03 Mary Wakefield (35 page)

“You’re sure Mr. Pink wasn’t aware that we knew nothing of the Banns?”

“Pink aware! Nothing on earth would have tempted him to commit such an outrage.”

Ernest declared solemnly, “It was enough to give Mamma a seizure.”

“Gad, I’d hate to be in his shoes when they meet.”

“Perhaps he won’t show his face till after dinner. He may go to the Laceys. I do hope he does. It’s a peculiar thing but disturbances during a meal give me a dyspepsia.”

Nicholas grunted, then exclaimed, “Lord, you could have knocked me down with a feather when those Banns were read!”

“I thought Mamma was rising to forbid them.”

“Small wonder if she had.”

“Nothing can stop the marriage now. We shall just have to put up with it.”

“Well, after all, she’s a very attractive girl.”

“Nick — would you willingly have Philip bring a girl of her loose character to Jalna, to be the mother of his children?”

“He swears she isn’t loose.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Philip’s never been a liar.”

“He might be, to save the reputation of the woman he loves.”

“Possibly. But I think that if Mary Wakefield had acknowledged it and it were so, Philip would not have denied it.”

“Then what, in the name of Heaven, possessed her to say such a dreadful thing?”

“In my opinion she wished it were so.”

“Nick, you are a confirmed cynic.”

They turned in at their own gate, scattering the fine gravel beneath the wheels. At the stable Hodge took charge of the horse. He looked downcast and even guilty, as though he had had a hand in the morning’s doings. He was a sensitive young man and devoted to Adeline.

Her two sons found her seated in her own particular chair in the drawing-room. Augusta and Edwin were there also, the sympathetic audience, it appeared, to a monologue by Adeline describing her shock, her outrage, at the church.

Nicholas bent over her and kissed her.

“Well, old girl,” he said, “That was a dramatic exit you made. I’ve never seen anything better — not on the stage.”

She looked pleased with herself, though sombrely.

Ernest kissed her from the other side. He said, “I wanted to escort you but I saw that you preferred to go alone.”

“An escort would certainly have marred the effect,” observed Sir Edwin.

“I showed the world,” said Adeline, “what I thought of the announcement.”

“The point is,” smiled Nicholas, “that we can’t do a thing about it.”

“Oh, to think,” cried Adeline, holding the hand of the son on either side of her, “that I should have brought my youngest child
into the world to have him treat me like this! Eight years I waited after Ernest was born and then, when I was expecting another —”

Sir Edwin interrupted, “Philip’s just at the door. If you care to repeat that, he will be in the hall to hear it.”

Adeline gave him a withering look. Nevertheless she once more, and with even greater tragic emphasis, said:

“Oh, to think that I should have brought my youngest into the world to have him treat me like this! Eight years I waited after Ernest was born and then — when I was expecting another I thought, this one will be like his father. He will have golden hair and blue eyes, and it’s him will be the prop of me old age.”

Midway through this speech Philip appeared in the doorway. He had had a lift in a farmer’s buggy and had alighted at the gate soon after Nicholas and Ernest. He stood listening to Adeline without entering the room, his eyes steady on her face, his arms folded. There was something in the sunny warmth of his appearance that lightened the scale of disfavour weighting the room. Added to this, Adeline’s affectation of speech, at such a moment, seemed to Augusta, Edwin and Ernest, most unfortunate. Try as they would they could not feel quite the same sympathy toward her. Nicholas thought, “The old girl’s defeated and she knows it, hence the Irish.” He squeezed the hand he still held, and said sternly to Philip:

“Well, and what do you have to say for yourself?”

“I had to do it,” he answered. “I had to settle the thing at one blow.”

“A blow! That’s what it was!” exclaimed Adeline. “A blow, in front of all the world.”

“It was not in front of all the world but just one little corner of it,” he said, almost soothingly.

“It is
my
world,” she answered sadly.

Looking at her it did seem a pity that she shone in only this remote community.

Sir Edwin said, “Dear Mrs. Whiteoak, we all felt with you. Your distress was ours.”

Augusta added, “I should have liked to leave the church with my mother, but thought better of it.”

“After a look from her,” supplemented Nicholas.

Philip came into the room. “If all of you,” he said, “had kept cool, not a person in the church would have guessed you’d had a surprise.”

Adeline sprang to her feet. “I like that!” she cried. “I like that, I do! I was expected to sit in my pew smirking while the Rector gave out the Banns for my son’s marriage and I knowing nothing of it. Is that what you expected me to do, Philip? Come, now, tell me!”

“I don’t know what I expected,” he answered sulkily.

Her nostrils widened as she said, “Or perhaps you expected me to take out a handkerchief and wipe me eye on that corner of it. Wipe me eye and bow me head and let out an Amen … Is that what you expected? Answer me, you good-for-nothing rascal!”

As these words vibrated on the air Sir Edwin put the thumb of his right hand on one ash blond side-whisker and its fingers on the other, concealing his mouth, over which flickered an un-seemly smile.

Philip’s colour rose. He looked at her dumbly. He looked at the miniature of his father in the brooch at her throat.

“Or perhaps,” she went on, “you even expected me to feel chastened that you’d insulted me. You maybe thought I’d rise in the pew and genuflect.”

“Mamma,” put in Augusta, “I don’t think you realize how irreverent that sounds.”

“Mind your business, Augusta.”

Philip said, “I intended no insult.”

“Well, maybe it was better than a poke in the eye with a stick. But was there a soul in church, d’ye think, who didn’t realize you’d insulted your poor old mother?”

Philip’s eyes became prominent.

“You’re not my
poor old mother
!” he said loudly. “You’re my domineering mother who makes a scene, even in a church, when she is balked in having her own way. If anyone was insulted this
morning it was I. Sitting there facing the congregation while you stalked from the church like a tragedy queen.”

The two last words pleased her. She considered them and then asked, on a milder note, “What was it like after I left? Did they go on with the service?”

“They did. You may be important, Mamma, but they couldn’t stop the whole show because you left in a temper. And I had to sit there with every eye on me.”

“In the olden times,” she said, “a man might have been chastened with scorpions for no more than you’ve done.”

“Those were the days for you,” he retorted.

“Come, come, Philip,” put in Nicholas.

“The point is,” said Philip, “the Banns have been read and will be read on the two succeeding Sundays and, a few days later, Mary and I shall be married.”

Adeline ignored this statement and demanded:

“Did Mr. Pink know I’d been told nothing of the Banns?”

“He did not know.”

“If I thought he had,” she cried, “I’d bann
him
, and I’d not take three weeks doing it! I’d do it in as many minutes.”

“Mamma,” said Philip, “you are not an Archbishop or even a Bishop.”

“Your father and I built that church.”

“Is it yours now?”

“Philip,” came from Ernest, “will you stop being rude to Mamma!”

“Will
you
stop defending me,” said Adeline. “I need no defence against an ungrateful young rogue like this.”

“What have I to be grateful for?” Philip asked truculently. Adeline threw up her hands in despair. She sank again into her chair and stretched out her long legs in an attitude of exhaustion. After a space she said:

“I have protected you against designing women who were after you, in the past. And you were glad of it, weren’t you? You have told me so with your own lips.”

“Well — maybe. But I could well have protected myself.”

She laughed scornfully. “The way you have protected yourself against this woman who took you as her lover in the room next the one where your innocent daughter slept. No protestations, my man! She told me so herself.”

“Now let us have this thing clear,” said Philip. “It is clear between Mary and me. Mamma made Mary so angry by her accusation that Mary wouldn’t deny it. In her anger she accepted the slur on herself. That’s what she says. What I think is that she was so intimidated she would have agreed to anything.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen her,” said Adeline.

Augusta’s contralto voice was now heard. “What Philip says reminds me of an occurrence when he was a little boy. Ernest and Nicholas were about thirteen and fifteen. They owned a beautiful collie, with an especially fine coat. One day the boys noticed that patches of it had apparently been cut of by scissors, right to the skin. Philip had got into trouble several times for mischief with scissors and knives. Naturally the boys thought he’d been up to his tricks. They accused him, roughly, the way boys will. I was there and I’m afraid I accused him too. He didn’t say a word but just looked at us, as though he were pleased to have done such a bad thing. He was dragged before Papa who thundered at him, ‘Did you do this, sir?’ And Philip looked Papa straight in the eye and said ‘Yes.’ He was severely punished. Then, a few days later it was discovered that the dog had a peculiar form of eczema and that was the cause of the hair coming off in patches. I remember I was so upset over Philip’s being wrongfully punished, I cried. But, when I asked him why he’d acknowledged a fault he’d never committed, he said he didn’t know. I myself think it was because he was pleased that he should be considered capable of such an enormity … Do you remember the occasion, Philip?”

“I can’t say I do. I had so many lickings.”

“A story to give one thought,” observed Nicholas.

Sir Edwin looked admiringly at his wife. “Augusta,” he said, “has an extraordinarily analytical mind.”

Philip bit his knuckle, unable to decide whether the analogy of this anecdote tended to make his loved one appear better or worse.

The low rumble of the Indian gong that rose and fell again under the beating by Eliza, told that the Sunday dinner was served. They were a family with excellent appetites and, when they had seated themselves about the table and the four plump young ducks on the platter in front of Philip gave forth their good odour, not one present felt himself unable to eat his share. Philip was a good carver, having sat at the head of the table since his father’s death. He carved slowly but with accurate knowledge of the anatomy of the ducks, and every eye was on him.

The two children were more watchful of the faces of their elders than of the portions they were to get. Nicholas, Ernest and Sir Edwin tried to draw the conversation into impersonal channels, but when the meal was no more than half over Adeline abruptly asked of Meg:

“Did you hear the Banns read in church this morning?”

Meg raised her face in egg-like calm to Adeline’s — “Yes, Granny.”

“Did you understand what it means?”

“Yes. It means that Papa is going to marry Miss Wakefield.”

“Did you understand at the time?”

“No. Nettle told me.”

“Are you pleased?”

“No. I don’t want him to.”

“And what about you, Renny? Do you want your father to marry Miss Wakefield?”

The little boy’s high clear voice came decisively. “If it will stop her giving us lessons I do.”

Meg added, “Nettle says it’s awful to have a stepmother.”

“That woman,” growled Philip, “will leave tomorrow.”

“She’s going anyway,” said Meg smugly. “She doesn’t want to stay — not with Miss Wakefield bossing her about.”

“Not another word out of you,” Philip said sternly.

Renny piped, “In the fairy tales stepmothers turn children into birds and animals. I hope Miss Wakefield will turn me into a horse.”

A chuckle ran round the table. Philip forced a smile and exclaimed, “Then what should I do? I’d have no little boy.”

“You could ride me!” Renny cried joyfully. “And I’d go faster than any other horse and you’d never need to touch me with the whip.”

“Philip covered his son’s little hand with his. “If Miss Wakefield turns you into a horse,” he said soberly, “I will mount you and the two of us shall ride away together and never come back.”

Meg, since Philip’s reprimand, had been on the verge of tears. Now she burst into them noisily and without restraint. Her father had shown preference for Renny. Ordinarily she would have been told to leave the table, but now Adeline called her to her side, embraced her, kissed her and said, “Poor child — poor child.”

“She’s nothing of the sort,” said Philip, “and she’s behaving like a four-year-old.”

“I quite agree,” said Nicholas. “This howling for nothing is a nuisance.”

“If she is behaving without restraint,” said Adeline, “she is doing no worse than Philip.”

“I think I have shown considerable self-restraint,” he returned.

“I was taught,” Adeline went on, “by my dear father, that there is no better quality to guide you through life than self-restraint.”

“That’s the first good word I’ve ever heard you say for him,” said Nicholas.

It was plain that Nicholas had gone over to the enemy.

“If you had been more like my dear father,” Adeline retorted, “your wife might not have run off with another man.”

“Mamma!” implored Augusta. “Remember the children.”

“I do remember them and I wish there were more of them but Nicholas never got a chick. Neither have you and Edwin managed one. Now my father got eleven children and he taught them all self-restraint. My, but he was a fine man! If ever I have said a hard word about him I deserve to be punished for it. Indeed, I never really appreciated him till he was gone.”