Over them all was the feeling that the object of the visit had not been fulfilled. It had been made to celebrate a wedding and no wedding had taken place. Meg sat in their midst trying hard to be brave, to live down the disappointment, but still abstracted and often melancholy.
The little boys were taking tea with the family as a special treat, dressed in white as they had been at the garden party. Augusta took Eden on her knees and whispered to him: —
“You won’t forget Aunt Augusta, dear, will you?”
“No,” he answered firmly, “I won’t forget you and I’ll say ‘God bless you’ in my prayers and I’ll go to visit you when I’m big and you’ll take me to the zoo.”
Augusta held him close. “I wish I could take him back with me,” she said. “I shall miss him so much — and Peep too.”
Philip said — “Molly and I will take all the children to visit you one day, Gussie.”
Augusta looked as though she thought that would be too much of a good thing. She said: —
“That would be delightful. But, speaking of visiting, I do think that Edwin and I have made a very long visit at Jalna. I think long visits are a great mistake.”
Sir Edwin added — “Yes, yes, we have stayed a very long time.”
“You’ve been very welcome,” said Mary. “It makes all the difference in the world who visitors are.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Meg. “Some people could never stay too long, while others …”
“I agree,” said Ernest, “that visits should not be prolonged and, even while Jalna is my home, the time comes when I know I should return to London.”
“Don’t be sanctimonious about it,” growled Nicholas. “You know you’re glad to get back.”
“One thing that I’m glad of,” put in their mother, “is that Malahide Court is staying on. He’ll be a great comfort to me.” She laid her hand protectingly on Malahide’s knee.
Hoofs now sounded on the gravel and the carriage appeared. Hodge drew up in front of the door.
“He’s too early,” said Ernest, looking at his watch.
Eliza came out of the house and spoke to Hodge. She then crossed the lawn and approached Philip. She told him something in a low tone. He turned a startled face to the others.
“What do you suppose has happened? Robert Vaughan has had a stroke! Poor man, this affair has been too much for him.”
“Just when we are about to leave!” said Augusta.
“A great blow for Mrs. Vaughan,” said Sir Edwin.
“I wonder what young Maurice will think of himself now,” growled Nicholas.
Mary exclaimed — “I have felt something — a shadow — all day!”
“I remember,” said Ernest, “how shaken he seemed that morning when we three went to see him. He could not at all keep himself in hand as we did.”
All discussed the calamity in sorrowful excitement, with the exception of Adeline, who sat, a hand on each knee, staring straight in front of her. At last she said: —
“A stroke, eh? Robert Vaughan a stroke. D’ye think he’ll be about again, Philip?”
“There is hope, Mamma.”
“Ha, that’s good! Must go to see him. Cheer him up. Where did you say he’s affected?”
“Down one side — the left.”
She shook her head in commiseration and rubbed her hand up and down her left thigh.
Sir Edwin looked at his watch. “By Jove!” he exclaimed, “we have no time to spare!”
“To think,” said Augusta, “that I must go without seeing poor Mrs. Vaughan! Mamma, you must give her our deepest sympathy.”
“They’ll get along. They’ll get along. Don’t you worry,” said her mother tersely.
But now the family goodbyes must be said. Sir Edwin, Augusta, and Ernest were in turn enfolded in Adeline’s strong embrace. To the last she whispered: —
“Ye mustn’t mind me giving a little present to Malahide. ’Twas nothing of any account.”
Ernest looked relieved but still a little dubious. He whispered back — “Don’t imagine that I grudge anything that gives you pleasure, Mamma. But, if I were you, I should not urge him to stay on. After all, it is Philip’s and Molly’s house and it is obvious that they dislike his presence.”
He had said the wrong thing when he referred to Mary as having a share in the ownership of Jalna. His mother pushed him from her.
“Jalna belong to that one! Jalna belong to that flibbertigibbety wife of Philip’s. You talk like a fool!”
“Sh, Mamma, she’ll hear you! All I meant was …”
But he was given no time for explanation. Nicholas pushed him toward the carriage. The bays were sweeping the gravel with their polished hoofs. Peep was being held up by Renny to throw kisses. Mary was snatching Eden from under the horses’ heads. Meg, all her trouble brought back by the news of Mr. Vaughan’s illness, was weeping on Philip’s shoulder. Malahide tucked Adeline’s hand in the crook of his arm and beamed, protectingly. He waved a glad farewell to the occupants of the carriage, as the dark branches of the hemlocks stretched out to hide them from view.
XX
AN OLD COAT AND AN OLD MARE
THE EARTH SEEMED to have wearied of heat and now, though it was still August, groped toward the chill walls of autumn. With the departure of three guests, Mary’s burden of housekeeping was lightened. She began to recover from her disappointment over Meg’s broken engagement. The relations between her and her stepchildren were happier than ever before. Eden, whose health had given her much anxiety, was now sparkling with vitality and Peep was as sturdy as a child could well be. There was this to be said for the company of Malahide: it gave her more of Philip, the intimate companionship she craved.
She loved his horses and dogs almost as well as he did. They would stand in the orchard watching a sow suckling her litter, with quiet pleasure. Happiest to them both were the hours they spent by the river, hidden by thick growing shrubs, while she read poetry to him and he lay watching the pale sunshine dapple the fine skin of her face and throat. What Mary could not and would not do was to go fishing with him. There he had the solitude which his nature demanded.
Adeline was less content in these days. The departure of her children left a blank not easy to fill. She leant on Ernest more than she realized, and she felt a keen sense of irritation when he was not at hand to wait on her, to supply that particular something which his personality offered. She missed the Buckleys, too, even Sir Edwin’s crisp protection of Augusta from her sometimes barbed remarks.
Her head grew weary from late sittings at the card table or backgammon board. Malahide was a better player than she, and she was shrewd enough to reject his suggestion that they play for money. Yet he did win money from both Philip and Nicholas at bridge.
One morning a stirring wind blew across the countryside, driving the clouds before it. They melted into the horizon beyond the lake, and the sky arched itself in summer blueness. The sun caressed the late flower buds into bloom.
Adeline longed for something active to do. Through all her body she had a sense of the futile inaction of the past weeks. She made up her mind that she would go about more. She would take some long drives. She would go to see Robert Vaughan, who was now able to sit up, the stroke having been a slight one. But on this fine blowy morning the first thing she should do would be to put her Philip’s clothes out in the sun and brush and shake them thoroughly, against the ravages of moths. This she did once every year at about this time. Her son Philip always helped her because Ernest shrank too much from what, to him, was a depressing ordeal, and Nicholas invariably drew her attention to new moth holes and advised her to give the clothes away or to burn them.
Now she went out at the side door to where she had heard Philip’s voice, in conversation with the prospective buyer of a horse, and called to him: —
“Philip, my dear, come here! I have something I want you to help me with.”
Philip’s back was toward her, and before turning round he h
esitated. There was that in her tone which told him what his task was to be and his heart rebelled, on such a morning as this. He stood sulkily, as he had often stood when a small boy, reluctant to answer the summons.
“Philip,” she called sharply, “are you woolgathering that you pay no heed to me?”
He turned slowly and came toward her, taking off his dilapidated Panama hat and passing his hand across his fair hair.
“I was just thinking,” he said deliberately, “that I have about a thousand things to do this morning.”
“You’re taking your time about them,” she returned sarcastically. “But there’s one thing, Philip, that you must do. You must help me give your father’s clothes an airing. The time is past due for it and there’s a fine cleansing wind.”
He came and put his arm about her waist. “Wouldn’t you like a nice drive in the phaëton, old girl?” he asked coaxingly.
“No,” she answered with resolve. “We’ll air your father’s clothes.”
Philip made a resigned movement of his shoulders and said — “Very well, I’ll have the boxes brought down.”
The limpid notes of an oriole came to them in late summer sweetness, from where he swayed near by his empty nest. Philip said: —
“He doesn’t trouble his head about the past. He enjoys his present — before the winter comes.”
His mother turned her head sharply to him. “Am I a bird?” she asked. Then she added, in a gentler tone — “No, Philip, we must not shirk it. We’ll do the clothes.”
Philip had the three trunks brought down from the attic and ranged on the grass plot at the back of the house where lines for drying clothes were stretched. He took the keys which his mother handed to him and unlocked them one after the other. As the lids were raised the smell of camphor came from them, and the smell of cloth long shut away from human flesh and air and sun. Philip began to take out the garments and lay them on the grass.
Adeline had brought from her room two old ivory backed brushes with the initials “P.W.” on them in silver. She handed one of these to Philip.
“His own brushes,” she observed. “Proper to brush his clothes
with them.”
Philip took up a coat of a warm brown-heather mixture tweed and looked it over.
“You are to have those brushes,” she said.
“I’ll like that. My initials.”
“Little Piers can have ’em after you.”
“Yes. I’ll see to it. This coat looks in pretty good condition.”
She came, brush in hand, and examined it. The coat, still bearing the print of the vigorous body that had rounded it, seemed almost to expand, as though drawing a deep breath of the outdoor air.
Adeline touched it gently.
“Men’s clothes,” she murmured. “Touching things they are — when the man’s gone…. A woman’s clothes — so much silk or velvet or cotton or lace — flattened out — no more than dead leaves dropped from a tree…. But — look at that coat now! No, — give it me — let me brush it….” Her voice broke. She took the coat and began energetically to wield the brush.
One trunk contained the dead man’s evening clothes, his finest linen, silk scarves, and velvet smoking jacket. Another his tweeds and riding clothes. The third the uniform he had brought from India. One by one they shook the garments, brushed them, and hung them on the line. The scarlet and gold of the uniform caught and held close the sunlight.
Philip took up a tasseled velvet smoking cap and put it on his head.
“Look, Mamma,” he said.
She gave him a searching look.
He asked — “Do I look like my father in it?”
“Yes…. But your face is in a different mould…. It hurts me to see you in the cap. Take it off.”
She turned again to her brushing of the tunic.
“If you could have seen him in this! Ah, but he was a figure! You don’t see his like nowadays.”
“But I did see him in it!” he said. “Don’t you remember? He wore it at some fancy-dress affair when I was a small boy. I thought I had never seen anyone look so grand.”
“No — and never will again.”
He opened the long narrow compartment in one of the trays. “Here are his pipes,” he said.
She came and looked. On every amber mouthpiece the lips of her beloved had pouted; through every stem drawn in the sweet smoke for his pleasure.
“No harm can come to them,” she said. “Shut the lid.”
In concern she saw that the garment she was holding had a large place eaten by moths on the breast. She drew her son’s attention to it. “It’s the one he wore — that last day,” she said “D’ye think we shall have to burn it?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I told you that a year ago. Look!” He took it from her and held it to the sun. “It is falling to pieces. If you keep it they will all have to be burned.”
She gazed at the garment, her strong old features carved in the image of compassion.
“I’m sorry for the coat,” she said. “’T was the last one he wore.”
“I will look after it.” He took it gently from her. “I’ll burn it back in the woods where he used to shoot.”
“Thank you, my dear.” She took the sleeve of the coat and held it to her lips. Her hands shook as she proceeded with the brushing of the garments.
When all were hung up on the line, swaying and swept by the clean wind, Adeline felt very tired. She would go to her room and rest, she said. She looked the other way when Philip picked up the coat and walked off with it hanging limply from his hand. She found Eliza and told her to keep an eye on the clothes that they were not touched.
Philip walked slowly along the bridle path, then turned from it to the little winding path that led through the wood and on to the waste land where Renny had left the worn out horse. His spaniel, Keno, trotted soberly after him.
He felt the land that he owned beneath his feet. He saw the same sky arching above. And here was his father’s coat in his hand and he himself walking in strength and security. What was death? Was it his father’s hand reaching out through the sleeve of the coat to grasp his and draw him into that blackness where he would be effaced? Or was it his father living on in him, striding as he strode, over the land they loved? He remembered his mother’s shaking hands and her dry eyes that burned with compassion. I am made in a softer mould, he thought, and his own eyes filled with tears.
He gathered twigs and broke the dead branch of a pine into short pieces. He folded the coat and laid it on top of these, then struck a match and set fire to them.
The hesitant little flames were slow to attack the cloth. They snapped and crackled among the twigs, then hid themselves in the shadow of the coat. But presently through its folds tendrils of smoke came creeping and then the flames were coaxed into life. It was in a blaze, all but one sleeve which flung itself out as though there were an arm about it that sought to be free.
As Philip stood staring at the small burning mound he heard a slow dragging step behind him. He turned sharply and saw the old mare, her bony knees bent, her inflated belly sagging, stumbling past. Again he saw the human eyes that suffering had given her, but she did not see him nor did she see the blazing of the fire. Her eyes were fixed on something beyond and she stumbled heavily toward it, her rasping breath coming with difficulty. She uttered a whinny in which there was a note of gladness.
Philip had thought she was underground weeks ago. A tremor passed through him as though he had seen an apparition. Could it really be she, he wondered. This mare’s mane and tail were brushed and her harsh hide curried to a semblance of decency.
He was about to step from behind the bushes which concealed him when he heard the sharp report of a gun. He hastened after the mare, saw her stagger, drop to her knees, and fall in a strange angular heap. He saw Renny running towards him, his gun in his hand. His face was white.
“Father! I might have killed you!”
“You might,” returned Phi
lip quietly. “Will you please explain what this means? And why are you shooting this poor old mare which should have been dead long ago?” The spaniel ran to the mare, sniffed it, and made a sound between a howl and a bark.
Renny’s features broke into a line of dejection. “I thought I could save her,” he said mournfully. “I’ve fed her and watered her and curried her — and she could eat. But, try as she would, she could not get well. She was dying. So — I had to do it at last.” He swallowed with difficulty. “I’m sorry. I should have had her shot when you told me, at the first.”
“Look at her!” exclaimed Philip sternly. “You ought to be ashamed to have let her live so long!”
“I thought she would get better. She was always so glad to see me. Why — she came to meet me just now — when I was going to do that to her!” His face was contorted as though he were about to cry.
Philip looked at his son, at the dead mare, at his father’s coat lying in shining layer upon layer as though it were made of cloth of gold. He sighed.
“This is a strange way,” he observed, “to spend a fine morning.” He patted Renny on the shoulder. “Come, come,” he said soothingly. “I can’t have you going on like this. Just be glad that you didn’t put a bullet into your dad!”
But Renny did not soon gain self-control. Philip suspected that his nerves were overwrought. He led him away from the sight of the dead mare and they stood leaning over a gate together, looking on a field of ripe grain. Renny lighted a cigarette and Philip, with a sigh of relief, filled his pipe. Keno entered the field and began to run here and there, snuffing the ground. Only the movement of the grain showed where he was.
Renny laid his arms along the top bar of the gate. He felt the smooth wood in his hands and saw that his father’s hands too were touching it. Between them they possessed the gate and the yellow field and the land, and life itself. He moved his hand toward Philip and gave him a furtive caress.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 111