corner of it,” he said, almost soothingly.

  “It is my world,” she answered sadly.

  Looking at her it did seem a pity that she shone in only this remote community.

  Sir Edwin said, “Dear Mrs. Whiteoak, we all felt with you. Your distress was ours.”

  Augusta added, “I should have liked to leave the church with my mother, but thought better of it.”

  “After a look from her,” supplemented Nicholas.

  Philip came into the room. “If all of you,” he said, “had kept cool, not a person in the church would have guessed you’d had a surprise.”

  Adeline sprang to her feet. “I like that!” she cried. “I like that, I do! I was expected to sit in my pew smirking while the Rector gave out the Banns for my son’s marriage and I knowing nothing of it. Is that what you expected me to do, Philip? Come, now, tell me!”

  “I don’t know what I expected,” he answered sulkily.

  Her nostrils widened as she said, “Or perhaps you expected me to take out a handkerchief and wipe me eye on that corner of it. Wipe me eye and bow me head and let out an Amen … Is that what you expected? Answer me, you good-for-nothing rascal!”

  As these words vibrated on the air Sir Edwin put the thumb of his right hand on one ash blond side-whisker and its fingers on the other, concealing his mouth, over which flickered an un-seemly smile.

  Philip’s colour rose. He looked at her dumbly. He looked at the miniature of his father in the brooch at her throat.

  “Or perhaps,” she went on, “you even expected me to feel chastened that you’d insulted me. You maybe thought I’d rise in the pew and genuflect.”

  “Mamma,” put in Augusta, “I don’t think you realize how irreverent that sounds.”

  “Mind your business, Augusta.”

  Philip said, “I intended no insult.”

  “Well, maybe it was better than a poke in the eye with a stick. But was there a soul in church, d’ye think, who didn’t realize you’d insulted your poor old mother?”

  Philip’s eyes became prominent.

  “You’re not my poor old mother!” he said loudly. “You’re my domineering mother who makes a scene, even in a church, when she is balked in having her own way. If anyone was insulted this morning it was I. Sitting there facing the congregation while you stalked from the church like a tragedy queen.”

  The two last words pleased her. She considered them and then asked, on a milder note, “What was it like after I left? Did they go on with the service?”

  “They did. You may be important, Mamma, but they couldn’t stop the whole show because you left in a temper. And I had to sit there with every eye on me.”

  “In the olden times,” she said, “a man might have been chastened with scorpions for no more than you’ve done.”

  “Those were the days for you,” he retorted.

  “Come, come, Philip,” put in Nicholas.

  “The point is,” said Philip, “the Banns have been read and will be read on the two succeeding Sundays and, a few days later, Mary and I shall be married.”

  Adeline ignored this statement and demanded:

  “Did Mr. Pink know I’d been told nothing of the Banns?”

  “He did not know.”

  “If I though
t he had,” she cried, “I’d bann him, and I’d not take three weeks doing it! I’d do it in as many minutes.”

  “Mamma,” said Philip, “you are not an Archbishop or even a Bishop.”

  “Your father and I built that church.”

  “Is it yours now?”

  “Philip,” came from Ernest, “will you stop being rude to Mamma!”

  “Will you stop defending me,” said Adeline. “I need no defence against an ungrateful young rogue like this.”

  “What have I to be grateful for?” Philip asked truculently. Adeline threw up her hands in despair. She sank again into her chair and stretched out her long legs in an attitude of exhaustion. After a space she said:

  “I have protected you against designing women who were after you, in the past. And you were glad of it, weren’t you? You have told me so with your own lips.”

  “Well — maybe. But I could well have protected myself.”

  She laughed scornfully. “The way you have protected yourself against this woman who took you as her lover in the room next the one where your innocent daughter slept. No protestations, my man! She told me so herself.”

  “Now let us have this thing clear,” said Philip. “It is clear between Mary and me. Mamma made Mary so angry by her accusation that Mary wouldn’t deny it. In her anger she accepted the slur on herself. That’s what she says. What I think is that she was so intimidated she would have agreed to anything.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen her,” said Adeline.

  Augusta’s contralto voice was now heard. “What Philip says reminds me of an occurrence when he was a little boy. Ernest and Nicholas were about thirteen and fifteen. They owned a beautiful collie, with an especially fine coat. One day the boys noticed that patches of it had apparently been cut of by scissors, right to the skin. Philip had got into trouble several times for mischief with scissors and knives. Naturally the boys thought he’d been up to his tricks. They accused him, roughly, the way boys will. I was there and I’m afraid I accused him too. He didn’t say a word but just looked at us, as though he were pleased to have done such a bad thing. He was dragged before Papa who thundered at him, ‘Did you do this, sir?’ And Philip looked Papa straight in the eye and said ‘Yes.’ He was severely punished. Then, a few days later it was discovered that the dog had a peculiar form of eczema and that was the cause of the hair coming off in patches. I remember I was so upset over Philip’s being wrongfully punished, I cried. But, when I asked him why he’d acknowledged a fault he’d never committed, he said he didn’t know. I myself think it was because he was pleased that he should be considered capable of such an enormity … Do you remember the occasion, Philip?”