Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny

by de la Roche, Mazo

  Colonel Vaughan had not only persuaded the Whiteoaks to settle beside him as neighbours, but had taken them into his own house for nearly a year while their own was in process of building.

  How well Robert Vaughan remembered that coming! He had only been a youth then, and the impression made on him by Adeline Whiteoak, in her brocaded silks, her bright patterned shawls from India, her feather-trimmed bonnets and beautiful beringed hands, was never to leave him. She was a being from another world. He had made much of little Augusta and Nicholas.

  But the Whiteoaks never became absolutely of the country as the Vaughans had. The Vaughans had no further interest in the Old Land and never revisited it. But Nicholas, Ernest, and Philip had been sent to school in England, and many Atlantic crossings were made by the Whiteoaks.

  Robert Vaughan thought tenderly of the young Meg who was soon to be married to his son. Before the summer was over she would be established in the large room across the hall which already had been freshly decorated to receive her. She was charming, she was pliable, in her Maurice’s mother would have the daughter she had always longed for. Maurice’s mother was sleeping quietly at this moment and Robert turned, putting his arm gently about her so as not to disturb her. Maurice had come to them late in their married life and, while all their hopes were centred on him, their attitude toward each other remained that of lovers.

  The tone of the sunlight, where it touched the walnut bedpost, was deepening, yet he could not bring himself to leave the comfort of his bed and break the happy sequence of this thoughts. A small mother bird was beginning to feed her young in a nest above the open window, and he smiled to himself at their eager twitterings. He pictured her, balanced on the edge of the nest, selecting which open beak should be the receptacle for the fat worm she carried.

  The sound grew more persistent — or was it another sound? Yes — it was distinctly another sound coming from below. Possibly a cat with its eye on the nestlings under the eaves.

  But no cat had given that weak and tremulous cry! Surely it was the cry of a very young child! Yet — that was impossible — unless some countrywoman were below with her child. But he had heard no steps on the drive and his hearing was keen. The cry became louder — it was a wail. He got out of bed and put on his slippers and went softly down the stairs to the front door. No one but himself was astir. He stood in his nightclothes on the threshold bathed in the brightness of the sunrise.

  There he saw, almost at his feet, a bundle wrapped in a plaid shawl. A note was pinned to the shawl and, as though he were watching someone else, he saw himself take the note, unfold it, and read the words written in a scrawling hand. “Maurice Vaughan is the father of this baby. Please be kind to it. It hasn’t harmed no one.”

  The little face, barely showing above the shawl, was no more than the sheathed bud of a flower. The words he had read were horrible to him. He sank on the floor in a faint.

  Noah Binns, a farm labourer, discovered him. He saw the crumpled piece of paper on the floor beside him. He picked it up, smoothed it, and read the content. No wonder the old gentleman was upset! Noah felt no surprise. He could have told a thing or two, if he had been asked. It was a piece of good fortune that he should be the bearer of this news.

  He knocked loudly on the brass knocker. Simultaneously a maid came hurrying to the front door and Mrs. Vaughan put her head out of her bedroom window.

  “Noah!” she called. “What has happened?”

  “It’s Mr. Vaughan, ma’am. He’s swooned. I rang the bell as I thought you’d like to know.”

  The maid exclaimed to Noah: “You fool! Why didn’t you raise up his head?” Then she saw the baby.

  “What does this mean?” she gasped.

  “It’s the young feller’s,” said Noah. “His and Elvira Gray’s. I’ve seen them in the woods together.”

  Mrs. Vaughan came running down the stairs, gathering her dressing gown about her.

  “Robert!” she cried. “My dear!”

  At the sound of her voice he opened his eyes.

  “I’ll get brandy,” said the maid.

  Mrs. Vaughan knelt down beside her husband and took his head on her knees. He hid his eyes against her dressing gown and groaned. She saw the note and took it up with foreboding.

  “No, no,” he said, loud and clear, “you mustn’t read it!” But he had not the strength to prevent her.

  She crushed it in her hand and turned white.

  The maid came running with the brandy. “I’ve telephoned for the doctor,” she said, trembling so that she slopped the spirits. Mrs. Vaughan picked up the child and felt the strange penetrating power of its fragile body.

  Noah Binns stared at all three, missing no detail of the portentous picture they made. Mr. Vaughan was looking less pallid.

  “Give me a hand, Noah,” he said. “I’m feeling better. I can’t think what made me faint. I never did such a thing before. Just the shock of finding this poor little child on the doorstep, I guess. An unfortunate village girl left it here hoping we would take it in. That’s what the note said. She hoped we would pity it and take it in. Poor girl — poor girl — If anyone asks you what happened, Noah, just tell them that, will you?”

  With Noah Binns’s help he got to his feet.

  “I’ll tell ’em just what you say, sir,” agreed Noah. “It’s a good thing to have a proper story. They’re a pesky lot to gossip here.”

  “Did you say you telephoned for the doctor?” Robert Vaughan asked the maid when they were inside the hall with the door shut behind them and Noah Binns’s heavy boots stumping in the direction of Jalna.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well —” he spoke testily — “telephone again and stop him, if possible. I am quite recovered. I cannot imagine why I fainted. Just the shock — well, a man doesn’t expect to find a young baby on his doorstep.”

  “No, indeed, sir.” The maid looked at him pityingly. “Shall I take the baby to the kitchen, ma’am?”

  “No. I’ll keep it with me till we decide what is to be done with it.” Mrs. Vaughan felt weak with the weight of the child, as though it had a mysterious power to crush her down. She swayed as she and her husband reached the top of the stairs. He put his arm about her.

  “You’re not going to faint too, are you?” He gave her a ghastly smile.

  “No wonder if I would!” She dropped into a chair, holding the infant on her lap. She looked at the familiar room, as though it were some sinister habitation into which she had suddenly been thrust. Even the face of her husband looked strange and unnatural to her. The only object in the room that did look natural to her was the face of the child, for it was the face of Maurice as he had looked when an infant. She gazed at it as though she would never look away. She undid the shawl and examined the little hands and feet.

  “No one will believe that the child has no connection with us,” groaned Robert Vaughan. “I might as well have given Binns the note to read and told him to blazen it forth to the countryside.”

  “No one can prove that it is Maurice’s child. But it is — I’m sure of that! Why, Robert, can’t you see it? Look at it from where I am. Can’t you see his face when he was a baby?”

  “The young wastrel! The young villain. The sly rake!”

  Never in his life had he said a word against his son. Now they were torn from him painfully in a voice neither he nor his wife had heard before. She said: —

  “If the Whiteoaks suspect Maurice of being the father, they will never, never let Meggie marry him!”

  “They must not suspect him! We must prevent that, at any cost. I had rather take the fatherhood of it on my own shoulders, so help me God, I would!”

  Mrs. Vaughan smiled at him wanly and pityingly. He looked older than she had ever seen him.

  “Let us be thankful,” she said, “that you secured the note. It would have been terrible if Noah Binns had read it.”

  He spread out the sheet of paper and read the words once more. “Who is she? Who is th
is girl?”

  “I can’t imagine … Why, Robert, it’s impossible! We’re wronging Maurice in suspecting him for a moment. As though he could do such a thing! He’s to be married in a few weeks, and to that sweet girl!”

  “What did you say a moment ago about the resemblance?”

  “I must imagine it.”

  He came and they bent over the child. It made a little hiccupping sound and a trickle of whitish liquid ran from the corner of its mouth.

  “Oh, poor little thing!” Mrs. Vaughan wiped its chin with her handkerchief.

  “What colour are its eyes?”

  “Very dark blue — no, brown.”

  “H’m, Maurice’s are grey.”

  “Robert, there’s no resemblance. I was just hysterical.”

  “Well, we’ll soon find out. I’ll have an interview with that young man.” He spoke grimly.

  “But it can’t be true! Oh, if only you had not fainted! We might have got the child away without anyone’s knowing about it.”

  “Did what I said to Binns sound convincing?”

  “Oh, yes.” And again she looked at him pityingly.

  He pressed his hands to his head. “My God, wife, what are we to do with the child — if the boy acknowledges it?”

  “Robert, you do believe it is his?”

  “Well, if the girl made up such a story she’d be a fiend. Everyone knows he is just about to be married.”

  “Girls have lied before.”

  The child made a sucking movement with its lips and began to cry. Its cry was unexpectedly loud and piercing. The two elderly people trembled like two conspirators. She hushed it with consoling pats.

  “Maurice will hear it!”

  “I have a mind to carry it to his room and face him with it.”

  “No, no, I think I had better go to him.”

  “I must see my son myself.” He spoke with authority. He hurriedly drew on his clothes.

  “Do be kind to him!”

  “If he denies this, I’ll go down on my knees and beg his pardon!”

  He repeated these words to himself as he went down the passage to Maurice’s room. He had never had a scene with him in his life. Between himself and his boy there had existed perfect understanding. And now —

  He remembered seeing Nicholas Whiteoak, when he was almost the age of Maurice, knocked down by a blow from his father. Captain Whiteoak had thrashed all his boys. His wife had even taken a hand in it. He had heard of the scene of which young Renny had been the centre when he had been suspended from college a month ago.

  He opened Maurice’s door softly.

  Maurice was lying, his hand under his cheek, his forehead smooth. The blanket was pushed off and beneath the sheet of his body, with the strong legs bent, was the body of a man. Robert Vaughan looked down at him almost fearfully. Out of his slender, delicate body he had begotten this heavily built muscular one. Maurice was like his mother’s people. Yet he had always felt in such close communion with his son. He could not believe, looking at him quietly sleeping, that he had had this shameful secret life. He touched him on the shoulder.

  “Maurice!”

  His son opened his eyes, blinked, half smiled.

  “Yes, Father.” He was not startled. It was not unusual for him to be wakened, to be persuaded to go out to enjoy the beauty of the morning or reminded that his mother liked him to breakfast with her.

  “Maurice, sit up and read this.”

  Robert Vaughan put the crushed sheet of paper into Maurice’s hand. At the same moment, the baby, as though in anguish of spirit, gave a loud cry in Mrs. Vaughan’s room.

  Maurice turned white. His hand that held the note shook. He stared at it fixedly, not able to read.

  “Read it,” repeated his father. “Read it aloud.”

  Maurice read, in a shaking voice: —

  “‘Maurice Vaughan is the father — ’” he stared horrified at his

  own father.

  “Go on,” said Robert Vaughan gently.

  “‘The father of this baby.’”

  Again the cry of the child penetrated from the other room.

  “She lies!” Maurice burst out.

  “Who lies?”

  “Elvira Gray.”

  “Oh, my God!” Robert Vaughan sank to the side of the bed and covered his face with his hands.

  “Father, don’t! I tell you it isn’t true!”

  Robert Vaughan began to cry, his whole body shaking convulsively.

  “Father! I can’t bear it! What do you want me to say?”

  His father uncovered a ravaged face.

  “When did you meet this — this Elvira Gray? Where did it happen? Don’t be afraid. Tell me everything.”

  Maurice’s misery was complete. The sound of his father’s sobbing, the sight of his face, were terrible to him.

  “When did she bring it here?” he asked.

  “This morning — before anyone was about. She left it on the step. Its crying woke me.”

  “She promised — she promised — !”

  “What?”

  “To go away. I gave her money.”

  “You gave her money…. Yes…. What money, Maurice?”

  “Oh, Father, don’t ask me that!”

  “No. I don’t need to ask you…. I can guess…. My God, when I think how your mother and I have trusted you — how proud we’ve been of you!”

  “Dad, I wish I’d died before I brought such trouble on you!”

  “Don’t say that! We must face it together.”

  Maurice wrung his hands. His face was distorted by remorse and shame.

  “Go on,” said his father sternly.

  “Mother and you will never be able to forgive me.”

  “Maurice, I beg of you, tell me everything. I must know what to say to the Whiteoaks.”

  Maurice groaned.

  “If they know the truth of it they will never let Meg marry me.” He felt that he had reached the depths of despair. With his face hidden in his hands he poured out the story of his meetings with Elvira.

  VII

  MESSENGER OF FATE

  MEG WHITEOAK WAS awake early that morning. She was stirred from her dreams by something new and exciting in the sweet summer air. Or was it some delicate current stirring in her own nerves? She made no attempt to discover which, but lay looking out of half open eyes through the white frilled muslin curtains of her window at the gently moving treetops. She liked to see the trees move gently so, like stately ladies fanning themselves. She liked the indolent morning conversation between two pigeons just above the eaves. She stretched out her bare white arm and let her glance slide along its glistening surface. She noted the pinkness of her palm and her pretty oval nails.

  This room and all that was in it were so much a part of her that it was beyond her imagination to picture herself as removed from it. Yet she knew that very soon she would be sharing Maurice’s room at Vaughanlands. She would take some things from this room to make it seem more homelike. The two little Dresden-china girls on the mantelshelf. The water colour by Uncle Ernest of the rose-covered Devon cottage, the sepia print of Queen Louise, and the oval gilt-framed Sistine Madonna that stood on her writing table. She would also like her comfortable stuffed chintz chair and the chenille curtains that hung at her door. Mrs. Vaughan had bought a new bedroom set for the young pair, the bed elaborately brass, the dressing table and washing stand of white enamel. Meg had suggested this herself, for she was tired of heavy walnut and mahogany furniture.

  It was surprisingly warm this morning. Summer was really here. A puff of scented air that was almost hot pressed between the curtains and caressed her face and arms. With a strong movement she kicked the bedclothes from her and lay smiling in her long white nightdress. She spread her pink toes to the warm air. She felt deliciously conscious of her body this morning, as though it were a strong young plant rejoicing in its coming fruition.

  A thick light brown plait lay over each shoulder and ended in a close g
lossy curl. She took these curling ends in her hands and dangled them.

  She heard a quick snuffling sound beneath her window, then an excited bark. It was her father’s spaniel, Keno, who was never let out in the morning except by Philip. Her father must be up then, off to catch a fish or two before breakfast!

  Meg jumped out of bed and ran to the window. She put her head between the curtains and looked down. Her eyes were dancing. Her lips parted in a mischievous smile.

  She saw her father in his corduroy Norfolk jacket, wading boots, and a disreputable Panama hat. He had laid his rod on the grass and was taking something from his pocket. It was a pocket comb, and he began at once to comb the wavy black hair of Keno’s ears. The spaniel looked up and saw Meg leaning across the sill. He whimpered with pleasure and tried to prance about, but Philip held him firmly by the ear.

  “Quiet, now, Keno! Behave yourself! We must have this loose hair combed out, you know.” He gave the dog a gentle cuff.

  Meg’s cheeks dimpled. The stone sill felt cold and hard against her breast, but she did not mind. She pressed closer to it as she leaned out and made encouraging signs to Keno. His eyes were starting with excitement. He licked Philip’s hands and drew away from the comb.

  Meg was just going to clap her hands to startle her father when she saw the figure of a man hurrying up the steep path from the ravine. As she turned her face in that direction a rich opulent smell came to her nostrils from the depths of moist earth and sun-warmed foliage there. Always afterward, when she thought of that morning, she was conscious of that smell.

  Noah Binns came through the wicket gate and crossed the lawn in a jog trot. Meg drew behind the shelter of a curtain. Philip straightened himself at the sight of Noah’s face, and the released spaniel reared himself toward Meg and rolled his eyes joyously. For the space of a moment the crystal of the summer morning was suspended.

  “Hullo, Noah,” said Philip. “What’s up? It’s the first time in my life I’ve seen you move out of a snail’s gallop.”

  Noah gasped — “I’ve a turrible piece of news fur you!”

  Philip stared at him, his eyes prominent.