“It is such a new experience, it will take me a while to get used to it. Then, there are those who are supporting me. When they let go of me, stop being fussy over me, then I shall realize it.”
“But you are happy, Gem?”
He again took her hand, and stroked it. “You know it’s my nature to want everyone about me to be happy. Even to be happier because of my existence. I’m an idealist. I dream of happiness in a miserable world. But this morning I had a shock. Colonel Whiteoak called on me. He made himself very disagreeable about my village. He was insulting. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more detestable man.” A hard look came into his eyes. “But insults have no effect on me. I’ll go on with my building. I’ll make him look small in this community.”
She smiled, she could not help it.
“You may smile,” he exclaimed. “But just give me time. Give Clappertown time. We’ll make him look small. When I get an idea in my head, Gem, I can think of little else. I have had the ideal village as my goal. My only other thoughts have been of you. But, by jingo, you’ve pretty nearly liquidated the village sometimes, you little scamp.”
Life had offered Gemmel Griffith so little. It had not even given her the power of standing upright. She had always been forced to raise her eyes to other people, as though she were a being of inferior order but now, now she could rise on her own two legs and soon would be able to walk. And here was this wealthy man, the man who had poured out his good money for her recovery, calling her a little scamp with an air there was no mistaking. She had a sudden, half-mad desire to domineer over Eugene Clapperton, even while her heart was overflowing in gratitude to him. But gratitude was really against her nature. She had never been grateful to her sisters. The thought of being grateful for the rest of her days to Eugene Clapperton made her angry. She wished she could do something tremendous for him — pay him off and have done with it.
“Call me Eugene,” he was saying. “I’d love to hear my name on your lips.”
“Eugene,” she repeated obediently and prayed that Garda might come with her tray. “It’s a pretty name,” she added, reaching for succour in that direction. “Do tell me how you came to get it.”
He liked to talk of himself. He told her how his mother had liked the name Eugene, and his father had liked the name Robert; so he had been called Eugene Robert. He never took his eyes from her face. She thought, “Has this look in his eyes something to do with my being like other women now? I’ve never seen the look before — I do wish Garda would come.”
“And your name,” he was saying. “How did you get your dear name?”
“Oh, my mother was determined to give us unusual names. That was all. Much better, I think, to have been Elizabeth and Ann and Jane.”
“My little Gem,” he whispered hoarsely.
Garda came in with the tray. A little frown from Gemmel detained her and, looking at his watch and seeing how late it was, Mr. Clapperton left, promising to call again the next day.
“Don’t give me my tray. I couldn’t eat a bite.”
Garda looked frightened. “Are you ill, Gem?”
“No. Not ill. But —” She flung out her arm, then laid it across her eyes. “I’m so disturbed. Mr. Clapperton has been trying to tell me he loves me.”
“Really! Oh, Gem! How thrilling! You’ve always been on the lookout for lovers for Althea and me, and now — almost before —” she hesitated.
“Go on.”
“Almost before you’re quite well you have one of your own.”
“I know how Althea feels.”
“Shy, you mean?”
She uncovered her eyes. “No, not shy. Just terrified.”
“But he’s so kind. Think what he’s done for you. And for us through you. If you spent the rest of your life trying to repay him you scarcely could do it.”
“I know.”
“He’s done a miracle for us.”
“Yes. Like Christ. And I’d be willing to think of him like that.”
“Do you think he wants to marry you?”
“I suspect it. Picture me getting married!”
“Gem, he’s terribly rich. He must be or he couldn’t do the things he does.”
“I love worldly possessions. I’ve always hankered for them.”
“You could have everything, Gem.”
“So could you and Althea. That is what excites me ... Oh, why did this happen? And before I can take two steps alone!” She broke into sobs, covering her face with her hands.
Garda knelt beside the sofa and took her sister in her arms. “You needn’t see him, if you don’t want to. He’s often said he doesn’t ask for gratitude. Come, let me dry your eyes.”
Gemmel controlled herself. “Give me the tray,” she said.
“That’s a good girl. You must eat and grow strong. And, when all is said and done, it’s rather nice to think that you’ve captivated a rich widower — with positively no effort. Think what you could do if you tried.” She arranged the tray in front of her sister.
Gemmel laughed through her tears and began hungrily to eat. “I’ll write and tell Molly. What fun to tell her! You must leave that to me.”
“Now you talk like yourself. Be a good girl and eat up every crumb.”
Remembering some dish she had left on the stove she hastened downstairs. Closing the door of the kitchen behind her she faced Althea.
“what do you suppose?”
“what?”
“Mr. Clapperton has been being sweet on Gem.”
“She imagines it. You know what Gem is for imagining things. What did he say to her?”
“I didn’t ask her.”
“Then you don’t really know.”
“I could tell by the way she looked. She was excited. Oh, Althea, if she really and truly recovers, and if she would marry Mr. Clapperton, what a different life we’d have!”
“I ask nothing better than the life I have.”
“With Gem an invalid?”
“Gem never was an invalid. She’s always been well — except that she couldn’t walk. I’ve never thought of her as a burden.”
“Neither have I.”
“I’ve loved caring for her. She’s been like my child. Just like my little child.”
“I know. I know. But think of her as well and rich — with nothing impossible to her.”
“Is she eating her lunch?”
“Yes.”
“I shall take her a glass of wine.”
“All right. I’ll get the cigarettes.”
They went up to Gemmel’s room, doing their best to look natural. Certainly she now did. She lighted a cigarette and looked through the wine toward the window. “Eugene’s wine,” she said.
“Goodness,” said Althea, “do you call him Eugene?”
“I may as well begin.”
Althea said solemnly, “Gem, I want you to put the thought of that man out of your head.”
“what! Never think of my benefactor?”
“Never, except as a benefactor.”
“Althea, would you marry him if he asked you?”
“I’d die first,” she answered passionately.
“Ah, he’s not Finch, is he?”
Althea turned away her face.
“Gardie, would you marry him?”
“Marry him? Let him give me the chance.”
“Just for greed?”
“I’m not thinking only of myself. Picture what I could do for you and Althea.”
“That’s just it, isn’t it?” She lay, launching one tremulous smoke ring after another on the air, for no one could make them like she could.
The screams of one of the Jalna dogs, in anguish of spirit as he chased a rabbit but could not overtake it, came through the open window, then died away, leaving only the vague sweet murmurings of late summer.
XVI
GRANDMOTHER’S ROOM
ADELINE CAME TO where Renny sat in the porch, the rain trickling noisily from the eave, the east wind blowing the lon
g tendrils of Virginia Creeper that, because of its luxuriant covering of the porch, could find no foothold. She put her arms round him from behind and kissed him with demonstrative affection.
“There’s something I want most terribly to do,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to do it ever since you came home.”
His eyes turned toward hers that were so close. “Then why haven’t you asked before? You are not usually so diffident.”
“But this is something very special. I’m sort of afraid to ask.”
“Out with it. If I refuse, I refuse.”
She drew a deep breath. “Very well. It’s this. All the while you were away I slept in your room. I wanted to sleep there more than anywhere. But now you’re home I have to share a room with Roma. I want a room of my own and you’ll never guess what room I want.”
He stared. “what room?”
“I want Granny’s room. I want Granny’s room for my own — if you’ll let me.”
He drew her in front of him and set her on his knee.
“Are you actually telling me that you have the wish to sleep alone in that queer old room? You couldn’t change things about, you know.”
“I don’t want to change them about. I want it just as it is.”
“And you have the cheek to ask for it? what do you suppose the uncles will say?”
“Must it be as they say?”
“Well, she was their mother.”
“But it’s your house.”
“No. It must be as they say. We’ll go and ask them what they think of the idea. Come along.”
He sprang up, eager to tell his uncles what Adeline had suggested. He was full of pride in her.
They left the front door open behind them. The wet cool air flooded the house. The dogs followed them up the stairs. The door of Nicholas’ room stood wide. Ernest was in there with him and they were going through old letters.
“Come in, come in,” said Nicholas, pulling off his spectacles. “Come in and sit down. Ernest and I are destroying old letters. The time has come to go over them. Some of them had better not be read by posterity, eh, Ernest?” He picked up the little Cairn and set him on his knee.
“Get off those letters, Roger, you brute,” said Ernest, pushing the sheepdog from the neatly arranged piles on the floor near his chair.
“Now here is a letter,” said Nicholas, “written to me by my mother, after she had first met Mary Wakefield and found that Philip wanted to marry her. Not the sort of letter that Piers or Finch or Wake should read.”
“Let me have it,” said Renny, holding out his hand, “I’d like to read a letter from her.”
“You’ll destroy it afterward?”
“Yes.”
Nicholas handed it over. “what a racy vocabulary my mother had!”
“Now here is a letter …” said Ernest.
“Adeline and I would like to interrupt you, just for a moment,” put in Renny. “We have a proposition to make.”
The two old men looked at him enquiringly, Ernest still clutching a handful of Roger’s topknot, for the sheepdog wanted to sit nowhere but on the pile of letters.
“what sort of proposition?” asked Nicholas pulling one of Adeline’s curls. “I hope it’s a proposition to make less noise over my head in the early morning.”
“That’s just it,” she cried eagerly. “There will be much less noise — if only you’ll let me do it.”
“Do what?”
“Tell him, Daddy.”
Renny grinned at his uncle. “She wants to sleep in Gran’s room. Have it for her own. That’s what she wants.”
“Not really?”
“Yes. And for my part I think it a good idea.”
Ernest held his chin in his hand pondering. He gripped his own chin and Roger’s topknot and thought deeply. “My mother’s room,” he said, and repeated, “My mother’s room.”
“She’d sleep there,” exclaimed Nicholas, “in that old, painted leather bed, with that old furniture —”
“She’d ruin it,” interrupted Ernest, “in no time!”
“No, I’d not, Uncle Ernest,” cried Adeline. “I’d take the very best care of it. I’d polish it and it wouldn’t be shut away and dusty, the way it is now. Only once a fortnight does Mrs. Wragge go in and draw a dust cloth across the tables. And I’m Great-grandmother’s namesake and I’m the image of her. I believe she’d be pleased, don’t you?”
“The room is getting a musty smell,” said Renny.
“My mother’s room smelling of must!” said Ernest.
“How old are you, Adeline?” asked Nicholas.
“Fourteen. And tall for my age.”
“I’ll not have Archer in there, racketing about.”
“I pity him if he does,” she exclaimed.
“It seems a nice idea to me,” said Renny. “I believe the old lady would be tickled to death by it.”
Nicholas and Ernest looked at each other. To them the room was a shrine, though in truth the old goddess had been a sardonic one. It was almost twenty years since their mother had died. In that room there was no air to breathe. Since old Adeline’s vital presence had been taken from it, loneliness was its fate. It mourned, outside the life of the family. But, with this loved child continuity would be established, the river of life would flow on. The stretching of her young body on that painted bed would be the laying of a red rose on a neglected shrine. Neglected? Yes, neglected, because, what with increasing years, the distance away of their own rooms, the length of the winter, the worry over their nephews at the war, they had not entered their mother’s room as often as they felt they should. There was something very melancholy in the atmosphere of the room. The faded hangings, the stuffed figure of her parrot on his perch, his staring glass eye seemingly fixed on his reflection in the dim looking-glass, all were melancholy.
But if young Adeline were to occupy the room, how different all would be! She would fly in and out like the summer breeze. Her clear high voice would shatter the deathly stillness. Surely, as Renny said, their mother would have wished it. Surely eighteen years was long enough for a room to go unused. As the brothers looked into each other’s eyes they saw the same thought reflected there. Ernest waited for Nicholas to speak first.
“Well,” he growled, pulling at his grey moustache, “well, it’s hard to know what to say.”
“But, Uncle Nick, I’d take such care of the room! And I’m getting older all the time.”
“So am I — worse luck,” said Nicholas.
“And I am away at school the greater part of the year. In the summer holidays I am outdoors all the time. I couldn’t do much damage, could I?”
“You are a good pleader,” said Nicholas. “I’ve a mind —”
“Then you will!” she cried, throwing her arms about him. “I knew you would.”
“what do you say, Ernest?”
“I agree. I think it is even suitable. The child is Mama’s namesake. She is the very image of her. Mama lives again in her, you may say. I am quite willing that Adeline should have the room.”
Adeline kissed him fervently.
“See that you are worthy of the room,” Ernest continued, as though his mother had been a saint and not a rather deplorable old woman, with a racy tongue and a violent temper.
“I will. I will!” she promised.
Renny looked out of the window. “It’s pouring with rain,” he said. “Alayne and Archer are in town at the dentist’s. The stage seems set for moving into your new quarters. Let’s get at it, Adeline.”
It seemed too good to be true. With passionate eagerness she tore the bedclothes from her own bed and carried them down to her grandmother’s room. Renny threw wide the window and let in the fresh damp air, till Nicholas hobbled in and ordered him to shut it. Nicholas and Ernest established themselves in two chairs and directed proceedings. They were exhilarated by the changing about. Certainly this was better than going over old letters. They had forgotten the dogs and now, upstairs, Roger was stretch
ed among the letters, Bill, the bulldog, was supplying some deficiency in his diet with one of them, while the little Cairn had overturned the wastepaper basket in search of a bit of cake Nicholas had dropped in it the day before.
“The child must not have that embroidered bedspread,” said Ernest. “Fold it up, Renny, and lay it in the drawer of the wardrobe.”
Renny did as he was told, then asked, “what about the things in the dressing table?”
“They also can be laid in the wardrobe. Her toilet articles — those old ivory brushes are quite lovely, and some day Adeline shall have them but it would not be suitable now. I shall keep them in my room if Nicholas approves.”
“All right,” said his brother. “Open the drawers, Renny, let’s see what is in the drawers.”
“I know without looking,” said Ernest.
Out came her scarves, her gloves, her ornate beribboned caps, her lace collars, the velvet bag in which she used to keep her handkerchief and a few Scotch mints. These inanimate objects so brought back her vigorous presence, that it seemed her voice must be heard. Ernest put his fingers into the bag, and there was a peppermint! “Good God!” he exclaimed, and held it up.
“After all these years!” exclaimed Nicholas.
“It’s very moist and clammy.” Ernest held it up waveringly. “what shall I do with it?”
He had a feeling that perhaps he ought to eat it rather than throw it away. But he could not bear to eat it. The decision was not left for him to make. The spongy morsel that once had been the peppermint, slipped from his fingers to the floor. The little Cairn terrier, trotting in, snatched it up and swallowed it as though it were just nothing to him. Nicholas burst out laughing. Ernest could not help feeling relieved.
Some instinct warned Adeline not to display too great a curiosity toward her predecessor’s possessions. She fixed her energies on the arranging of her own bed linen on the bed wherein old Adeline had conceived four children, given birth to them, had watched her loved Philip die. No memories disturbed the child’s joy in establishing herself there. When she had asked permission to do so she had had small hope of its being granted. Now here she was, smoothing her sheets on that coveted couch, plumping the pillows to rest her empty young head where that head, so full of memories, bitter and dear, so full of the passions and emotions of a long life, had lain.
Books 13-16: Return to Jalna / Renny's Daughter / Variable Winds at Jalna / Centenary at Jalna Page 21
