“You’d known her before? When she lived here?”
“I’d met her — just once. I had gone to take money to Elvira from Maurice. He didn’t want to see her again. He was afraid of another scene with her. He was terribly upset.”
“So — he pushed my son into a brothel, to save his own feelings — damn his eyes!” Philip spoke quietly against the mouthpiece of his pipe, the even puffs from which were not interrupted. He added, after a moment — “I’d like to go to his house this moment and thrash him under his father’s nose.”
The indolence of Philip’s speech somehow softened all his threats. Renny moved closer to him along the bench. He said huskily: —
“There was nothing between us at that first meeting. Except a bit of chaffing. I’d seen her through the window reading a teacup, and she said she’d read my fortune if I would go to see her.”
“And did she?”
“Yes.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Oh, mostly rot!”
“And didn’t she promise anything else — that first night?”
“She said she’d tell me how she came by such strange looking eyes.”
“Had she come by them honestly?”
“Her mother had got intimate with a Rumanian gypsy.”
“Is she pretty — this woman?”
“No — not pretty. But you can’t keep your eyes off her.” Remembrance of the night surged through him. He wrung his fingers together between his knees. “I don’t want to talk about her, Father. But I had to tell you why I was there.”
Philip asked quietly — “Did you sleep with her?”
Renny’s voice was scarcely audible. “Yes.”
“The bitch! And you not twenty yet! And your first experience!” He turned his full blue eyes on his son. “It was, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. There was something about me — that first night we met — that made her think differently. So she didn’t know — I don’t believe she’s the sort of woman you think she is, Father. She says I must never go back to see her again.” He spoke with boyish simplicity.
“Well, that is handsome of her,” returned Philip. “Renny, I want you to promise me something. If you feel tempted to go back to that woman, I want you to come to me and ask me for money. I’ll send you off somewhere. Go with you myself, if you’d like to have me. In the meantime, there’s the colt! You must try to see what you can do with him. And you’ll soon be going back to college.”
“I guess you’ll be glad when I do go, Dad,” said Renny contritely. “I’ll do what you say and — it’s awfully decent of you to let me have the colt. I’m afraid you spoil us — just as Mother says.”
Philip took his son’s hand and squeezed it.
“Well,” he said, as cheerfully as he could, “you and Meggie must turn out well, else I’ll be blamed for it. I’m sorry this happened. And right on top of the other affair, too. It seemed quite unnecessary. But — so much of life is unnecessary! You’ll find that out as you grow older.”
XIV
PEACE IN THY PALACES
IN THE WEEK that followed Cousin Malahide was not idle. It gratified something in his dark and circuitous nature to verify Meg’s haphazard thrust at Renny. When he had his facts assembled he spread them out in front of Adeline, as a peddler might spread his wares. She pounced on them, and though furious with Renny, exulted in spite of her self in the assurance that her grandson was a Court, and that her father, old Renny Court, lived again in the youth.
But it was late Saturday night; she was too tired for any scene so vital as this disclosure must portend. On Sunday morning there was the church service to be gone through, then Sunday dinner, which must be enjoyed without interruption, and her forty winks afterward. She lay in bed, the gentle glimmer from the night light throwing an enormous shadow of her parrot across the ceiling, while she counted the number of hours which must pass before she could lay bare the truth.
There was no malice in her toward her grandson. But she had the desire to show Philip that he had brought up the boy badly, that he had never taken her advice or even asked for it, that he had failed both as father and as son. She counted the seventeen hours that must pass before she would take the wind out of Philip’s sails.
It seemed to her that she had scarcely slept at all, that she had had nothing but little cat naps all through the long hours till the first beam of sunshine stole the parrot’s shadow from the night light and spread it elongated against the yellow wall.
The next thing she knew there was Eliza, her print dress standing stiff about her, with the breakfast tray, the large brown egg in the silver egg cup, the pile of buttered toast, the pot of marmalade, the two golden popovers wrapped in a snow-white napkin. She took no porridge on Sunday mornings so that she might have room for, and the ability to digest, two of these, which were a special treat of the day.
She took the egg cup and held it to the light to see if it might be tarnished a little. If it were she would let the servants hear from her. But it was bright as a coin fresh from the mint and, with a little grunt half of disappointment, half of pleasure, she set about chipping the egg.
The parrot drew up his grey eyelids, fluttered his wings, and gaped, showing his dark tongue. He cocked an eye at the napkin containing the popovers, for which he had an inordinate liking.
“No, no,” she said, shaking her egg spoon at him. “You’re a greedy fellow! Go back to your sunflower seeds!”
But she relented and rather clumsily began to undo the napkin. As he saw that he was to be indulged he sidled up and down the footboard of the bed wriggling with pleasure, undulating his glossy neck, opening and closing his claws while he said in his nasal tones: —
“Chota Rami — Dilhi — Dil Pasand!”
He gave her no peace till she had tossed him the fragments of one of the popovers and had hurriedly demolished the other lest it too might be begged of her.
“You’re a regular playboy, you are!” she exclaimed. “You and Cousin Malahide are a pair!”
Before any of the others she was ready for church, sitting by one of the windows in the drawing room in her velvet cloak and heavy widow’s weeds.
The next to be ready was Eden, in a white sailor suit, a ten-cent piece clutched in his small hand. He dragged an ottoman beside his grandmother’s chair and sat down on it, observing: —
“Mamma said I was to stop with you till she was ready so I’d keep clean. Look, I’ve got ten cents for church. It’s the most I’ve ever had.” He displayed it on his palm.
“Look out that you don’t put it in your mouth.”
“It wouldn’t matter if I did,” he answered with dignity. “Mamma washed it before she gave it to me. I wonder why?”
“Just one of her flibbertygibbety ways,” answered Adeline brusquely.
Ernest came in immaculate in morning coat, his top hat on his arm. His mother looked him over approvingly. “You look nice,” she said.
“And you look handsomer all the time,” he returned gallantly, and kissed her.
She beamed for a moment and then said — “Mary has washed this child’s offering. It will put these new germy ideas in his head. I don’t like it.”
“There’s something exquisite about Mary,” said Ernest. “A fastidiousness that I would not have changed. And, when one thinks of it, it is more seemly to offer a thoroughly cleansed coin at the altar rather than a dingy one which may, the day before, have been passed across a bar.”
“You make me tired,” retorted his mother. “Money is money wherever it comes from. D’ye mean to say,” — she extracted a fifty-cent piece from her bag and slapped it down on the occasional table beside her — “D’ye mean to say that my money isn’t as good as Mary’s?”
“Of course it is,” Ernest answered soothingly. “Nevertheless I do admire Mary’s delicacy.”
The Buckleys appeared just as Hodge drew up the bays in front of the door. In her Sunday attire Augusta looked rather an overpowering mat
e for Sir Edwin, but he carried their two prayer books and steered her protectingly down the steps to the carriage, where Ernest was already establishing his mother and Eden clambering to the box beside Hodge. They drove in the best carriage, which Captain Whiteoak had had made in London many years before. Philip himself drove a smart grey mare, with hogged mane and tail, dam of Renny’s colt. Mary, Nicholas, and Meg were with him. Malahide was still abed and Renny was walking to church across the fields.
It was Meg’s first appearance in public and the world to her had a strange new look. The season had indeed matured greatly while she had kept to the house, but to her it seemed that summer was over, that the grass looked dry, the flowers drooping, and that the great clouds coming up from the west were forerunners of autumn.
She was sure that everyone in the church would know that her engagement with Maurice was broken off, and why. She wondered how she would face them all. Even now, in the carriage, the only thing that kept her from breaking down was the sight of her father’s broad shoulders in front of her.
When they reached the steps he offered her his arm instead of giving it to Mary as he usually did. So she entered the church as she had often pictured herself doing, but not to her marriage ceremony. She clutched his arm in her silk-gloved hand and wondered if she could walk down the aisle. Their pew seemed very far away and the throbbing of the organ rather frightened her.
“Oh, Daddy, I can’t do it!” she said.
He could not hear her words, but saw the movement of her lips and smiled at her. Soon she found herself passing the pew where Admiral Lacey, his wife, two daughters, and granddaughter sat. Their faces turned toward her and she felt a sudden forlorn dignity in her position.
As she knelt she peeped through her fingers across the aisle at the Vaughans’ pew. Mr. Vaughan was there looking very sad, Meg thought, and Mrs. Vaughan, broad and erect, facing the world across her son’s shame. Maurice sat with folded arms and bent head. Meg could not see his face.
Renny was late as usual, and when he slid into the seat beside Meg she felt that some of the security of her everyday life had come to her with him. She glanced at his face and saw it proud and aloof, with an expression she could not fathom. They all knelt together and began the general confession.
Eden was between his mother and Nicholas, but desired very much to be with Renny and Meg. Mary wanted him to be good and sweet. When he fingered the whistle at the end of his lanyard or shook his money between his palms she took his hand gently in hers and held it. There was nothing gentle in the look Uncle Nick gave him when he wriggled. It made him hang his head and colour, yet he could not keep still.
“May I sit beside Renny?” he whispered.
Mary shook her head and gave him a little prayer book with coloured pictures to look at. He looked at the pictures disconsolately and tried to make out the words under them, but could not. He slid on to his backbone so far that he would have slipped from the seat had not Nicholas caught him and set him up with a jerk.
Now they stood up to sing a hymn, and Eden hung over the pew looking at the belongings of Ernest, Grandmother, and the Buckleys. He found that he could reach the handle of Aunt Augusta’s umbrella. She looked round at him and shook her head. Philip reached across Mary and moved Eden beside him. He snuggled there a moment, then, as they resumed theirs seats, whispered: —
“Daddy, may I sit between Renny and Meg?”
Already they were making room for him. Philip let him pass and he pressed in between them. He smiled up happily into their faces. He pushed a hand into theirs. Meg’s was plump, velvety. Renny’s thin and muscular.
The family filled two pews with their bodies and the little church with their strong voices. They set themselves in good earnest at a hymn, as hunters at a jump. Now it was “The Church’s One Foundation” which rose from their throats in a tempo always a little in advance of the organist. Meg tried to sing it too, but when they came to “From heaven He came and sought her — to be His holy bride,” her voice failed her and she could only clutch Eden’s hand and stare dumbly at the blurred page of her hymn book.
The young clergyman was not quite High enough to please old Mrs. Whiteoak and her two elder sons, not quite Low enough for Philip and the Buckleys. The Laceys were on the High side, the Vaughans on the Low, and, being an amiable young man, he varied the ritual as much as possible, so that while neither side was satisfied neither was absolutely affronted.
He chose as his text today: “Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.” It was a text well chosen to please the Whiteoaks, though not deliberately on Mr. Fennel’s part. They leant back in their broadcloth and velvet to enjoy it to the full. Adeline took out a large black satin fan on which purple violets had been painted by the elder Miss Lacey, and waved it slowly to and fro. Peace, prosperity, and palaces — all good words, she thought. They all began with p, too, which was her favourite letter, since it began her dear husband’s name. It stood for other vigorous words, such as pride, pomp, purple, prejudice, pageantry, pillory, pike, and, on its lighter side, pianoforte, piffle, and pooh-pooh. She fixed her still bright brown eyes on the rector and drank in all he had to say of peace within the home and the dangers of too much prosperity, till, to her mind, he became a little long-drawn-out, and her thoughts wandered to the shock she had up her sleeve for her family.
She became drowsy and would have dozed but for a fly that tormented her. He flew finally to the back of the pew in front and, folding her fan, she ended his activities with a sharp blow that made everyone look in her direction. She gave a pleased smile and settled her veil about her shoulders.
It was Communion Sunday, as Meg realized with dismay. She could not — nothing on earth could persuade her — face the possibility of kneeling at the altar in terrible proximity to Maurice. Yet if she left the church before the celebration, it was all too probable that he would leave too and they would walk down the aisle together — not united, but sundered forever!
As she hesitated Philip leaned toward her and said — “You and Renny go and take Eden along.” He gave her a warm protective glance.
She woke the little boy, who stumbled between his elders along a side aisle and through a small door opposite the Lacey’s pew. Vera joined them outside.
“I couldn’t stay,” she exclaimed, “when I saw you two leaving, so I whispered to Grandpa that I had a frightful headache, and the old dear nodded, but the aunts looked very disapproving!”
Meg put her arm through her friend’s and felt a sudden lifting of the spirit, finding herself out under the sky with other young people. There was no sign of Maurice, for he had gone out by the front door and concealed himself among the gravestones till they were out of sight.
Renny, by the light of his late experience, saw Vera with new eyes. He perceived her delicate charm. But he presented a new air of taciturnity toward her, walking at the side of the road with his hand on Eden’s neck and ignoring both the girls.
Vera said, in an audible whisper to Meg — “What is the matter with the son and heir? He looks very aloof this morning.”
“I expect he is brooding on Cousin Malahide,” returned Meg. “We both hate him, you know.”
“I don’t wonder! I think he’s an impossible person.”
“We hope and pray that he will go back to England with Aunt Augusta and Uncle Edwin.”
“But surely he’d never let them go without him!”
“That’s exactly what he would do! Poor Daddy suspects it, I know. I think the truth is that Cousin Malahide hasn’t two coins to rub together at the moment, and his only hope is visiting round among his relatives.”
“And what a visitor!” Vera began a ridiculous imitation of Malahide Court. Her aim was to divert Meg and she succeeded. The two girls walked along the dusty country road giving little shrieks of laughter.
Renny threw an antagonistic glance at them. At this moment he was disliking the presence of all womankind. The thought of the unwanted Malahide
remaining in the house infuriated him.
“If he stays,” he said, savagely kicking a stone out of his way, “I will make Jalna too hot to hold him!”
“What shall you do?” questioned both girls.
“I’ll have to think about it,” he answered glumly.
They left Vera at her grandfather’s gate and returned across the fields to Jalna. Eden was very much awake now and darted about them, finding something at every turn. A snail shell or the nest of a bird filled him with delight.
In the hall Renny put his arm about his sister’s waist. “I like having you about again, Meggie. You’re coming down to dinner, aren’t you?”
“I suppose.” She stroked the polished grapes of the walnut newel post.
Cousin Malahide was coming down the stairs.
“What a charming picture!” he drawled.
“Are you being disagreeable?” asked Renny abruptly.
Malahide turned up the corners of his mouth beneath his long nose.
“Good heavens, no! I love you both too well for that!”
They were shamed at the thought of being loved by him, chagrined by his refusal to quarrel.
Eden held out his snail shell. “Look what I found!”
Malahide took it and laid it out on his palm. He said, with a wry smile: —
“How I envy the snail — carrying his house on his back!”
Meg, remembering Vera’s imitation of him, began to shake with secret mirth. She was at the stage of recovery that lies between tears and laughter.
Renny turned and went out of doors again, followed by Eden. Malahide’s arm slid round Meg’s shoulders. “Won’t you let me comfort you?” he asked.
Meggie still shook with laughter. They were standing so when the first carriage arrived at the door. Meg disengaged herself and ran quickly up the stairs. Malahide advanced to meet his old kinswoman.
“So you are back, my dear Adeline,” he said, “refreshed in soul and ready for the good meal I can scent in preparation! How marvellously well you all look! As for me, I have dozed a little, after a stark night of anxiety over my affairs. I had a most unkind letter from my mother yesterday. I can only compare her to those fabled monsters who devour their young. Could anyone accuse me, Edwin, of not being an affectionate son to her? You have seen us together. And you, too, Augusta!” He took an arm of each of the Buckleys and escorted them into the drawing room.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 106
