“Well, here she comes like Paris with the golden apple and here are the three of you waiting! Let her make her choice.”
From the thick evergreens that fringed the drive Muriel Craig’s trap emerged, drawn by a pretty chestnut cob. She sat very straight, holding the reins high, the small elegant whip in one hand. She looked self-conscious, rather than confident. The three brothers went quickly toward her. Adeline looking after them thought, “If she chooses by distinction, it’s Nicholas — if by elegance, it’s Ernest — if she prefers an untidy rapscallion, as she probably does, it’s Philip.”
She greeted Muriel Craig warmly, giving at the same time an appraising look at her, out of narrowed dark eyes.
“How fresh you look, my dear, and what a pretty striped shirt-waist!”
“I’m glad you like it. My father thinks the strip rather loud.”
“Not a bit of it. If anyone can wear that stripe you can. What do you say, Ernest?”
“I say she can wear it,” he returned, tepidly.
“Mr. Ernest does not sound very enthusiastic,” said Muriel Craig. “I’m afraid he also considers it too loud.” She turned to Philip. “What do you think, Mr. Philip?”
“I always like stripes. Like ’em loud, too.”
Nicholas thought, “The girl is positively languishing for Philip. Ernest has no chance whatever.”
The children ran out of the house shouting, their lessons over, free for the rest of the day. They began to pull handfuls of grass for Miss Craig’s cob.
“Oh, the sweet children!” she exclaimed. “I must go to see them.” She sprang up and swept across the grass. A straight line might have been drawn from her chin to her instep…
“Children!” she called. “I have brought you candy!”
From the seat of the trap she took a small box of butterscotch. They were delighted. Meg thrust a square of it into her mouth, and mumbled her thanks.
“You should have passed it round first, you greedy girl,” said Renny.
Her cheek distended, her teeth glued together, Meg proffered it to her elders. Philip had got to his feet and made as though to join Miss Craig.
Adeline gave him the dark look she had for him nowadays.
“Don’t go,” she said. “Leave that to Ernest.”
Ernest roe. He refused butterscotch but Adeline took a piece with eagerness. “A very small box,” she commented in an undertone to Nicholas. “I hope the girl isn’t mean.”
Philip watched Ernest’s progress with amusement.
“An ardent suitor, what!” he remarked.
“That fellow,” said Nicholas, “will never reach the point of proposing to any girl.”
“Ernest has plenty of character,” said his mother. “Give him time.”
Ernest had reached Miss Craig’s side. He smiled pleasantly and said, “How is your father, Miss Craig?”
“Improving every day. He is beginning to walk again. He has a most efficient nurse who seldom leaves his side.”
“How very satisfactory.”
“Yes. But she really is a detestable woman.”
“How annoying.”
“But, I hear that all nurses become overbearing.”
“I shouldn’t wonder.” After a silence he asked:
“Would you care to see our dahlias? They’re very fine.”
She hesitated. “I’m afraid I should be going. My father…”
“The dahlias really are especially good.”
Her eyes wandered to the group on the lawn.
Ernest thought, “I was never meant for this. A fortune-hunter! It’s humiliating.” Then the remembrance of Mr. Craig’s wealth stood out as promising deliverance from his financial worries, and she was a personable girl — an attractive girl. He wondered at his own coldness.
Mary came out to the porch where its drapery of Virginia creeper was just beginning to redden. Soon the frosts would set it flaming and turn the dahlias black.
“Ernest is taking Miss Craig to see the dahlias,” observed Nicholas. “That looks promising.”
“There’s Miss Wakefield!” cried Renny. “May I take her a piece of butterscotch?”
“Not just one piece,” said Adeline. “Offer her the box. Then ask her if she will be kind enough to go the Rectory and ask Mrs. Pink for the recipe she promised me. You children had better go with her. Come first and kiss me.”
He clambered on her knee, hugged and kissed her.
Philip rose. He extracted a piece of butterscotch from between Jake’s jaws which was causing him acute misery and threw it in the shrubbery. Jake at once set out on an intensive search for it.
“Don’t go, Philip,” said Adeline, more kindly than she had spoken to him since the night of the party. “I’ve scarcely set eyes on you today.”
“I’ll be back before long, Mamma,” he said, stubbornly. “Nick will be with you.”
He went toward the porch.
“Look at the shape of his trousers!” exclaimed Adeline. “The set of his jacket! I can’t imagine what any girl sees in him. Think of your father’s back — the way he wore his clothes! The contrast is terrible. I wonder Philip can be my husband’s son.”
“Don’t worry about him, Mamma. All the girls are after him.”
“Ah, if only I could get that governess out of the house! And do it I will, by hook or by crook.”
Philip stood looking up at Mary.
“Did you get my mother’s message, Miss Wakefield?” he asked. For the first time he noticed how she’d gone off in her looks.
“Yes. I’m setting out now.”
“We want to go too,” immediately came from Renny.
“I don’t think he should,” Mary said. “He runs so much on the way and gets hot and it makes his hives itch.”
“I’ll stay with him,” volunteered Meg.
“Good girl,” said her father.
She clung to one hand, Renny tugged at the other. Between them they made a wall, always between her and Philip, thought Mary, and believed he wished it so.
“Are you quite well?” he asked, thinking of what Doctor Ramsey had said of Mary’s health.
“Perfectly, thank you.” Did he think she was slack in her duties?
“You look a little pale to me. Perhaps you are losing your English complexion.”
Meg began to laugh. She put her arm about Renny’s neck and whispered in his ear, “She forgot to paint.”
“I felt the heat,” Mary said, “but this weather is lovely.”
Ernest and Muriel Craig came round the house.
“What heavenly dahlias!” she cried. “I’ve never seen their equal. Mr. Whiteoak has promised me some bulbs.” She greeted Mary with that air of condescension which made her long to escape from Miss Craig’s presence or be rude to her.
“How well your charges look!” she exclaimed. “Really they are a credit to you.”
“We look well,” said Renny, whose grin showed a front tooth missing, “because we paint.”
“Oh, you rascal!” Miss Craig threw both arms enthusiastically about the little boy. “The things you say! I tremble for what you’ll be when you’re a man.”
She spoke as though she had suffered a good deal at the hands of dashing men, yet not entirely without pleasure.
“He’ll be a rip, I fear,” said Ernest.
Still holding the child to her Miss Craig said to Philip:
“I have a message from my father to you. He is so anxious to see you — about something, I’m not quite sure what it is. Your mere presence helps him. He wondered if you could drive back with me. Then, this evening, one of our men is coming in this direction and would bring you home. For my part I’d be grateful for a lesson in driving this cob. I know I’m a silly little thing but I’m terrified of him.”
Renny had never before heard a woman call herself a silly little thing. Neither his grandmother nor aunt were in the habit of so describing themselves. Mary posed as an encyclopedia of knowledge and a Gibraltar of firmness. Yet there was someth
ing that did not ring quite true in Miss Craig’s words. He and Mary exchanged a look that on his side might almost have been called sardonic.
Philip agreed with alacrity. He had noticed Miss Craig’s self-conscious and inefficient manner of handling the reins.
“But first I must tidy myself,” he said.
“Please don’t. We know you have been fishing. If coming with me forced you to change, I should never forgive myself. We think he looks very nice as he is, don’t we, children?”
The children chorused, “Yes.”
Philip however went into the house to make himself respectable. Mary at once set off on her errand, for she would not remain a moment longer than necessary in Miss Craig’s company. Ernest and Muriel Craig watched her figure disappear along the drive. He felt deeply rebuffed by Miss Craig’s open lack of interest in him and in the dahlias. For once in his life he made no attempt to be agreeable to a visitor but stood silent and abstracted. Muriel Craig was silent too. Her round light eyes took in every detail of Mary’s dress and seemed to probe beneath the dress into the very body that pulsed beneath. But, as Philip’s returning steps were heard in the hall, her eyes turned to where the children were romping on the lawn with the spaniels, and she exclaimed:
“How I love those two children!”
Ernest made no reply but Philip gave her a gratified look. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “Sometimes they’re pretty bad, you know.”
She refused to believe any such thing. Ernest held the cob steady while Philip assisted her to mount the seat. A well-shod foot, a pretty ankle and a rustling taffeta petticoat were, for an intriguing moment, visible. Ernest said good-bye coolly, and, lighting a cigarette paced a number of times up and down the house. His naturally sanguine nature took heard. After all, he was not ruined. He still had enough to live on, and live quite well too, provided he spent part of each year at Jalna. He always enjoyed being there. Philip was a good-humoured and generous host. In truth, Adeline and her three older children scarcely looked on Philip as a host but rather as the youngest son who had by good fortune been chosen by his father as inheritor of the estate and whose duty it was to make them welcome at all times. As for Philip there was nothing he liked better than to have them there with him.
Now Ernest made his way back to the garden seat and dropped down on it with a sigh. Nicholas gave him a dubious look. He hoped Ernest was not going to remain in the dumps over his losses.
Adeline remarked, “Did ye notice how well the cob moved down the drive? He knew he had a good man at the reins.”
“That young woman,” said Nicholas, “handled them as if they were hot pokers.”
Adeline turned to Ernest. “Did you make any headway with her?” she asked.
“Not a bit,” he replied testily. “And to tell you the truth I don’t want to. She is not at all my sort. I have no wish to be married.”
“It seems a pity,” said Adeline, “never to put out a hand to capture all that money. These losses of yours, Ernest, show how easy it is to lose it. Now here is a fortune, at our very door and I have two attractive sons —”
“What’s the matter with Philip?” asked Nicholas.
“I don’t want another woman at Jalna.”
“Mamma,” said Ernest, “it is inevitable that Philip will marry again. It’s plain that Miss Craig wants him. Take my advice and don’t do anything to discourage him. If you do you may get a daughter-in-law you’ll like much less. You might even get Miss Wakefield who hasn’t a shilling to her name.”
Adeline turned to him sharply. “Have you seen anything suspicious since the dance?”
“N — no. But propinquity often leads to regard.”
“Ernest, you did a bad day’s work when you engaged that designing creature. I might have known better than to trust you to show any sense where a female is concerned.”
“You might indeed,” he returned tranquilly. “I don’t know the first thing about the average woman. You are the only woman I pretend to understand, but then you make yourself so clear.”
“Certainly,” put in Nicholas, “Miss Craig makes her intention clear. She is tooth and claw after Philip and, in my opinion, he wants to be hooked.”
“Speaking of being hooked,” said Ernest, “here are his fish. He’s gone off without a second thought for them. I think I had better carry them down to the kitchen.” He picked up the basket from where it stood on the rustic table. He hesitated a moment and then said, “I have an investment in mind which I am positive will recoup the losses I have had — not only cancel them but make me a great deal more. The thing is that I shall be on the spot to watch the fluctuations of the stocks. If I had been there this summer things would be very different with me now.” He went to the house gently swinging the basket of fish in his hand.
“D’ye think he may do what he says?” Adeline asked, her eyes following Ernest.
“I shouldn’t be surprised. He has a decided flair for speculation, but don’t you ever be persuaded, Mamma, to invest anything on his advice.”
“Trust me to hang on to what I have!” she exclaimed. “It’s little enough, God knows, but ’twill keep me in my old age.”
She watched Nicholas light a fresh cigarette and put out her shapely hand for one. However, she surreptitiously took the light he gave her and looked almost fearfully toward the house as she inhaled.
“That hussy, Miss Wakefield, smokes,” she said. “I wouldn’t have Nettle see me do it, not for anything.”
The trap bowled brightly along the tree-lined road, the cob moving in accord with the pleasant pressure he felt on the reins. Philip and Muriel Craig made a handsome pair, she very upright, her sailor hat tilted forward, he wearing a checked coat and yellow gloves. He twiddled the whip, admiring the scarlet ribbon on its handle.
“I can’t tell you,” she said, “how nice it is just to sit here, with my hands in my lap and watch someone else drive — particularly when they handle the reins as you do.”
“This cob,” he said, “is gentle enough, but he needs more exercise. I’m afraid you’re a bit nervous, Miss Craig.”
“I am — I am! And I’m so ashamed. I don’t think I should be half so nervous on horseback. It’s the thought of this high trap overturning that makes me tremble. My father promises to buy me a saddle horse if I’ll learn to ride it. But who will teach me? There are so few who ride excepting your family.”
“I’ll gladly teach you.”
She clapped her hands. “Oh, how lovely that will be! Are you sure it won’t bore you?”
“Come now, Miss Craig, can you imagine my being bored in your company?”
“I wish I couldn’t” she said humbly, “but I’m afraid I can imagine anything. I’m far too imaginative.”
Philip looked into her round, matter-of-fact eyes and doubted it. A couple of generations ago, he decided, she would have been pretending to swoon.
“Oh,” she cried, “there is Miss Wakefield on the road ahead of us! Do you think we could squeeze her into the seat with us? She walks as though she were so tired.”
“It would be a close fit,” he returned, his eyes searchingly on Mary’s back. “Besides, she’s going only as far as the Pinks’. Do you really think she seems tired?”
“Perhaps it’s just her shoes. I always feel that shoes should be chosen for the wear they’re to have. What I mean is, on rough country roads it’s better to have brogues like I wear.”
They had overtaken Mary. Philip drew in the horse. She looked up at them defensively. Miss Craig leaned toward her with a solicitous air.
“We think you look so tired, Miss Wakefield. We’d love to give you a lift but there’s scarcely room for three on the seat. So I’m going to propose that Mr. Whiteoak shall drive you to the Pinks’ while I trudge manfully along the road in my big brogues. Your shoes are so dainty, they’re better suited to city pavements, aren’t they?”
“Thank you. I’m not at all tired.”
“Oh, yes, you are! You can�
�t fool us. We know, by the way you walk. Do let me out, Mr. Whiteoak.”
“If anyone is to get out it will be me.” He put the reins into her hands. Their hands touched and she gave him a small, intimate smile, as though they spoke in a language no one else could understand.
Mary included him in the icy look she gave Miss Craig.
“I want to walk,” she said. “My shoes may be all wrong but they feel quite comfortable to me. Good morning.” She turned away.
“Now we’ve offended you!” cried Miss Craig. “Please, please don’t be offended, Miss Wakefield! It breaks my heart if I think I’ve offended anyone. You mustn’t misunderstand me. I think your shoes are quite the prettiest I’ve ever seen. I only meant — I’d love to walk and let Mr. Whiteoak drive you to the Pinks.”
Mary gave her a look of speechless anger and literally strode down the road. Little whorls of dust circled about her skirts.
Miss Craig returned the reins to Philip. She drooped, almost on his shoulders, and he saw that her eyes were swimming in tears.
“Why,” he exclaimed, in astonishment, “surely you’re not crying!”
“Oh, I’m such a silly,” she sobbed.
“You are indeed.” His eyes were puzzled and kind. “I don’t know what it all was about.”
“She hates me and I can’t bear to be hated.”
“Now that’s sheer nonsense.”
“You saw the look on her face.”
He could not deny that he had.
“But you mustn’t cry,” he said, and patted her hand.
His sympathy was more than she could bear. Now her head was indeed on his shoulder, her sailor hat tilted precariously over one ear. He flapped the reins on the cob’s back and they jogged past Mary in this position.
Philip had never been more uncomfortable. With Miss Craig’s head so unexpectedly on his shoulder — “just as though I were a hired man taking my girl for a buggy ride,” he thought — with Mary’s eyes boring a hole in his back, he thought yearningly of the tranquil hours he had spent with his fishing rod.
He shifted his shoulder a little and she sat upright and straightened her hat. Her face was flushed and smiling now. He had never seen her look so pretty. She was leaning forward to smile at a figure that was just emerging from the shadow of a clump of cedars.
03 Mary Wakefield Page 17