“Keep them!” he repeated, fiercely. “Keep them! What I want to think up is the most insulting way of returning them.”
“Well, after all,” she said, “he ought to give you a present. He knows he has been horrid to you and he is trying to make up for it. Besides, Granny has been giving him presents, so it is only fair he should return the compliment.”
“What a mind you have!” he exclaimed peevishly.
“I have a logical mind,” she returned, “which you have not and never will have.”
He gave her a long, searching look, trying to read her, trying to understand this being, so close to him, of the very flesh of which he was made, yet uncomprehendable as a book in a foreign tongue.
He gave up the effort and said — “What I am afraid of is that he will not leave when Auntie and Uncle Edwin do. If he doesn’t, God knows when we shall be rid of him. He may stay till Christmas — all the winter!”
“Oh no,” cried Meg, “that would be too horrible! We must make it so unpleasant for him here that he will be glad to go!”
“When are they leaving?”
“In a fortnight. They’re seeing about tickets tomorrow.”
“Meggie, can you think of anything we might do to get even with him for what he’s done to me? Something so insulting that he’ll be bound to go, after it?”
“Let me think,” she said, and covered her face with her hands.
There was silence while she sat with bowed head and he gazed hopefully at her. The grandfather clock in the hall struck its twelve sonorous tones.
“You’re not going to sleep, are you?” he asked.
She uncovered her face and turned it reproachfully on him.
“Do you imagine,” she said, “that a plan to get rid of such a bundle of black iniquity can be thought of in a second?”
“I suppose not. But have you got an idea?”
“Yes…. But it will all depend on how well we can do it. Supposing we write an insulting verse to him and teach it to Eden and have Eden recite it in front of everyone.”
He was disappointed at the suggestion. It lacked the violence he desired, but he said, encouragingly: —
“That’s a good idea. But you’ll have to write it. I’m no good at that sort of thing.”
“We’ll write it together!” Her face brightened with a mischievous light he had not seen there for a long while. He grinned in response.
“How shall we begin?” he asked.
“We’ll begin with the vocative. I’ll do the first line….'O Malahide —' Now you go on.”
“I can’t abide,” he added at once.
“Good!” she exclaimed.
He knit his brows. “I can’t think of anything else.”
“Of course you can! You must.”
He proceeded, with a scowl: — “The way you’ve spied —
The way you’ve lied —”
Meg carried on triumphantly: — “You are a snide!”
Renny uttered a snort of delight. “Go on, go on,” he implored, “while you’re in the vein!”
With an exalted expression she concluded: — “I wish you’d died
In Ballyside —
O Malahide!”
Renny’s lips were stretched in a grin of approval.
“Now let me say it over from the beginning.” But she could not repeat it for laughing. She buried her face in her bolster and he laid her pillow on her head to smother the sound of her mirth. “What a one you are for laughing!” he said, but he was pleased with her.
A bat flew in at the window and began its naked, black dance, soft and punctual, up and down the room.
Meg sat up and stared at it from the ambush of her sheet.
“Oh, put it out! Oh, kill it!” she said in an anguished whisper. “If it gets into my hair it must be cut off!”
Renny caught up a towel, folded it into a weapon, and tiptoed, lean and silent, after the bat. It flitted always where he was not, like the spirit of opportunity, the answer to desire.
“Ha, I’ve got you!” he said, again and again, but when he raised his weapon the bat was pirouetting with its shadow against the ceiling.
“Oh, mind the lamp!” she cried, as the flapping towel snatched the air from the glass and the flame sank and the smoke poured up through the lamp chimney. But the lamp did not go out. The flame rose again to show her Renny triumphant, holding the bat in a little nest in the towel.
“Want to see it?” he asked.
“No, no,” she answered, shrinking, but in spite of herself had to peer fearfully at it nipped between his finger and thumb. From out of the towel its evil face peered back at her. Its body swelled with spite.
“It’s a return gift,” said Renny, “for Cousin Malahide.”
With the hair brushes in one hand and the bat concealed in the towel, he stole from the room and rapped softly on Malahide’s door.
It opened, and Malahide appeared clad in a black silk dressing gown, open to the waist. His neck, without the high collar, was smooth as ivory. On his breast was a patch of glossy black hair.
“Cousin Renny!” he exclaimed. “I’m so glad to see you! Come in! Did you like my present?”
“So well,” said Renny, with a bitter grin, “that I’ve brought you one in return!”
He stepped into the room, laid the brushes on the dressing table, and, with a bold gesture, released the bat. It danced from its captivity, ugly as fate, and circled above their heads.
Renny slid swiftly out of the room and closed the door behind him.
XVII
RECITATION
EDEN WAS CAPTURED the next day by Renny and led to Meg’s room. He had been told that he was to share a secret with them, and his back was stiff with pride. He stood looking expectantly from one face to the other, at Meg settled in her chintz-covered chair, and at Renny lighting a cigarette as he lounged on the wide window sill.
“Now,” said Renny, “you know that Cousin Malahide is going away. Meggie and I have decided that it will be nice for you to recite something for him — a sort of goodbye verse in front of all the family. So we’ve brought you up here to teach it to you.”
Eden looked blank. “Is that all? I thought there was a secret.”
Meg took his hand in hers. “It is a secret. No one is to know anything about it but us three. Renny and I have made up the verse, but we’re too old to recite it, and you recite so beautifully.”
Eden was unimpressed. He said, “I don’t want to.”
Renny and Meg exchanged glances. This lack of enthusiasm on the part of their speaker would never do. Renny said: —
“Now, look here, if you recite this piece properly I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I will take you for a glorious ride on my colt. He’s perfectly safe now, but you mustn’t say anything about it. The whole thing is a profound secret.”
“All right,” said Eden at once. “How soon will you take me on Gallant?” The colt had been so named by a combination of his dam’s name, Saucy Gal, and his sire’s, Duke of Brabant.
“As soon as you have said the piece,” returned Renny, “and we’ve escaped with our lives.”
“Sh,” warned Meg.
Eden had a good memory. In a quarter of an hour he could recite the doggerel accurately.
Two days passed before the propitious moment came. Remembering the promised ride, Eden kept the secret. The Laceys and Mr. Fennel had come to tea, and a game of backgammon and two tables of whist had been arranged.
Admiral Lacey and Adeline were seated at the backgammon board in the middle of the room. The Admiral, a man of just over seventy and of a build so solid and a countenance so red that he looked a formidable opponent, faced her with friendly truculence. His wife, short, stout, and pink-faced, sat at a table of whist with Sir Edwin as her partner, and Augusta and Philip as opponents. At another table the two Miss Laceys, who were in their late forties and had fluffy hair turning grey and complexions like young girls, were engaged at play with Nicholas and Ernest. There
had been a time when they had hoped very much to be engaged with them in the business of life, but the brothers had spent much of their time in London and had there met women more congenial to them, as they had thought, and certainly less restricted in their outlook. Now Nicholas, looking into Violet Lacey’s blue eyes, wondered if he would not have done well to marry her. On her part she still cared for him, but about his head glimmered a sinister halo of divorce. She doubted if she could face that. Still, the sight of his large handsome hands shuffling the cards moved her strangely. Her sister Ethel and Ernest kept up a flow of badinage of the sort fashionable in the nineties. At a third table Mary, Malahide, and Vera Lacey watched Mr. Fennel do a card trick prior to a game of bridge.
After a period of great heat there had been an electrical storm and the air was now unseasonably cool, so that the snapping of the wood fire was agreeable to the human occupants of the room, though not to Keno, the spaniel, who wished to lie on the rug in front of it, or to Boney, who eyed the blaze askance from his perch, at the same time keeping the eye next the company closed, as though in distaste for their frivolity.
Renny had not appeared for tea. Now he came in and went straight to Mary with an air of unusual deference.
“I’m sorry I’m late, Mother. I had to go to town and I got caught in the rain and was wet through. I’ve been changing.”
Mary, always ready to be friendly with her stepchildren, smiled at him. Meg appeared in the doorway with Eden by the hand. She had not yet quite resumed her place in the family. Now her coming was greeted by sympathetic smiles. She said sedately, after speaking to the guests: —
“Eden has come to say goodnight. Hurry up, dear, and get it over with.”
“But,” said the little boy excitedly, “I want to say my piece first.”
“What piece?” asked his father.
“My goodbye poem for Cousin Malahide.”
“A goodbye poem,” repeated Malahide. “That’s rather premature, isn’t it?”
“But I must say it!” insisted Eden. He placed himself in front of Malahide Court and recited in a clear treble: —
“O Malahide!
I can’t abide
They way you’ve spied,
The way you’ve lied.
You are a snide —
I wish you’d died
In Ballyside,
O Malahide!”
No one had initiative to stop him, while the subject of the poem, turning a sickly yellow, cast a look of bitter chagrin at Adeline.
She was the first to speak.
“Come here,” she said to the child.
Feeling important and pleased with himself, he marched to her side. She took his chin in her hand and started into his eyes.
“Who taught you that?” she demanded.
Well schooled, he returned — “I made it up.”
“A likely story! Made it up! I say — who taught you that verse?” She emphasized the last five words with five successive raps on the table.
Eden’s face quivered, but he persisted. “I made it up myself.”
“Please don’t mind,” said Malahide.
“I will mind! I’ll get to the bottom of this!”
“Plenty of time later,” said Philip, very red in the face.
“Yes, yes,” agreed Admiral Lacey, “let us go on with the game, Mrs. Whiteoak.”
“I will not have my kinsman insulted and let it pass!”
“I’m sure,” said Mrs. Lacey soothingly, “that none of us understood it, in the least.”
Adeline turned her head from one to another of the assembly. “Is there anyone here,” she demanded, “who is so imbecile so not to understand the meaning of that recitation?”
Both the Miss Laceys chimed in together — “I didn’t understand a word of it! Really I didn’t!”
“Childish nonsense,” said the Admiral.
“Childish devilment,” declared Adeline. “I’ll get to the bottom of it. I won’t have Malahide insulted.” An ominous colour suffused her face.
Nicholas sat tugging at his grey moustache. Ernest and Ethel Lacey dared not look into each other’s eyes. He pressed her foot under the table. Augusta boomed: —
“The child is the mouthpiece of others.”
“Quite so,” agreed Sir Edwin.
“Mouthpiece or not,” said Adeline, “I’ll have it out of him!”
Eden wriggled his chin out of her hand and fled to his mother.
“I did make it up,” he insisted proudly. “Every word of it. Shall I say it again?”
“Yes,” said his grandmother, “I want to hear it again.”
Mr. Fennel had, with admirable coolness, worked at his card trick all this while. Malahide kept his eyes on the cards as though his life depended on the working out of the trick. Meg, seated on the piano stool, was as impassive as the Dresden-china shepherdess on the mantelpiece. Not so Renny. An uncontrollable grin stretched his features. He was standing beside the parrot’s perch and, half in nervousness, half in malice, tweaked a feather from its tail.
With a torrent of curses in Hindoo it spread its wings and flew to the backgammon board, scattering the neatly placed men in all directions.
Adeline stretched out a long arm and pulled Eden from his mother’s lap.
“Now,” she commanded, “say your piece again, child!”
“Mamma —” began Augusta.
“Hold your tongue, Augusta,” said her mother.
“Steady on, Mamma,” growled Nicholas. “We can have that later.”
“Yes,” said Violet Lacey, “we’d love to hear it later on, dear Mrs. Whiteoak.”
“No need to wait. I remember the first line myself: ‘O Malahide —’ Now go on, Eden.” She had soothed the parrot and he sat preening himself on her shoulder.
Eden, with more than a hint of mischief on his face, declaimed: —
“O Malahide!
I can’t abide
They way you’ve spied,
The way you’ve lied.
You are a snide….”
Uncontrolled laughter broke from Nicholas and Ernest. Renny, with a sudden flourish of his hand toward Malahide, concluded, in a derisive tone: —
“I wish you’d died
In Ballyside,
O Malahide!”
Philip said — “Renny, take Eden away. I’ll see to him later.”
Renny shouldered the small boy and glided out of the room.
“Somebody bring Malahide a drink,” ordered Adeline. “He looks queasy.”
Ernest got up with alacrity.
“Could I have a drop of something too?” asked the Admiral.
“We’ll all have something,” said Nicholas.
Malahide was restored somewhat by the sherry. The greenish shade left his skin and it resumed its normal ivory tint. He gathered his forces and smiled wanly at Adeline. Her choleric colour had faded and she was now enjoying herself. She leant forward and started sympathetically at Malahide.
“I was never so ashamed,” she said. “As I’ve heard the peasants in Ireland say — ‘You might light a candle from the same in me eye.’ But, never fear, Malahide, our young man will smart for this. I know well that its root lay in him and I’ll not bear that he should intimidate any guest of mine.”
“Well, after all,” said Mary, in impulsive defence of her stepson, “it’s only natural that Renny should retaliate.”
Philip beamed at her.
“I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Lacey inquisitively.
“It is better left unexplained,” said Augusta.
“We’ll have him flogged,” said Adeline. “You must lay your stick about him, Philip.”
“Impossible!” said Philip. “I must just ask Cousin Malahide to forgive him, if he can.”
Malahide raised his head. “I have already done that, Philip. But what I shall never forget is the superb manner with which the little boy spoke his lines — unsettling as they were to me. His poise is perfect.”
�
�Ay, he’s a clever young rascal,” said Adeline.
Mary was delighted by Malahide’s praise of her child.
“He is really amazing,” she said eagerly. “The things he says! You’d hardly believe.”
“He’s too precocious,” said Philip, yet pleased, in spite of himself.
The Admiral said — “Now, when I was his age, I used to stand up in front of a roomful of people and recite, ‘My Name is Norval,’ at the top of my lungs.”
The men were replaced on the backgammon board; the cards dealt. Boney uttered sounds of content and Keno scratched the hearth rug into a more agreeable disposition for his fire-baked body. Another rainstorm dashed against the pane, and the roof spread itself hospitably over all beneath it.
XVIII
GARDEN PARTY
THE RESULT OF THIS disturbance was to divide the family into two parties. One was for Malahide’s remaining there, the other against it. On the one side were the Buckleys, who very much preferred leaving him at Jalna, for they feared that, if he returned with them to England, he might settle down in their house for the winter. A business affair of Ernest’s was important enough, in his eyes at any rate, to recall him to London, and he was leaving with his sister and brother-in-law. Nicholas, who was remaining, looked on Malahide as rather an amusing addition to the family party, and a unique companion for Adeline. He enjoyed hearing them talk together. Adeline herself, having cast her protective power over Malahide, would not lightly withdraw it, and the fact that she wanted him to stay made opposition to this infuriating to her. On the other side were ranged Philip, Mary, Meg, and Renny, a solid family within the family, the two younger members of which were ruthless in their determination to oust the intruder.
No coldness or indifference on their part had any effect on Malahide, neither could Philip be brought to the point of telling him directly to get out. Philip strolled about with his dogs at his heels or fished or oversaw his stables or farm, tolerant and good-humoured toward both parties, but not to be driven by either of them into a definite step.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 108
