And the Dean’s house itself! Adeline wished she owned it as she descended from the carriage. It looked so sedate, so warm-coloured, so welcoming. She might indeed have been the mistress, to judge by her luggage that cumbered the hall, her husband’s voice that rapped out orders to the servants, her infant that made the echoes ring with its crying, her parrot which rent the air with erotic endearments when it heard her voice. Augusta and the Dean seemed mere nobodies in their own house. Adeline flew to the parrot, chained to its perch in the drawing-room.
“Boney, my sweet, I’m back!” she cried, advancing her lovely aquiline face to the bird’s beak.
“Ah, Pearl of the Harem!” he screamed, in Hindu. “Dilkhoosa! Nur Mahal! Mera lal!” He nibbled her nostril. His dark tongue quivered against her lips.
“Where did he learn all that?” asked the Dean.
Adeline turned her bold gaze on him. “From the Rajah,” she returned. “The Rajah who gave him to me.”
“It hardly seems nice,” said Augusta.
“It isn’t,” answered Adeline. “It’s beautiful — and wicked and fascinating.”
Philip broke in, “I say, Augusta, has our infant been howling ever since we left?”
His sister’s face clouded. The Dean answered for her.
“She has indeed. As a matter of fact I could not find a single spot where I could write my sermons in peace — between baby and parrot.” Then he added genially — “But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.”
But it did matter. Philip knew very well that a dean requires more quiet than does a Hussar, and he was annoyed with his daughter. She was now almost a year old and ought surely to have a little sense. The first time he had her to himself he took her to task. Holding her in his strong hands, so that her sallow little face was on a level with his fresh-coloured one, he said: —
“You young minx, don’t you know which side your bread is buttered on? Here are your uncle and auntie, childless. Here are you — a baby girl — just what they want! You could stay here with them, at any rate till your mother and I are settled in Canada. If you behaved yourself they’d make you their heir. Now what I mean is, I want you to stop this howling every time your aunt looks at you. You are not to cry. Do you understand?”
What Gussie understood most clearly was her discomfort. She suffered from constant colic induced by injudicious feeding and still more injudicious dosing with medicine when the food was not digested. Yet the ayah thought that no one but herself was capable of caring for the child. Certainly she poured out love and selfless devotion on her.
Gussie was precocious, partly because of remarkable intelligence, partly because of the constant changes of scene which had been her lot. She understood that the powerful being who held her high up between his two hands and spoke in such a resonant voice was ordering her not to cry, to keep her miseries of pain and shyness to herself. The next time her aunt on a sudden impulse of affection snatched her up and dandled her, the little creature made what was to her stupendous effort and controlled her desire to burst into tears. She fixed her mournful gaze on Augusta’s face, her mouth turned down at the corners; her eyes grew enormous but she kept back the tears that welled up in them.
Augusta was really shocked to see such an expression on the little face.
“Why,” she said, aghast, “Baby hates the sight of me! I can see that she does!”
“Nonsense,” said Philip. “It’s just shyness. She’ll get over it.” He snapped his fingers at Gussie.
“No she won’t. I’ve tried and I’ve tried to make friends with her. And just now she gave me such a desperate look! As though she were controlling herself with all her might, when what she really wanted to do was to scream at me. Here, take her, Adeline.”
Adeline took the child and gave her a not very gentle pat on the back. It was more than Gussie could bear. She stiffened herself and shrieked. The Dean came into the hall, putting on his cloak.
“I think I shall go to the Vestry,” he said. “Perhaps I can have peace there.”
Then Adeline and Philip became aware that the parrot was screaming too. It was a mercy the Dean could not understand Hindu, for the words Boney was screaming were the worst in his vocabulary, he having picked them up on board ship.
Adeline and Philip began to feel that the time had come for their visit to end. He was impatient to begin the new life but she would have been willing to linger a little longer in the quiet of Penchester, enlivened by visits to London. She loved the sunny walled garden behind the Dean’s house where crocuses were in bloom and daffodils swelling into bud, though it was still only February.
One morning Augusta took her brother into the privacy of her own sitting room, and said: —
“I do not think, Philip, that you have had your proper share of our parents’ belongings.”
Philip’s blue eyes widened in pleasurable anticipation. “Were you thinking of giving me something, Augusta?” he asked.
“Yes, if you feel you can safely take fine furniture with you. I should hate to think that precious possessions which our family long cherished might be handled roughly.”
“They won’t,” he eagerly assured her. “They will be strongly crated and I’ll personally oversee the loading on to the ship and off it. We are sailing by fast clipper which, I am told, is almost as quick and much cleaner and more comfortable than by steamship.”
She sighed. “Oh, I do wish you weren’t going! It seems so hard to have you return from India, only to lose you again. And I do so dread the voyage for the dear baby.”
“Augusta,” he said earnestly, “if you’d like to keep the baby for a time —”
“No, no. It would never do. Baby Augusta does not take to me. She cries too much. It upsets Frederick. She shall come to visit me when she is older …”
“She is a spoilt little creature,” said Philip. He frowned, then brightened. “The house Uncle Nicholas left me is well-built, in the French style, I am told. I want to furnish it well,” he said. “We brought some things from India, as you know. Adeline has a really picturesque bedstead and inlaid cabinets. We have some fine rugs. Oh, we shall get on! Don’t worry.”
“But I do worry. I want you to take your place in Quebec as people of consequence and you cannot do that in a sparsely furnished house.”
“Oh, we shall get on. I fancy that there aren’t many officers of Hussars in the town and Adeline is the granddaughter of a marquis, as you know.”
“Yes. She is distinguished-looking, too. Did she show you the pearl brooch and bracelet I gave her?”
“She did indeed and I’m delighted.”
“Now I am going to give you the furniture I had from our home. It is mostly real Chippendale and would grace any drawing-room. But I do not need it. This house was filled with furniture when Frederick brought me to it. I have no children to save it for. Will you like to have it, Philip dear?”
“I shall like it tremendously,” Philip exclaimed. “It’s very handsome of you, Augusta.”
Adeline was charmed by Augusta’s generosity. Her spirits were high. Her talk, her laughter, the sound of her eager footsteps, filled the house. Philip did not know what it was to desire peace and quiet. But how earnestly the Dean and Augusta wished for it! By the time the visitors had departed with their mountain of luggage (the noise of the furniture being crated had nearly driven the Dean mad), their crying child and its ayah who kept the kitchen in a ferment with her demands of strange food, and their noisy and often blasphemous parrot, the sedate couple were exhausted. Their sincerest wish was to see the last of their relatives and never again to have a prolonged visit from them.
Philip and Adeline, on their part, had felt a cooling in the atmosphere and resented it. They were setting out to visit Adeline’s people in Ireland.
“There you will find,” she exclaimed, throwing herself back against the cushions of the carriage, “Irish hospitality, generous hearts, and true affection!”
II
IN IRE
LAND
NOT IN ALL the long voyage from India had Adeline suffered as she suffered in crossing the Irish Sea. The waves were short, choppy, violent. Never were they satisfied to torment the ship from one quarter alone. They raged on her from the northeast, veered and harried her from the southeast, then with a roar sprang on her from the west. Sometimes, it seemed to Adeline, the ship did not move at all, would never move again but just wallow in the grey misery of those ragged waters till the day of doom. The ayah’s face was enough to frighten one, it was so green. Gussie, who had not been seasick on her first voyage, now was deadly so. It was maddening to see Philip, pink and white as ever, his firm cheeks moist from spray, actually enjoying the tumult of the sea. Still he was able to look after her and that was a comfort. In fact he gave a sense of support to all who where near him.
The Irish train was dirty, smoky, and its roadbed rough, but it seemed heaven after the Irish Sea. One after the other the sufferers raised their heads and looked about them with renewed interest in life. Gussie took a biscuit in her tiny hand and made a feeble attempt at gnawing it. But more crumbs were strewn down the front of the ayah’s robe than found their way into Gussie’s stomach.
At the railway station they were met by a jaunting car drawn by a fine pair of greys and driven by Patsy O’Flynn who had been nearly all his life in the service of the Courts. He was a great hand with the reins. A light wind was blowing across the hills which were turning into a tender green, and the leaf buds on the trees were opening almost as you watched them. There was a mistiness on the scene as though a fine veil hung between it and the sun. The cackle of geese, the bray of a donkey, the shouts of young children at play, brought tears to Adeline’s eyes. “Oh, ’tis good to be home!” she exclaimed.
“Aye, and it’s good to see your honour, Miss,” said Patsy. “And it’s a queer shame to you that you should be thinkin’ of lavin’ us agin so soon.”
“Oh, I shall make a good visit. There is so much to show my husband. And all the family to see. I expected by father to meet me at the station. Is he not well?”
“He’s well enough and him off to lodge a complaint against Sir John Lafferty for the overflow of wather from his land makin’ a bog out of ours and his cattle runnin’ wild as wolves.”
“And is my mother well?”
“She is, and at her wit’s end to get the house ready for you and your black servant and parrots and all, the poor lady!”
“Are any of my brothers at home?”
“There’s the two young lads your mother sent to the English school to get the new accent on them but they attacked one of the masthers and gave him a beatin’. So they were expelled and ’tis at home they are till himself decides what to do with them. And, of course, there’s Masther Tim. He’s a grand lad entirely.”
Adeline and Patsy chattered on, to Philip’s wonder and amusement. He saw her in a new light against the advancing background of her early life. The road was so muddy after rain and flood that the wheels were sunk almost to their axles but Patsy did not appear to mind. He cracked his whip about the well-groomed flanks of the horses and encouraged them with a stream of picturesque abuse. Several times women appeared in the doorways of low thatched cabins at the roadside and, when they saw Adeline, held up their babies for her inspection, while fowls scratched and pecked in and out of the cabins. There was an air of careless well-being about the place and the children were chubby, though far from clean. Adeline seemed delighted to see both mothers and babies. She called out to them and promised to visit them later. Apparently Patsy did not approve of this, for he whipped up his horses and hurried them past.
The fields about were bluish-green like the sea and the grass moved slowly in the breeze. Cattle stood knee-deep in the grass. Swallows darted overhead. Adeline was looking beyond the fields. The roof of her home showed above the trees of a park where deer grazed. She cried: —
“There is the house, Philip! Lord, to think it is nearly five years since I’ve seen it! It’s more splendid than anything I’ve set my eyes on since! Look at it! Isn’t it grand, Philip?”
“It’s fallin’ to pieces,” said Patsy, over his shoulder, “and divil a one to spend a five-pound note on it.”
“It was indeed a fine old house, though not so fine as Philip had expected, judging by Adeline’s description of it. Though he was no judge of architecture he could see that several styles had, at different periods, been added to the original. All were now blended into a sufficiently mellow whole. But it was not the noble pile she had described and at a glance he could see signs of dilapidations. Not even its rich cloak of ivy concealed the crumbling stonework.
Adeline craned her neck in delight to see every bit of it.
“Oh, Philip,” she cried, “isn’t it a lovely house?”
“It is indeed.”
“Your sister’s little house is nothing, compared to it.”
“Augusta’s house was built in the time of Queen Anne.”
“Who cares for Queen Anne!” laughed Adeline. “Queen Anne is dead and so is that stuffy cathedral town. Oh, give me the country! Give me Ireland! Give me my old home!” Tears rained down her cheeks.
“I’ll give you a smack,” said Philip, “if you don’t control yourself. No wonder you’re thin.”
“Oh, why did I marry a phlegmatic Englishman!” she exclaimed. “I expected you to go into raptures over the place.”
“Then you expected me to behave like a fool which I am not.”
They had now stopped before the door and a half-dozen tame deer had sauntered up to see them alight from the carriage. Adeline declared that she could recognize each one and that they remembered her.
The footman who opened the door was in handsome livery though rather too tight for him. He greeted Adeline enthusiastically.
“Ah, God bless you, Miss Adeline! It’s grand to see ye back. My, ’tis yourself has got thin in the body! What have they been doing to you out yonder? And is this lovely gentleman your husband? Welcome, sir, y’r honour. Come right in. Patsy, look after the luggage o’ thim and be quick about it.” He turned then and shouted at three dogs which had begun to bark loudly.
Philip felt suddenly self-conscious. He did not quite know how to meet his wife’s family. All she had told him of them made them seem less, rather than more, real. He was prepared not to like them, to find them critical of him, yet the tall gentleman who now came quickly down the stairway held out his hand with a genial smile.
“How d’ye do, Captain Whiteoak,” he said, taking Philip’s finger in a thin muscular grasp. “Welcome to Ireland. I’m very glad to see you, sir. I apologize for not going to the station myself but I had a wearisome business at the Courthouse that must be attended to.… And now, my girl, let’s have a look at you!”
He took Adeline in his arms and kissed her. Philip then had a good look at him.
Adeline had spoken of her father, Renny Court, as a fine figure of a man, but to Philip’s mind his back was too thin and certainly not flat enough at the shoulders, and his legs were not quite straight. It was amusing to see how Adeline’s lovely features had been modeled on this man’s bony aquiline face. And his hair must once have been auburn too, for there was a rusty tinge across the grey of his head. Certainly his eyes were hers.
Philip became conscious that others had come into the hall, a woman somewhat beyond middle age, and three youths.
“Oh, Mother, here I am!” Adeline turned from her father and flung her arms about her mother.
Lady Honoria Court still retained beauty of a Spanish type which had been handed down in her family since the days of the Armada when a Spanish don had remained to marry an ancestress. Honoria was a daughter of the old Marquis of Killiekeggan, who, with the famous Marquis of Waterford, had raised the sport of steeplechasing from a not very respectable one to its present eminence.
One of the dogs, an Irish staghound, raised itself on its hind legs against the ayah, in order to look into Gussie’s face. Both nurse and ch
ild shrieked in terror. Renny Court ran across the hall, caught the hound by its heavily studded collar and, dragging it away, cuffed it.
“Did you ever see such a dog!” cried Lady Honoria. “He does so love children! What a sweet baby! We have a man in the town who takes the loveliest daguerreotypes. You must have one made of her while you are here, Adeline.”
Lady Honoria laughed a good deal. Unfortunately she had lost a front tooth and each time she laughed she hastily put a forefinger across her lips to hide the gap. She had beautiful hands which Adeline had inherited, and her laughter rang out with contagious mirth. Philip, before he had been two days in the house, decided that she feared her husband’s temper but that she circumvented and thwarted him many a time. She had an air of triumph when she achieved this and he a wary look, as though waiting his turn to retaliate. Often they did not speak to each other for days at a time but each had a keen sense of humour, each found the other an amusing person and their sulks were often broken in upon by sudden laughter from which they recovered themselves with chagrin. Lady Honoria had had eleven children of whom four had died in early infancy, but she was still quick and graceful in her movements and looked capable of adding to her family.
Adeline was embracing each of her three young brothers in turn. She led them to Philip, her face flushed, her eyes brilliant in her excitement at being home again. Her bonnet had fallen back and her auburn hair rose in curls above her forehead.
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