02 Morning at Jalna (14 page)

Nicholas laughed. “I hope it will make his breath better,” he said, “for just now it’s disgusting.”

“Hard luck, old fellow,” said Guy, patting Ernest’s knee. “I’ll bet you’re ravenous.”

Mrs. Lacey was in a state of anxiety about her daughters.

“Hurry, Guy,” she called. “I’m so worried over the sunburn your sisters have got. It serves me right for allowing them to go into the sun without hats. These delicate complexions require constant care.”

“Thank goodness,” said Adeline, “I don’t need to trouble about Gussie’s complexion, for she’s sallow as any Spaniard.” Mrs. Lacey cast a sympathetic look at Gussie.

The pleasure vehicles moved up the road, away from the sound of the wavelets. The road lay thick in dust. Evening closed in with great suddenness. There was as yet no moon. Darkness rose from the earth to meet darkness from the sky.

XV

The Golden Pen

The house was extraordinarily dim and quiet when the family entered it after the picnic. Usually, at this hour, it was the scene of bewildering activity — Lucy Sinclair dressing for the evening meal, her servants engaged in argument with the cook over the preparation of her special dishes; Jerry seated at the kitchen table devouring what pleased his palate; the two boys running up and down the stairs defying the order to go to bed; the baby Philip crying as he found himself alone in the dark; Adeline and Philip seeking, not very patiently, to create order out of chaos; Nero and Boney, the parrot, adding their voices to the confusion; people calling for hot water; people calling for oil lamps; shutters and doors banging to keep out the evening air.

But now how different!

The picnic party were met at the door by Bessie, a tidy, clean-aproned Bessie, with a smile on her face instead of a frown, who took little Philip gently in her arms.

“It’s late for his bath, ma’am,” she said to Adeline. “Do you think I might just wipe his face and hands and knees with a sponge and pop him into bed?”

“You may,” agreed Adeline. “We all are tired. What a lovely long day! What peace in the house!”

Bessie beamed. “That there Mrs. Coveyduck,” she said, “is a marvel. Everything goes as smooth as silk with us now that she’s back and them niggers is gone. She has a nice hot meal waiting for you.”

“Goodness, I’m not hungry.”

But when Adeline came to the dining room, saw the table invitingly laid beneath the light of the chandelier, she changed her mind and decided that she was very hungry. The tureen of vegetable soup sent up a delicious odour. After the soup came an omelette, light as a feather, and after the omelette an apple tart, smothered in Devonshire cream which Mrs. Coveyduck well knew how to make.

Philip and Adeline, Augusta and Nicholas, sat in comfortable relaxation about the table. Agreeable, charming as Lucy Sinclair had been, there was no doubt that her presence had been a weight. Philip never had found Curtis Sinclair congenial to him. Now he looked about the table at his family with satisfaction. However, he missed someone.

“Where is Ernest?” he asked.

Augusta spoke up, with an accusing look at him.

“Papa, you said Ernest was to go supperless to bed.”

“Ah, so I did. Now I forget why.” He took a mouthful of the crisp crust of homemade bread.

“It was because he spat out Mr. Wilmott’s fish and said it stank.”

This remark struck Nicholas as being excruciatingly funny. He bent almost double in laughter.

“Do you want to follow your brother to bed?” asked Philip.

That sobered Nicholas. The meal proceeded in serenity and good appetite. Both Philip and Adeline remarked on Guy Lacey’s charm and good sense. It was a pity, they said, that his leave was so soon to be over. Augusta said nothing but, as soon as she could, stole up to her own room. It was dark and the smell of fall came in on the dew-drenched air. She struck a match and lighted a candle on the dressing table, which had a flounce of glazed chintz round it. Her reflection showed in the mirror, so strangely intimate that it was like another girl in the room with her — a girl who, Guy Lacey had said, was like a mermaid, with her long black hair and alluring eyes. Were those his exact words? She could scarcely remember — she had been so confused. And leaping up and down with him in the lake had trebled the confusion and the delight. She looked deep into the large dark eyes of the girl in the mirror, trying to solve their mystery. Often she had heard her mother’s eyes admired, called luminous, gay. She had seen the golden lights in their brownness, seen how they could change with her mood. But these eyes of her own were always the same — sombre, like the eyes of some melancholy Spaniard, Adeline had once remarked.

Her attention was diverted from her reflection in the mirror to the hunched figure of her dove that had spent the day in his cage, alone, unnoticed. Contrite, she opened the door of the cage and spoke to him.

“Oh, my lovely dove! My little love — my dove.”

Never before had she used such endearments to him. Tonight they came naturally to her lips. Everything was different tonight. Over and over she said loving words to him. But he was feeling his neglect. His head that had been under his wing was indeed uncovered, but it was some little time before he shook himself and hopped down from his perch and then to her shoulder. There again he shook himself and made a loving noise, deep down in his burnished throat. Delicate undulating movements vibrated through his body.

“My little love — my dove,” murmured Augusta. “My love hath dove’s eyes.” She was tired after the long day and dropped to the floor and sat there.

Three leaves from the Virginia creeper had blown into the room and lay trembling a little on the floor. Augusta felt strangely happy. But her peace was broken by the sound of a sob from the room next hers. She was sure it was Ernest who was crying.

There was hazy moonlight in the boys’ room. It fell across the bed, on which she could make out the figure of Ernest, curled up in a little bundle of misery.

She came and sat on the side of the bed. His hand reached out to her groping. “Is it you, Gussie?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she answered calmly. “I heard you crying. Are you hungry?”

“Hungry? No.” His voice came thick with sobs. “I’m not the least bit hungry, but — oh, Gussie, I’ve done something bad.”

She drew the sheet down to uncover his tear-stained face. “Yes, Ernest, what is it? Tell Gussie.”

“Is that the dove?” he asked.

“Yes. He’s been alone for hours. Now he’s so happy that I am back.”

The dove cooed in his throat.

Ernest was easily diverted, even from real unhappiness. Now he sat up in bed, then knelt up to stroke the dove. “How nice he is! I’m sure he knows me and likes me better than he likes Nicholas. Do you think he likes me, Gussie?”

“Tell me what you have done,” she said.

“You won’t tell Papa?”

“Have I ever carried tales?”

“No. But this is the worst thing yet.”

“Is it about the gold pen?”

He threw himself back on the bed and pulled the bedclothes over his head. “How did you guess?” came in a strangled voice.

“I saw you go into the shrubbery. I saw you come back.”

“I couldn’t help myself, Gussie.”

“Where have you hidden the pen?”

“Oh, I have it safe enough.”

In the dim moonlight she could just see his face, a girl’s face, pink and delicate, with the forget-me-not blue eyes and the rumpled fair hair, but the mouth was the mouth of a boy, sensitive and delicately arrogant.

She said, “Do you realize, Ernest, that it was stealing?”

He wriggled beneath the bedclothes. “But the pen is really mine, Gussie,” he said.

“Then why were you crying?”

He could not answer.

She went on, “Mamma and Nicholas and I had given back our presents — the pearl necklet, the watch and chain, the ring. They weren’t ours any longer. Neither is the pen yours. It was stealing to take it.”

“I know — I know,” he moaned.

“In England, not very many years ago,” she said, “there were more than a hundred crimes a person could be hanged for —”

“Even a boy?” he faltered.

“Yes — even a boy. A boy could be hanged for stealing a sheep, and a gold pen is worth more than a sheep.”

“Did you say a hundred crimes?” he quavered.

“More than a hundred. Mr. Madigan told us.”

Ernest now tried to obliterate himself in the bedclothes. Gussie could barely make out what he said. “Then,” he said, “I could have been hanged every day in the week. Oh, Gussie, tell me what to do!”

She patted him on the back. “We must find a way,” she said comfortingly.

Now his flushed little face appeared over the edge of the sheet. “Please don’t tell Papa,” he begged. “I don’t want to be thrashed.”

“Why did you start all this tonight?” she asked.

“I was so lonely and now I’m so hungry.”

“Roll over on your face and press your fists into your tummy. That will help.”

He did. Then he said, “It seems to make me hungrier.”

“Now, listen,” said Augusta. “You must stay quietly here and I will go to the kitchen and get you something to eat.”

“Don’t leave me alone!” Ernest’s voice was no more than a wail. He tried to make himself even younger than he was.

“Come, then.” Gussie spoke in resignation.

Ernest scrambled out of bed with surprising alacrity.

“I suppose you know,” said Gussie, “that I should not be doing this. It’s breaking rules, you know.”

“How would you feel if you found me dead of starvation in the morning?”

“You would not die from missing one meal. It is not the first time this has happened to you.”

“But it’s the first time I’d such a weight on my conscience. Is your conscience in your stomach, Gussie?”

“You are always so ready to talk,” she answered wearily. “I want to get this thing over — so come along and don’t make a sound.” She returned the dove to its cage.

The sudden transition from fear and loneliness to security and the comfort of Gussie’s presence not only filled Ernest with gladness but gave him a pleasing sense of adventure. It was the first time that he had gone down to the basement at this hour. He clung tightly to Augusta’s hand and they fairly held their breaths. Philip was in the sitting room reading the weekly newspaper. They could hear the rustling of it as he turned the pages. Nero was with him and came to the door and looked out at them and whined.

“Come back here, sir.” Philip spoke with his pipe between his teeth.

The children stole silently through the hall, past the door of the bedroom inside which they could hear their mother softly and not very musically singing. Certainly she would not hear them creeping past. They descended the stairs into the basement. Here it was pleasantly warm. The moonlight lay in shining rectangles on the freshly washed brick floor and discovered a golden gleam in the copper utensils hanging on the walls. The Coveyducks and Bessie were long ago in bed, tired out after their efforts to obliterate all traces of the Negroes.

As the children crept down the basement stairs Ernest whispered, “Just like thieves in the night, aren’t we?”

Scarcely were the words past his lips when he realized how terribly well they applied to himself. It was fortunate that he was on the bottom step, otherwise in his dismay he might have lost his balance. As it was he clapped his hand over his mouth and rolled his eyes up towards Augusta’s face to see if she had noticed.

If she had, she made no comment but led the way into the larder. It was possible by the light of the moon to see the large pans of Jersey milk, the loaves of bread, and many tempting edibles, tempting especially to one as hungry as Ernest. Augusta discovered a candle and matches. She lighted the candle and held the candlestick aloft, so that it shed its light on the shelves.

“Bread and milk?” she invited.

But he had seen the slab of apple pie, the bowl of Devonshire cream. “Oh, Gussie,
please
, some of that,” he begged. Without comment she cut a large helping for him, laid it on a china plate with a chip out of it, then mounded it with cream. Like a priestess in some Gothic ceremony, she led the way back to the kitchen and set plate and candle on the clean-scrubbed table. He slid on to a chair and she put a spoon in his hand.

“If your feet are as cold as mine are,” she said, “you’d like a hot drink.”

His mouth was too full for speech but he made eyes of gratitude, and pointed with his spoon to the teapot. In this kitchen the teakettle was always on the boil. Gussie stirred the coals under it and when the exact moment of bubbling came she had the teapot ready with plenty of tea in it.

She seated herself beside Ernest and poured a cup of strong Indian tea for each. The first mouthful brought tears to his eyes it was so hot. But he was so happy — just the two of them together and he not the odd one as so often he was!

He said, “Nicholas will wonder where I am. He will wish he might be in my place, won’t he?”

“I don’t know who would choose to be in your place,” said Augusta.

That remark subdued him, though only briefly. The pleasure of the late feast, the two cups of strong tea, had an exhilarating effect. He was still hungry.

Gravely she considered his plea for a second piece of the pie. He was delicate. The second piece might be too much for his digestion. Still — he had eaten little since breakfast. She rose. “I’ll risk it,” she said.

Ernest remembered a proverb he had heard from Lucius Madigan. Now he brought it out. “Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” he said.

Augusta looked at him in despair. “Can’t you keep your mind off bad things?”

He hung his head. He was speechless a moment, then he said, “I guess bad things come natural to me.”

“You look innocent,” said Augusta, “and that’s a danger. Anyhow, I’ll risk giving you more pie.”

She did and they both had more tea. He looked at her in love and gratitude. On their way through the hall, Ernest fairly skipped in his happiness.