01 The Building of Jalna (26 page)

“I never pleased her — not after the first year. And I resent nothing you told her. I am grateful, with my whole soul. Just think — if it were not for you — she might have her feet on this land at this moment!” He just touched Adeline’s shoulder with his thin hand. “There you stand — beautiful and strong — and my protector — not from Henrietta but from what she would make of my life!”

“Don’t thank me. I loved getting the best of her. Faith, if ever she comes back, I stand ready for another bout!”

“If only we had some way of finding out if she really goes to New York and if she sails from there!”

“We have!” said Adeline triumphantly. “Thomas D’Arcy and Michael Brent will tell us!”

“D’Arcy and Brent!” cried Wilmott, stiffening. “How could they know anything of the matter?”

“I gave her their address so she could find out all the truth about your trip to Mexico from them.”

“You must have been mad!” shouted Wilmott. “What do they know of this affair?”

“Nothing. But I shall write posthaste and tell them to expect her. I know those two Irishmen. D’Arcy is a rip and Brent a regular playboy. They’ll like nothing so well as to tell fairy tales to Henrietta for my sake.”

“You place yourself in a strange light,” said Wilmott. “What will they think of you?”

“There you go, wondering what people will think! I say people will think ill of you no matter what you do. It’s human nature.”

“I would not have taken a thousand pounds and had those two told this of me.”

“Then I shall not write to them.”

“Have you no reasoning power?’

“No. I have only instinct. Why?”

“Naturally they will have to know everything — now you have sent Henrietta to them.”

“You need not care. You will never see them again.”

“I possibly never shall. But will Messrs. D’Arcy and Brent refrain from telling this good story to their friends after dinner?”

“I will swear them to secrecy, James.”

“Do you think they will remember to be secret when they have drunk well? No. All their friends will hear this story.”

“You need not care. You are dead.”

“I had better be,” he returned bitterly.

They eyed each other coldly. Then Adeline exclaimed in exasperation — “What in the name of God did you expect? Did you expect me to meet Henrietta with a full-fledged plan in my head, with no weak spots in it? I think I have done very well but what thanks does one ever get for interfering between husband and wife?”

“She is no wife to me, nor has been for five years.”

“Then why worry about her now that she is far away? I may add that Hettie doesn’t want you back.”

Wilmott stared. “Was Hettie there?” he asked incredulously.

“She was. And showed no desire for a reunion with her papa.”

Wilmott exploded in bitter laughter. “What a family we are! And how unworthy of your interest in us!”

She gave him a piercing look. “If you still say
us
about yourself and those two, I wash my hands of you.”

“I don’t!” he exclaimed. “I announce myself free. I have never been so happy in my life as I have been here. I shall trust in a beneficent Providence and go on being happy.”

“Just trust in me,” she returned.

Wilmott turned to her, his features working, his eyes full of sudden tears. “If I am happy here,” he said, “it is because you are near me.”

Adeline gave a little laugh. “Come with me,” she said, “to Jalna. I will not leave you alone.”

He looked about him. “It doesn’t seem too much for a man to ask to have this log house in peace and yet I cannot feel at all convinced that I shall.”

“You shall not stay here alone today,” she returned. “We’ll go to Jalna and see the staircase. The men are just building it and Philip has found a woodcarver who is carving a beautiful newel post for it. The newel post is to be of walnut and done in a design of grapes and their leaves, with a grand bunch at the top. Shouldn’t you like to see it, James?”

“I should like nothing better.”

He got his hat. He no longer wore the woodsman’s clothes he had affected when he first arrived but he had kept his word about taking off his whiskers. Adeline again remarked the improvement in his appearance.

“I declare,” she said, “you look very distinguished, now that you have got rid of those whiskers.”

“As a matter of fact they were quite small ones,” he returned.

“All whiskers are too large. Don’t you want one to say that you look distinguished?”

“Everything you say is so important to me that I am bound to criticize it.”

“You are a character, James, as we say in Ireland, and sometimes I could find it in my heart to pity Henrietta.”

They went through the intricate paths that led to Jalna, he leading her horse, she with the long skirt of her habit thrown across her arm. They found Colonel Vaughan with Philip. They clustered about the stairway, discussing the width of the treads, the curve of the banister, the design of the proposed newel post. Adeline declared that, for ease of mounting, the steps had never been equaled. She could run up and down them all day, she said, with a baby on either arm.

Colonel Vaughan invited Wilmott to join his other guests at dinner. Wilmott was invited to Vaughanlands less frequently than he might have been had Mrs. Vaughan liked him better. She had on several occasions heard him express views on religion and politics which were antagonistic to her. She had seen that her husband admired him. She felt that he was a dangerous companion for Robert. What she disliked still more about him was the admiration for Adeline which she had glimpsed alight in his eyes. She thought it was reckless of Adeline to visit his home alone and so make herself the subject of gossip. She thought it lax of Philip to allow her to do so. She said as much to Adeline that same afternoon before dinner.

“Dear Mrs. Vaughan,” said Adeline smiling, a little dangerously, “please don’t take me to task for something entirely innocent.”

“I am not taking you to task, Mrs. Whiteoak. I am only warning you.”

“Warning me of what?”

“That you will find yourself talked about.”

“You mean that I am already talked about?”

“You must acknowledge that what you are doing is unconventional.”

“Philip and I are unconventional people. We don’t care a fig what gossips or busybodies say.”

“But these people are not gossips or busybodies. They are nice people and your future neighbors, you must remember.”

“Oh, Mrs. Vaughan, please don’t take a chiding tone with me!” Adeline’s cheeks were scarlet but she added more calmly — “While I am here with you I shall not go again alone to Mr. Wilmott’s house. I hope that will satisfy everyone.”

She went off to dress for dinner, feeling the constriction of a prolonged visit. She stopped at the children’s door and opened it. Nicholas had just been given his bath and was sitting on his nurse’s knee, wet and shining as a shell just lifted from the sea. His hair flew upward in moist waves from his forehead. His eyes had a look of infant hilarity and daring. He had thrown the great sponge to the floor and now, on Matilda’s knee, reached for his slippery pink toes. She, with the prideful, fatuous smile of the nurse, looked up at Adeline as though to say — “You may have borne him but just now he is mine, mine.”

Nicholas did not care whose he was. He took a large magnanimous view of life. His chief occupation was to destroy what was nearest.

“You angel!” cried Adeline. “Oh, Nurse, how he grows! Aren’t his dimples enchanting?”

“They are indeed, ma’am,” answered the nurse, as smugly as though she had put them in with her own finger.

Gussie came forward carrying a doll Wilmott had given her. It had a pink-and-white face and black curls all painted on its china head. It wore only a chemise.

“Look,” said Gussie, holding up the doll.

“Oh, how pretty!” said Adeline, but her eyes returned at once to Nicholas.

“Look,” said Gussie, drawing back the doll’s chemise and displaying its body.

“It’s a marvel,” said Adeline, but she did not look.

Gussie laid the doll in the bath and pressed it firmly down. As it sank, an odd look came into her eyes. She remembered something. She turned to her mother.

“Huneefa,” she said.

Adeline was startled, almost horrified. What did the child remember? Why had she said the ayah’s name?

“There she goes, at her naughtiness!” exclaimed the nurse. “All day long I can’t keep up to her. If it isn’t one thing it’s another. If you would punish her, ma’am, it might do some good.”

Gussie began to cough from whooping cough, ending in that strange crowing noise. The cough shook her tiny frame. It was pathetic to see her supporting herself by grasping the arm of a chair. When the paroxysm had passed her face was crimson and her forehead moist with sweat. Adeline wiped it with her own handkerchief.

“Poor little Gussie,” she murmured, bending over her. “How you do cough! This is what comes, Nurse, of her going to tea with the young Pinks.”

“Well, ma’am, it was your own wish. I didn’t like the idea myself. You can’t be too careful — not with a baby in the house.”

“Good heavens, how was I to know the little Pinks were taking whooping cough?”

“You never can tell what clergymen’s children will be taking, ma’am.”

A step came on the stair. There was a quick knock at the door.

“It is the doctor,” said Nurse, enfolding Nicholas’s nakedness in a huge bath towel.

Adeline opened the door and Dr. Ramsey came in. He was a young man of just under thirty, of bony frame but particularly healthy appearance. His high cheekbones and firmly cut lips gave him a look of endurance, even defiance. His manner was somewhat abrupt. After greeting Adeline he turned to his little patient.

“Hullo,” he said. “Another bout of coughing, eh?”

Gussie gravely assented. She passed her hand across her forehead, putting back the curls that clung moistly there.

Dr. Ramsey sat down and took her on his knee. He laid his fingers on her tiny wrist but his eyes were on Adeline.

“I wish,” he said, “we had some way of isolating her. I shall be very sorry if you develop whooping cough, Mrs. Whiteoak.”

“There is little likelihood of that, since I did not take it when all five of my brothers had it at one time.”

“I wish you had taken it then,” he returned.

“Indeed then, I don’t, for I should have missed the races in Dublin, to which my grandfather took me, and all my five brothers whooping away at home!”

“Better the miss of some races,” he returned, “than the miscarriage of a child.”

Adeline varied between having complete trust in Dr. Ramsey and disliking him. The dislike did not impair the trust but it tarnished it. She said: —

“All I worry about is my baby. He has never yet had a day’s illness.”

Dr. Ramsey turned to Nicholas, sprawling in supreme comfort in his nurse’s lap.

“If he contracts this cough,” he said, “it will take off some of that flesh of his.”

“If only Miss Augusta would keep away from him,” said the nurse, “but she won’t.”

If only Mrs. Whiteoak would keep away from Augusta!” said Dr. Ramsey.

Philip found Adeline dressing in their room. Between Mrs. Vaughan’s criticism of her visits to Wilmott’s house and a certain irritation provoked by Dr. Ramsey, Adeline’s mood was not an amenable one. Her head in her wardrobe, her voice came out to Philip on a note of dissatisfaction.

“I declare,” she said. “I am sick and tired of considering other people’s feelings. From morning to night I am put to it not to give offence. My clothes are all in a heap. My children are in a heap. You and I are in a heap.”

“What’s up?” asked Philip laconically, unbuttoning his waistcoat.

“It’s all very well for you! You live unhampered. You are free as air. You are not chided for visiting your neighbor. You are not going to have a baby. You haven’t seventeen crinolines hanging on one hook!”

“I have to sit with my head out of the window or up the chimney when I smoke a cigar,” he returned mildly. “Was it about going to Wilmott’s that Mrs. Vaughan spoke to you?”

She withdrew her head from the wardrobe and faced him with disheveled locks and flushed cheeks. “Yes. Who told you?”

“Vaughan. He thinks it is rather too unconventional of you and I expect he is right. I have given you a loose rein, Adeline, because I think it is the best way with you, and I believe Wilmott is a decent fellow. I told Vaughan I would speak to you.”

“You needn’t have troubled. I’ve told Mrs. Vaughan I shall not go to Wilmott’s again while I am here.… Dr. Ramsey says it will go hard with me if I get whooping cough.”

Philip looked aghast at the thought. “You are to keep away from those children. I command you.”

“I am not worrying. It is just that I don’t very much like Dr. Ramsey. I wish Dr. St. Charles were here. Do you think perhaps he would come and look after me if we asked him?”

“I’m afraid it is rather too far. For my part, I think Ramsey is a very capable fellow. What is that you are putting on?”

She had taken a green taffeta dress from the wardrobe. It was cut very low and to Philip seemed extreme in fashion for such an occasion. He told her so.

Adeline threw it on the floor and desired him to find her something hideous enough to grace the moment. He looked at his watch.

“We are going to be late for dinner,” he said. “Your head is like a hayrick. If you want to appear with your head like a hayrick and your body overdressed, I shall try to endure it but, I promise you, I shall be ashamed.”

She sat down gloomily, looking out of the window. “How sweet it is in County Meath at this time of the year,” she said.

“Aye,” he returned, “and it’s nice in Warwickshire, too.” “Ah, you English have no heart for your country! You don’t know the deep, dark, hungering love we Irish know for ours.”

“And a very good thing, too. Else we should be where Ireland is.”

“It is you English who have made us what we are!” she flared.

“We can do nothing with you and you well know it.”

She laughed, a little comforted. She began to play a tune on the window sill. “How out of practice I am!” she exclaimed. “I can feel my fingers getting quite stiff and I used to be able to play ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ with only three mistakes.”