They did not find out when the house was completed, and furnished. (Did you see the carloads of furniture coming into the station, from Ottawa and as far away as Montreal?) Mary-Jim knew what had to be done, and in due time a small notice appeared in The Clarion announcing that on a certain day in June Mrs. Francis Cornish would be At Home at Chegwidden Lodge.
This meant, according to local custom, that anyone not positively Polish was free to come, drink a cup of tea, and look around. They came in hundreds, trudged all over the house, rubbed fabrics between their fingers, covertly looked in drawers and cupboards, sucked in their lips, and murmured jealously among themselves. Didn’t it beat the band! The money that must have been poured out! Well, it was nice for them that had it. And Chegwidden Lodge—what were you to make of that? The postmaster’s wife said that her husband had half a mind to insist that letters be addressed to 17 Walter Street, which is what the vacant lot had been before this mansion was set up. Everybody agreed, out of her earshot, that the postmaster had only half a mind at the best of times, and nothing of the sort happened. The postmaster’s wife reported that letters were posted with Chegwidden Lodge plainly printed on the envelopes. Their own stationery! And Mary-Jim correcting everybody about the way to say it, and wanting them to say Cheggin, as if they couldn’t read plain English—if that word was English, mind you.
The day Mary-Jim received Blairlogie was also the last day she did anything of the sort; she had only agreed to a single occasion because of her father’s political position. There was no sign of the baby. It was usual for babies to hold court, and be exclaimed over, as the wonders they were.
The baby had a nurse, a starched, grim-faced woman from Ottawa, who made no friends. A rumour went around that when the baby cried, its cry was queer—the queerest thing you ever heard. Victoria Cameron made it her business to track down the source of this rumour, and, as she suspected, it was Dominique Tremblay, the maid at Chegwidden Lodge. Victoria descended upon Dominique and told her that if she ever dared to open her mouth about family matters again, she, Victoria Cameron, would rip the soul-case out of her. Dominique, terrified, said no more. But when she was questioned, she rolled her eyes dramatically, and laid her finger to her lips; this made rumour worse.
Rumour whispered that the ailing child was the victim of some fault in the father (you know what those old English families are) or—hush!—one of those diseases soldiers pick up from foreign harlots. That would be why Mary-Jim had no more children. Was it choice or inability? Rumour knew of women whose insides were simply a mass of corruption from diseases communicated to them by their husbands. Such speculation kept Rumour pleasantly engaged in dispute for some time.
Rumour was checked after February 1909 when Dr. Jerome told Mary-Jim that she was pregnant again. This was both good and bad news to the Cornishes. The Major was delighted that there was to be a child of his loins—a son, he was certain—and so was Mary-Jim. Although they would not have passed as a loving couple, they were congenial, and invariably as polite to one another as if they weren’t married at all, Blairlogie said. But with the caprice of domestics, the starched, grim woman from Ottawa chose this moment to leave. People who discharge employees have to give reasons; employees are under no obligation to explain why they leave. Still, the starched, grim woman volunteered the opinion that another year in Blairlogie would be the death of her, and added insultingly that she had always heard it was the Jumping-Off Place, and now she knew it. So Mary-Jim was pregnant, and had the care of the sick child, except for such help as Victoria Cameron could give her. Victoria showed every sign of becoming a family retainer and champion, although she was still not much more than thirty. Dominique Tremblay was not to be trusted, and was kept out of the nursery.
This was inconvenient, for the Senator wanted his cook in his own kitchen. The Major fussed over his wife like a bridegroom, and was angry with fate when she was tired and in low spirits. Dr. Jerome said something had to be done, and, having said it to the Cornishes and to Marie-Louise and Aunt Mary-Ben, he said it with special emphasis to the Senator, once again as they sat in the uniquely panelled library, over a dram.
“I won’t make strange on you, Hamish, it would be far better for everybody if that child had not lived. It’s a burden, and it will always be a burden, and it’ll be a burden to the new child, because a dooley elder brother is a weight to carry.”
“You said it wouldn’t live when first they brought it home.”
“I know I did, and I was right. It’s the child that’s wrong. It has no business to be going on living, the way it is. Five years! It’s utterly unscientific.”
“And of course there’s nothing in the world to be done about it.”
The Doctor paused: “I’m not so sure of that.”
“Joe—you don’t suggest—?”
“No, I don’t. I’m a Catholic like yourself, Hamish, and a pillar of the Church, even if I’m an external pillar. A life is sacred, whatever its quality may be. But if that Swiss man had had any sense he wouldn’t have been such a busybody when it was born. The first five minutes, you know—you don’t invite death, but you let nature make its choice. I’ve done it myself scores of times, and never a twinge of conscience. Some of these fellows, you know, are too anxious to show their skill to have any discretion or humanity. But I tell you plump and plain, I wish that boy were out of the way. He’s bad for Mary-Jim, and he’s bad for all of you!”
“Well, but what did you mean, Joe, when you said you weren’t sure. What weren’t you sure of?”
“The child isn’t what it was a few months ago. We may be quit of it yet—and the sooner the better.”
Apparently Dr. Jerome’s suspicions were well founded, for a few days later, after a blazing row with the Major, Marie-Louise summoned Father Devlin in a hurry, and the sick child was baptized for the second time, as a Catholic. And it was only a day or two later that one of the top workmen at the Senator’s planing-mill made a small coffin—made it beautifully. And at night a little procession of two carriages took its way to the Catholic cemetery—a bleak, windswept, treeless place and in March dreadfully cold. It was as private as such an affair can be. Old Billy had dug the little grave with pick and shovel breaking the frost-bound soil, and he it was who stood in the background as the Senator and Marie-Louise, Aunt Mary-Ben, and Major Cornish heard Father Devlin read the burial service. The Senator and the Major carried coal-oil lamps to light the scene. There were no tears as the Senator’s first grandchild was buried in the otherwise empty McRory plot.
When the spring came, it was Aunt Mary-Ben who saw to the placing of a little white marble marker—it was only a foot wide, and lifted itself above the earth no more than three inches—on which raised letters said FRANCIS.
Mary-Jim’s pregnancy went splendidly after that, and on September 12 the subject of Simon Darcourt’s biography was born, and christened, in the Anglican Church, Francis Chegwidden Cornish.
SO YOUR MAN makes his appearance on the scene at last, said the Lesser Zadkiel. You were at the birth, of course?
—Where else would I be, said the Daimon Maimas. I’d been on the job, so to speak, since the boy was conceived on December the tenth, 1908, at 11:37 p.m.
—What precisely was it you needed to do? said the Biographical Angel.
—Obey orders, of course. When Francis was conceived—at the very moment of the Major’s fortunate orgasm, They summoned me and said This is yours; do well by him but don’t show off.
—Had you been showing off?
—I never think that a few flourishes do any harm to a life and perhaps I have overdone it, once or twice. But They take a very different view. When They gave me Francis They said, don’t show off and I tried my best not to show off. That family needed an influence like me.
—You found them dull?
—My dear Zadkiel, we haven’t even touched on Blairlogie. There was dullness for you! But its been my experience, over several aeons, that a good dull beginning does no h
arm to an interesting life. Your man runs so hard to get away from the dullness he was born to that you can do very interesting things with him. Put them into his head to do himself, that’s to say. Without me, Francis would just have been a good, solid citizen like the rest of them. Of course, I knew all there was to know about the burial of the first Francis. There was a rum thing, as the Major said at the time.
—You haven’t any pity, Maimas.
—Neither have you, Zadkiel, and don’t pretend you have. Long. long ago—if we must talk as though time had any meaning for us—I learned that when a tutelary spirit like myself is given a life to watch over, pity merely makes a mess of things. Far better to put your man over the hurdles and scrape him through the hedges, and toughen him up. It is not my work to protect softies.
—Well, shall we get on with the story, now that we have reached Francis? It was necessary to tell about his immediate forebears in some detail, because they were what was bred in his bone, which poor Darcourt wants to find out.
—Yes, but now I am on the job—I, Maimas the Daimon, the Tutelary Spirit, the Indwelling Essence. Though he was a McRory, and a Cornish, and all that goes with such a mixture, I also was what was bred in his bone, right from the instant of his conception. And that made all the difference.
Two
It was in a garden that Francis Cornish first became truly aware of himself as a creature observing a world apart from himself. He was almost three years old, and he was looking deep into a splendid red peony. He was greatly alive to himself (though he had not yet learned to think of himself as Francis) and the peony, in its fashion, was also greatly alive to itself, and the two looked at each other from their very different egotisms with solemn self-confidence. The little boy nodded at the peony and the peony seemed to nod back. The little boy was neat, clean, and pretty. The peony was unchaste, dishevelled as peonies must be, and at the height of its beauty. It was a significant moment, for it was Francis’s first conscious encounter with beauty—beauty that was to be the delight, the torment, and the bitterness of his life—but except for Francis himself, and perhaps the peony, nobody knew of it, or would have heeded if they had known. Every hour is filled with such moments, big with significance for someone.
It was his mother’s garden, but it would be foolish to pretend that it was Mary-Jim’s creation. She cared little for gardens, and had one only because it was the sort of thing a young matron in her position was expected to possess. Her husband would have protested if she had not had a garden, for he had determined ideas about what women liked. Women liked flowers; on certain occasions one gave them flowers; on certain occasions one told them they were like flowers—though it would not have done to tell a woman she looked like a peony, a beautiful but whorish flower. The garden was the work of Mr. Maidment, and it reflected the dull, geometrical character of Mr. Maidment’s mind.
It was uncommon for Francis to be in the garden unattended. Mr. Maidment did not like boys, whom he knew to be plant-tramplers and bloom-snatchers, but at this magical moment Bella-Mae had left him to himself because she had to go indoors for a moment. Francis knew she had gone to pee, which she did frequently, having inherited the weak bladder of her family, the Elphinstones. Bella-Mae did not know that Francis knew, because one of her jobs was to protect Francis from bruising contacts with reality, and in her confused and grubby mind, little boys ought not to know that adults had such creatural needs. But Francis did know, even though he was not fully aware who Francis was, and he felt a minute guilt at his knowledge. He was not yet such a close reasoner as to suspect that if Bella-Mae were thus burdened with the common needs of life, his parents might also share them. The life of his parents was god-like and remote. Their clothes did not come off, obviously, though they changed several times a day; but he had seen Bella-Mae take off her clothes, or at least shrug and struggle them off under her nightdress, because she slept in the nursery with him. She also brushed her coarse rusty hair a hundred times every night, for he had heard her counting, and was usually fast asleep before she had reached the century stroke.
Bella-Mae was called Nanny, because that was what the Major insisted she be called. But Bella-Mae, who was Blairlogie to the core of her being, thought it a silly thing to call her by a name that was not hers. She thought Major and Mrs. Cornish stuck-up and she took no pride in being a child’s nurse. It was a job, and she did it as well as she could, but she had her own ideas, and sometimes smacked Francis when he had not been very bad, as a personal protest against the whole Cornish manner of life, so out of tune with Blairlogie ideas.
Within the time between his meeting and recognition of the peony and his fourth year, Francis came to know that Bella-Mae was Awful. She was plain, if not downright ugly, and grown women ought to be beautiful, like his mother, and smell of expensive scent, not starch. Bella-Mae frequently made him clean his teeth with brown soap, as she did herself, and declared it to be wholesome; she took no stock in the tooth-powder with which the nursery was supplied. This was Awful. More Awful still was her lack of respect for the holy ikons which hung on the nursery wall. These were two vividly coloured pictures of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, and once a month she scrubbed their glass with Bon Ami, saying under her breath: “Come on, you two, and get your faces washed.” If the Major had known that, he would have given Bella-Mae what-for. But of course he did not know, because Francis was not a squealer, a kind of person Bella-Mae held in abhorrence. But if he was not a squealer, Francis was a noticer, and he kept a mental dossier on Bella-Mae which would certainly have led to her dismissal if his parents had known what it contained.
There was, for instance, her contumelious attitude, expressed physically but not verbally, toward the other picture in the nursery, which was of A Certain Person. Bella-Mae did not hold with images or idols; she belonged to the small assembly of the Salvation Army in Blairlogie, and she knew what was right, and a picture of A Certain Person, in a room like the nursery, was not right.
To remove the picture, or alter its position, was out of the question. It had been hung beside Francis’s bed by Aunt, Miss Mary-Benedetta McRory, who ought by rights to be called Great-Aunt. Bella-Mae was not the only one to have reservations about pictures of A Certain Person; the Major was not happy about it, but rather than have a row with Aunt he tolerated it, on the ground that women and children had soft heads about religion, and when the boy grew older he would put an end to all that nonsense. So there it hung, a brightly coloured picture of Jesus, smiling sadly as though a little pained by what his large brown eyes beheld, and with his lovely long white hands extended from his blue robe in the familiar Come-unto-me gesture. Behind him were a good many stars, and he seemed to be floating.
From time to time Aunt Mary-Ben had a secret little whisper with Francis. “When you say your prayers, dear, look first at the picture of Jesus, then close your eyes but keep the picture in your mind. Because that’s Who you’re praying to, isn’t it? And He knows all about little boys and loves them dearly.”
Bella-Mae was sure that Jesus didn’t like to see little boys naked, and she hustled Francis out of his clothes and into them with great speed and certain modest precautions. “You don’t think he wants to look at your bare B.T.M. with his big eyes, do you?” she said, managing to include both Francis and the picture in her displeasure. For her displeasure was immense. The faith of the Salvation Army expressed itself in her through a repertoire of disapprovals; she lived strongly in the faith of the Army, and from time to time she murmured the Army war-cry, “Blood and Fire”, with the vigour usually reserved for an oath.
She saw that the Army figured in Francis’s life as much as possible, though she would not have dared to take him to the Temple; the Major would not have stood for that. But at least twice a week he beheld her in the splendour of her uniform, and he was the first to see her in the glory of the Chapeau.
The Army uniform cost a good deal of money, and Bella-Mae bought hers garment by garment, as she could afford it.
The sensible shoes, the black stockings, the skirt, and the tunic with its wonderful buttons, were achieved one by one, and then the great decision had to be made. Should she buy the bonnet, which was the familiar headgear of the Salvation Lassies, or should she opt for the Chapeau, a flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat of blue fur felt, glorious with its red-and-gold ribbon, and strongly resembling (though Bella-Mae did not know this) the hats worn by Catholic priests in nearby Quebec. After deep inward searching, and prayer for guidance, she chose the Chapeau.
In full Salvation fig at last, she marched around the nursery, for Francis, singing in a style of her own, which included noises indicative of the band’s contribution:
At the Cross, at the Cross
Where I first saw the light
And my heart’s great burden roll’d away (pom, pom)
It was there through Blessed Jesus
That I turned to the Right
And now I am happy all the day! (Pish! scolded the cymbal)
At the Cro—s—s—s!
At the Cro—o—o—s!
At the Cross where I first saw the light (boomty-boom)
It was there through His mercy
That I turned toward the Right
And now I am happy all the day! (Boom, boom!)
It was irresistible. Francis hopped off his bed and paraded behind Bella-Mae, and under her guidance was able to shout, “Thine the glory!” and “Blest Redeemer!” ecstatically at the right intervals. He was elevated. He was free of the repressive influence of A Certain Person, whose sad eyes he ignored. He did not know what he was singing about, but he sang from a happy heart.
What's Bred in the Bone Page 7