The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (156 page)

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DELINE WALKED SLOWLY
about the tea table, examining what was spread thereon with an eye so interested as to be almost greedy. She thanked God that her digestion was good. She was not one of those old people who had to subsist on pap foods. She could eat the highly seasoned curry for which she had acquired a taste in India; she could eat English plum pudding with brandy sauce, or a chocolate éclair, and feel so little the worse for it that she always considered the game had been well worth the candle.

Here was spread just the lavish sort of tea she most enjoyed: chicken, cucumber, and fish paste sandwiches. Hot buttered crumpets with honey. Three cakes — a coconut layer cake, a dark rich devil cake, and a white iced cake crowned with halved walnuts. There was a dish of fresh bonbons. She stretched out a greedy, wrinkled hand, took one of these last and popped it into her mouth. The centre was marzipan and it stuck firmly on her upper plate. She did not mind this but stood, leaning on her stick, her brown eyes goggling a little, while she savoured the sweetness.

But of course she could not enjoy it in peace. Her daughter, elegant in black taffeta and heavy gold bracelets, came in search of her.

“Are you all right, Mamma?” she asked, looking into Adeline’s face.

Adeline returned the look dumbly but with rising colour. She would choke rather than give herself away.

Augusta came and took her arm.

“Is there anything wrong, Mamma?”

“Justavin a look a — table,” she mumbled through the marzipan.

“Mamma! What — oh, I see. But really you shouldn’t.”

“Shouldn’t what?” demanded Adeline, more clearly and truculently. She swallowed the morsel and no longer tried to hide her face.

Augusta replied with tact — “You shouldn’t be asked to wait so long for your tea.”

Adeline thought — “I’ve taken her in.” She was pleased and said magnanimously — “I don’t mind waiting on occasion.”

They moved back to the drawing room together. “Do I look all right?” asked Adeline. “Is my cap on straight?”

Her daughter moved it a quarter of an inch.

“You look very nice.”

Nicholas and Ernest were already there. Nicholas was reading a war novel sent to him by a friend in England, Ernest a little ostentatiously holding a volume of Shakespeare in his hand. He rose and went to meet his mother. Nicholas winced as he made the effort.

“Stay where you are,” said his mother. “I’ll take the will for the deed. How’s your gout?”

“A nuisance. I’ve done nothing to bring it on this time. Been living like a Spartan.”

His brother uttered a skeptical, falsetto, highly irritating laugh.

Nicholas glared at him.

“Boys,” adjured their mother, “I hear the visitors in the hall.”

Meg entered the room hurriedly, then went forward with dignity to meet Dayborn, Chris Cummings, and Mrs. Stroud. She presented each in turn to her grandmother, her aunt, and her two uncles. Before the introductions were over, Wakefield came running after her in a pale blue smock, and slippers of the same colour. He gave his tiny hand to each of the visitors, with an air of putting them at their ease. Meg had all a mother’s pride in him.

“My youngest grandson,” said Adeline. “A posthumous child. He’d never have lived if I hadn’t cosseted him. Whatever his life may be, he owes it to me. He knows that already, don’t you, child?”

“Yes,” agreed Wakefield. “Owe my life to Gwannie.” He beamed at the admiring circle.

“And how is your own health, Mrs. Whiteoak?” asked Mrs. Stroud, sitting down beside her. “Good I hope.”

“Ah, I’m full of merit,” replied the old lady. “I’ve fewer pains and aches than any of my three children. My eldest son — him with the moustache — is suffering from gout.”

“What a distinguished looking man!” said Mrs. Stroud.

“The other one,” proceeded Adeline, “has lit’ry tastes. He’s got an idea for a book. He’ll tell you all about it. He told me yesterday, but I’ve forgotten. My daughter, Lady Buckley, is a widow. They’ve all three spent most of their lives in England. They’re too English for me. I’m a real old pioneer, I am.” She peered round Mrs. Stroud at Chris Cummings. “So that’s the girl that breaks in colts! She don’t look strong — but you never can tell. Where’s your baby, my dear, and why didn’t you bring him with you?”

“Old Scotchmere is minding him for me. He’s rigged up a hobby horse.”

“Ha, ha, Scotchmere turned nurse! They tell me you can ride like a jockey. I must get as far as the stables one day and see you.”

Mrs. Stroud interposed. “Don’t go, Mrs. Whiteoak. I did once, and it frightened me to see her. She’s too pretty to run such risks.”

“It’s my job,” said Chris, “and I ask no better.”

“Ah, that’s the spirit!” Adeline’s gaze swept the room. “Where’s Renny? Why doesn’t he come to tea? Where’s Eden and the other two? We’ve waited long enough.”

As she spoke Renny came in, his hair flat from the brush, his eyes expectant. Eden followed him, a faint smile lighting his face as his eyes met those of Mrs. Stroud. Meg, taking Wakefield by the hand, led the way to the dining room. He held out his other hand to Mrs. Stroud.

“How sweet he is!” she exclaimed. “And so friendly. Children have an instinct for knowing those who really love them.”

Renny, playfully and in a mood to show off his precarious friendship with his youngest brother, picked him up as they reached the tea table and raised him shoulder high. Wakefield stiffened and cried — “Down, down, please! Want d-d-down!” Renny deposited him, far from gently, on the chair next Meg’s.

“Now, what about instinct?” laughed Dayborn. “He doesn’t take to you.”

“Unfortunately,” explained Meg, “the poor little fellow was frightened by Renny soon after he came home. He hasn’t got over it, but he will.”

“He is nervous,” added Ernest, “and doesn’t see many strangers.”

Nicholas said — “Since the death of his parents we have lived very quietly. It’s time to change that.”

He was sitting next to Mrs. Stroud. She looked into his deeply-lined, experienced face and thought — “What a striking looking man! And a
divorcé!
How could a woman divorce him! Oh, to have been married to a man like that!”

But his table manners did not please her. He humped his broad shoulders above his plate and devoured a fish paste sandwich in two bites. He began to tell her about a fountain he was planning, at the south side of the house, to be ready for his mother’s birthday.

“The design is to be a female figure, in Hindoo costume, holding an Irish harp and leaning against a lion. It is to typify the three countries which have most influenced my mother’s life. The idea is my brother’s. He will show you some sketches he has made for it. But please do not mention it to my mother. It is to be a complete secret till the day. The water is to come out of the lion’s mouth.”

“How interesting!” said Mrs. Stroud. “But has Canada no part in the design?”

“Canada supplies the water,” he replied.

Eden, on her other side, was offering her a crumpet. She was acutely conscious of his nearness. She was contrasting his smooth, young brown hands, with those of Nicholas which, though shapely, shook perceptibly as he raised his cup to his lips.

“Well, and what do you think of us?”

“I think you’re fascinating. Much more so than you led me to expect. Why, there’s poetry in every one of you — with one exception.”

“I guess which one you mean. I must say he’d be relieved to be the exception. But I’m dashed if I can see poetry in any of them.”

“Ah, you know them too well. If you had lived the life I have! But that’s all over. It’s a new world for me. I’m so glad I came here. Now I know your background. It’s as different as possible to mine. How charming your grandmother is being to Jim Dayborn!”

The old lady was talking with gusto of Irish hunters. Her harsh laugh broke out as she told him of youthful exploits. She questioned him closely as to what he considered Launceton’s chances for the Grand National. She was all for entering him but her sons, her daughter and granddaughter, thought it was too great a risk and expense.

Ernest was telling Chris of his idea for a book about Shakespeare. Quite different from anything that had been done, he declared. He felt himself, from years of theatre going, well fitted for the task. He asked her opinion of Shakespeare’s sonnets. She confessed that she did not know he had written any. This confession did not lower her in Ernest’s opinion. He was satisfied to have an attractive young woman to talk to of “his work.”

“What a nice old boy!” she thought. “Yet he does seem a bit ga-ga on the subject of Shakespeare.”

But as Ernest talked, his clear forget-me-not blue eyes did not miss the understanding glances that passed between Mrs. Stroud and Eden, nor the self-conscious pleasure in her as she manoeuvred to keep him by her side when, after tea, they went to see the garden.

Old Adeline established herself on the circular white seat beneath the great silver birch that dominated the lawn. The bed of red geraniums had just been set out and she beamed her approval at it. Then she remembered Piers and Finch.

“Where are the two young lads?” she demanded. “I didn’t see ’em at tea?”

Meg replied — “Piers is off fishing. Finch has somehow got tar in his hair and wasn’t fit to come to table.”

“Tar, eh? The young rascal! He’ll have to have his hair buttered. That will take it off. That one’s a nice little boy, Mrs. Stroud. But full of music, like his poor mother.”

“A musician and a poet, Mrs. Whiteoak! You are lucky in your grandsons!”

“I am that! And in yon horsy fellow too — and the baby. Look out, sir! You are a naughty boy!”

Wakefield had just emptied his two hands, filled with gravel from the drive, into Mrs. Stroud’s white piqué lap. She made nothing of it and would not allow him to be rebuked. She was making herself a general favourite.

It was the first time that Renny had seen Chris in anything but shabby riding breeches. Here was a different girl. Instead of the long-sleeved shirt, she wore a pink chambray dress. Her silk clad legs and slender bare arms were graceful. But the hand and wrist were so tanned as to give the impression that she wore coffee-coloured gloves. From whip-like, almost fierce vitality, she had flowered into graceful femininity.

“You’re two different people,” he told her as they stood beside an old mulberry tree under which a dilapidated hammock had been the recipient, for more than three decades, of fallen berries. Its mattress sagged, its framework was rusty, but it was a sequestered spot that retained a certain poetic essence.

“I pity you, if you’re as easily taken in as that,” she returned.

“I can’t imagine your swearing in this outfit.”

“The hell you can’t!” she exclaimed, incredulously and without affectation.

“Chris, I do like you.”

“Thanks.”

“I like you more every day.”

“Do you like me enough to raise my wages?”

“I don’t let material things enter into my affections.”

“That’s bad news.”

“But, if you want a rise, you shall have it.”

“I don’t earn a penny more than I get. You’ve been lovely to me.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

He turned his away. He began gently to swing the hammock. “Do you know,” he said, “my father and mother were sitting on this when he proposed to her.”

“A damned messy spot to choose!”

He returned rather huffily — “It was new then. A waterproof covering was kept over it when it was not in use. My young brothers took it for some of their nonsense, while I was away.”

“I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “But I have to be horrid to you or — can’t you understand?”

“No. Tell me.”

She turned her shoulder toward him.

“You understand perfectly.”

“You mean that you are on the verge of loving me and have some perverse reason for not wanting to.”

“I mean I daren’t.”

“But you
are
on the verge?”

“I’m going. I’ve been away from Tod too long!”

He caught her arm and held her. He said — “Kit, this is the first time we’ve ever been alone together. There was always a horse or something.”

She raised her eyes to his. If her nose was slightly insolent, her eyes made up for it by their arresting intensity.

“Renny — Renny — darling, please let me go.”

He ran his hand the length of her arm, then released her. He followed her to where the others had gathered in a group about old Adeline.

She remained where she was when the visitors had gone. It amused her to talk them over, comparing them with people she had known long ago. She thought she would like a quite large dinner party next week. The continued fair weather had warmed her through and through, given her new vitality. Her sons were seated on the bench beside her, Nicholas placidly puffing at his freshly-lighted pipe, Ernest watching Augusta who had returned to her
gros point.

“I do wish I could do that!” he said admiringly.

“I’ll teach you, if you like,” answered Augusta.

“I doubt if I could learn.”

“Nonsense! There is no reason why you should be a whit less clever than I.”

“I hope you are not insinuating that I am effeminate, Augusta.”

Not at all. But you have a niceness, an exactness about you. Now, if Renny should suggest that I teach him …”

Renny was lying on his back on the grass, one arm thrown across his eyes. Beneath it his lips had a sombre bend. Eden sat also on the grass, playing with Wakefield and showing off, somewhat provocatively, the little boy’s preference for him.

“Go and play with brother Renny,” he said. “Make him be a big bear.”

“No,” said Wakefield decidedly. “Baby not able to t-t-talk properly to him.”

“Well, if you can’t talk, go and make a naughty face at him.”

With timorous mien Wakefield ventured close to the outstretched figure. But he was braver than he seemed for, when Renny suddenly caught him and placed him on his chest, Wakefield sat there pleased with his position and with the steady rise and fall of this new throne.

“The darling!” cried Meg, from where she was picking flowers from the border. “I knew he would make friends with you before long.”