“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.”
&
nbsp; 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.”
She heaved a great sigh. “That is the way of it, with parents, and I suppose ’twill be the way with me. I’m not so young as I was.”
“I never have seen you look better than you do at the present time, Mamma,” said Ernest eagerly.
“Ah, I don’t complain.”
Eliza now brought in a peach shortcake, mounded with whipped cream, and set it in front of Adeline. Eliza’s hand shook, as she set down the dish, for she had been greatly upset by Hodge’s account of what had happened in the church.
Adeline was so impressed by Eliza’s condition that, when she took up the heavy silver fork and spoon to serve the shortcake her own hand trembled like a leaf.
“Eliza,” she said, “will you please give the dish to Lady Buckley to serve. I don’t feel able for it.”
Eliza did as she was bid, with a look of deep commiseration.
“Why, Mamma,” cried Ernest, “peach shortcake is one of your favourite dishes! Aren’t you going to have any?”
“Not today … not today,” she answered, in a small voice. “I have no appetite for this meal. But don’t worry about me. I shall just sit here quietly and enjoy the sight of your enjoyment. Meggie, go back to your chair, dear, and eat your shortcake. Renny, sit up straight and hold your fork properly. God knows I have done my best to train you in good manners, as I was trained. If I or my brothers behaved unmannerly my father would give us a clip on the ear that would send us flying.”
For a space she watched, with sad expression, the consuming of the shortcake, then she said:
“I think I shall go and lie down for a bit. I’m far from well. Boys, will one of you lend me an arm.”
Nicholas and Ernest at once sprang to her assistance. She left the room supported by their strong arms.
Augusta, with great good sense, talked cheerfully to the children, gave them second helpings and, when they finished, gave them permission to leave the table. Nicholas and Ernest returned from their mother’s room.
“How is she?” Sir Edwin asked anxiously.
“A little better,” answered Ernest. “She wants you to go to her, Philip.”
“Oh, surely she is not able to continue the discussion,” said Augusta.
“I think,” Ernest said judicially, “it will be best for Philip to go.” He reseated himself remarking, “This is going to give me indigestion.” With a resigned air he again attacked the shortcake.
Philip said, “Excuse me, Augusta,” and left the room, with a step that had more of stubbornness than conciliation in it.
“I do hope there is nothing serious wrong with your mother,” said Sir Edwin.
Nicholas finished the last of his peach shortcake, leaned back in his chair and wiped his drooping moustache.
“There is nothing serious,” he said, “beyond the fact that Mamma has the good sense to know when she’s been beaten.”
In truth she did know and, as she lay on her bed waiting for Philip, she accepted the fact without bitterness.
Now he stood in the doorway, his head bright against the dark curtains, just as his father had stood, in that same doorway, when he was a young man.
“Come closer,” she said, “come to the bedside.”
He came close and knelt down by the bed, putting his arms about her.
“Mamma,” he said, “are you ill?”
“I’m better now.” She put her long arms about him and drew him closer. He pressed his face against her breast.
“You’re my favourite,” she said. “My youngest. I can’t deny you anything. If you want to marry this girl, you must.” She gave a deep sigh of resignation and added, “Bring her home and I’ll be nice to her.”
Boney had been perching on Adeline’s ankle. Now he walked the length of her body, picking his steps carefully. When he reached her head he sank to his breast and spread his wings as though to shield her. He uttered little clucking noises.
On the following day Philip was once more driving his chestnut mare along t
he road by the lake. On the seat by his side Mary sat and behind the portmanteau was stored. It was a brilliant and chill morning, with coloured leaves flying through the air like small birds, and flocks of small birds, on their southward journey, blown through the air like leaves. A steady rhythm of drumming waves sounded on the beach, and the mare, as though taking pleasure in it, kept time with the beat of her hoofs. Each separate hair of her mane and tail seemed vibrant with life.
Mary sat clutching her hat with both hands to keep it on. The wind had whipped a lovely colour into her cheeks, a colour slightly deeper than that in her lips. The effect, Philip thought, was very pretty. He remarked:
“Your lips are less red than they were, Mary dear,” he said.
She caught the under one between her teeth and gave it a little bite.
“I have a confession to make,” she said.
“Yes?” he smiled.
“I did formerly put a little paint on my lips.” She scanned his face, anxious to discover the effect of her words, then added, “But I’ll never do it again, if you like me better without it.”
“I like you as you are,” he said.
They were on their way to the Laceys, where it had been amicably arranged that Mary should stay till her marriage. It was necessary to pass Jalna on the way. At the gate Philip drew up. The whip slanted from his hand.
“Don’t look startled, Mary,” he said. “I’m not going to force you to anything you are against. But I think it would be well for you to come in now with me to meet my mother. You’ll have to do it sooner or later and the sooner you have it over with the better. In fact, I think it would please her to have you come straight to her before you go to the Laceys.”
“Oh, no — not yet! I don’t think I can.”
“Of course you can … Come, now, be a sensible girl. Mamma will like you all the better for being forthright. And remember, you have me at your side.”
Ah, she could do anything with him at her side! She could face a dozen Adeline Whiteoaks, having Philip to protect her. Yet her heart beat with painful swiftness as she nerved herself to consent.
“Very well,” she said. “I suppose you’re right. But, as for your mother liking me, I can’t picture such a thing.”
03 Mary Wakefield Page 28