“Of course,” Adeline agreed heartily, “any son would thank any father who made him toe the scratch. It’s the spoilt boy that brings shame to his father’s house.”
Meg rose from her ottoman. “If you are going to talk about that, Granny, I cannot stay here.”
Her grandmother looked at her kindly. “You have finished your tea. Very well, my dear, you had better go. I want to say just what I feel — for once.”
Meg went quietly from the room and there was a perceptible moment of drawing closer to Adeline, who, with underlip thrust out, sat staring straight in front of her. Renny sat looking at his clasped hands with an air of wary attention.
His grandmother now turned to him abruptly. She asked — “Where did you spend the night of the day when you set out to deliver the colt?”
He raised his eyes to her face, but did not answer.
She turned to Philip. “Do you know where your son spent that night?”
“Yes,” he returned, “I know. No need to talk about it, Mamma.”
“You know —” she repeated violently, “you know nothing of the sort! You know just what the young rake has chosen to tell you.”
“I know that he spent the night at a farm about ten miles from Mr. Ferrier’s.”
“Yes — and whom did he sleep with?”
“He slept with a woman — the older one of the two who got young Maurice into trouble.”
His mother’s fiery glance turned to Renny, who faced her with his lips drawn back from his teeth.
At Philip’s words Sir Edwin uttered an exclamation of distaste and pulled nervously at his whiskers. Lady Buckley drew back her chin and with an air of speechless affront. Nicholas made a sound between a chuckle and a groan. Ernest turned red and exclaimed — “My God!” Mary drew in a quick breath and caught her underlip between her white teeth, and Malahide Court would his legs together where he sat on a sofa by himself and fingered his diamond tie pin.
“How rural!” he murmured.
Adeline’s face quivered with humiliation. She had prepared a fine scene between herself and Philip. She had prepared a flamboyant part for herself to enact before her family. She felt, for the moment, defeated, cheated, deprived of her prestige. The sight of the boy grinning at her revived her. She leant towards him, supporting her hands on her stick.
“So,” she said in a rasping voice, “you saved your face, you young whelp, by confessing to your easygoing, spineless father!”
He did not answer.
“Haven’t you a tongue in your head?” she demanded violently. “Can you do nothing but sit there grinning at your Grandmother? Oh, I warrant you had plenty to say to that trollop! Lots of sweet words to lavish on her! Where did you have her, I’d like to know! Come now, out with it! Take that grin off your face and tell me where you had the troll!”
“In the mow,” he answered in a level voice. “In the new hay.”
“In the hay!” groaned Augusta. “A Whiteoak in the hay, like any common yokel!”
“He ought to be horsewhipped!” growled Nicholas.
“It is to be hoped it won’t get out,” said Ernest. “What a piece of gossip for the countryside!”
Philip said to his mother — “How did you find this out?”
“Oh, I have ways of finding out!” she retorted. “I haven’t lived for eighty years on this earth for nothing!”
“I think you ought to tell me,” he persisted.
Renny turned to him fiercely. “I’ll tell you! No — let him tell you himself — ask Cousin Malahide!”
“You honour me,” answered Malahide, “with a perspicacity I do not possess.”
“If you want to know,” said Adeline, “I will tell you. Malahide did find out. But only because I begged him to. He had no personal interest in it whatever, had you, Mally?”
To have his part in the disclosure made public was the last thing Malahide desired. He pulled at his lower lip and said deprecatingly: —
“Please leave me out of it, dear cousin. You have much more important things to discuss.”
Augusta interrupted with — “These women should be forced to leave the Province. To think they would cause two young boys to lose their virtue!”
Philip said gravely — “I feel that Renny’s excuse in this affair is the disturbance to his mind by all that has taken place. It’s most unfortunate. But he has made a clean breast of it. No more should be said on the subject.” He took out his pipe and began to fill it.
Nicholas said — “You’re too much inclined to let things slide, Philip. When the boy was suspended last term, what did you do about it? Absolutely nothing.”
“And the result is,” said Ernest, “that things have slid, as Nicholas puts it, into this!”
“My sons,” declared Adeline, “would have been flogged if they had been sent home from school. But your son is pampered and petted —”
“My son is as manly as yours,” interrupted Philip angrily.
“But has he the self-control?” asked Augusta.
“Good Lord!” said Philip. “Has our family been famous for self-control? Had the Courts self-control? What are these stories of life in Ireland that Mamma and Malahide are so fond of raking up?”
Adeline proceeded — “My grandson went unscathed after his suspension. It made him feel master of himself! He’ll do what he pleases and no deference to you or to anyone! Now I say something must be done about the affair of this woman. And you are the one to do it. You’ve shilly-shallied long enough!”
A murmur of assent came from the others. Their eyes looked accusingly at Philip. He began to wonder if perhaps he were to blame for Renny’s behaviour. He puffed at his pipe in silence for a space, then turned to his son. “I wish,” he said ruefully, “that we could have kept this matter between ourselves. As it is — I think you must not see Maurice again before you go back to college. I expect he’s been a bad influence for you.”
“Not see him!” Renny repeated. “What do you mean, not see him?”
“I mean keep away from him. Have nothing to do with him.”
“That’s right,” agreed Nicholas.
“A pity you did not say that long ago, Philip,” said Ernest.
“Maurice’s influence has been bad from the first,” declared Augusta.
Renny exclaimed hotly — “It’s ridiculous! Maurice and I can’t be kept apart. We’re neighbours — we’re friends — how can we keep apart?”
Adeline struck her stick on the floor. “By doing what you’re told, for once in your life, you independent young vagabond! The first thing we know, we’ll be having a brat left on the doorstep of Jalna!”
“Mamma!” cried Augusta. “How can you say such a thing!”
“I say it and mean it! A woman’s a woman whether it’s mattress or hay!”
Renny sprang to his feet. “I’m going!” He said bitterly. He turned to his father.
“Are you in earnest?”
“Yes. I want you to keep away from Maurice — absolutely.”
“May I see him long enough to tell him?”
“Certainly — but no longer.”
Renny turned to Malahide.
“I wish,” he said savagely, “that you would come outside with me!”
“You’re very much the schoolboy still, aren’t you?” said Malahide, with a sneer.
Renny flung from the room. Eliza, who had been keeping the tea wagon outside till calm should reign within, wheeled it with dignity through the door. Sighs of pleasurable anticipation greeted it.
In the hall Renny stopped. He stretched up his arms and closed his hands. He stretched his body taut and blew out a great breath of resentment and hate for Malahide. From the drawing room came the sound of his grandmother’s voice, harsh and dictatorial, laying down the law about him, he supposed. He raised his eyes to the carved fox’s head on the top of the hatstand and made a grimace at it.
XV
MAURICE AND RENNY
“AND SO," CONCLUDED Renny, bitterly, “we’re
to be cut off from each other just when we might manage to get a little pleasure out of this beastly disappointing summer.”
“We should have been parted in any case,” returned Maurice. “Dad and I have decided that it is best for me to go away for a while. I have cousins in Nova Scotia, you know. I am going to visit them till this affair blows over.”
“If you wait for that,” said Renny pessimistically, “you’ll be grey-headed when you come back. Nothing is ever forgotten here.”
“Still, in a few months it won’t be so difficult for us. In our own house, I mean. Now when we meet each other we feel embarrassed. We spend our mealtime in making polite conversation, trying to pretend that everything is all right. It’s ghastly!”
“Why do you pretend?”
“Well, one has to. Mother can’t tell me at breakfast that she spent a sleepless night because of my behaviour. Dad can’t say why it is he has no appetite. And — if I told them what was in my mind … It just can’t be done! We’ve got to keep up a pretense of ordinary life, but it’s a terrible strain.”
“Yes,” agreed Renny, “it must be.”
“I’m tired out with it. I must go away.”
Renny sighed. “I suppose it is better for you. But I’m sorry you’re going.”
They were walking down the narrow sandy road to the lake. Maurice caught his friend’s arm in his hand and held it close. “You’ve been a brick to me through all of this,” he said. “I’ve spoilt everything for you just as I have for Meg and myself. It’s too awful! Let’s go to my boathouse and take out the canoe. Your father can’t object to our having a paddle together when we’ll be separated for so long.”
“Good,” agreed Renny, “I’d like that. As for Father, he’d never have said such a thing if he hadn’t been driven to it by Gran.”
“But,” exclaimed Maurice, “why are they making all this fuss now? I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand because you don’t know everything. You don’t know that I went to see Elvira and Lulu. That was what got the wind up.”
Maurice stopped in the road and faced him. His grey eyes were sombre in his dark pale face.
“You too,” he said heavily. “You went there! Good Lord! What made you do it?”
Renny flashed him a challenging look.
“I wanted to see Lulu again.”
“Lulu!” Maurice echoed the name in mingled relief and consternation. “Lulu!” Why — why on earth — well, I can’t believe that you were attracted by her.”
“Why not?”
“Well, she’s years and years older than you are, for one thing. And she’s rather an ugly looking woman.”
Renny began to walk quickly along the road. He muttered — “To my mind she’s a beautiful woman.”
Maurice overtook him and gave a high, embarrassed laugh. “Well — if you think so — but I don’t see what you could have found to say to her. She made me uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t understand her,” said Renny gruffly.
“Upon my word, I’m surprised that you did. I shouldn’t fancy her your style at all. But perhaps it just means that you have more discrimination than I have.”
“She’s wonderful.”
A silence fell between them as they padded, in their light canvas shoes, over the warm earth. They turned into a narrow winding path and, in a moment, the lake lay before them and the deserted white sickle of the shore. The lake was rippled like blue silk and level cloud shapes barred the horizon. They were a nameless colour, neither blue nor rose, nor gold, but a mingling of all three.
The two boys slid the canoe across the sand and sprang into it, Maurice pushing off with his paddle. In three strokes they had entered into a new world, a liquid translucent world freed from the troubling bonds of the land. They had taken off their jerseys, and their smooth torsos, as they bent above their paddles, were bronzed by the afterglow. The rhythmic movement of their arms, the crystal drip of water from their paddles, gave them peace. They saw the events of the past weeks in a calmer light. As they moved farther and farther from shore they became detached from themselves, and each looked into his own mind as into a still well.
“You say,” said Maurice, at last, “that she is wonderful. Does that mean that she has let you love her?”
“Yes.”
“Were you long at the farm?”
“I stayed there one night.”
Maurice looked at his friend’s back, watched its muscles moving against the shapely bones, watched the proud way he held his head and how his ears lay against it.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever understood you, Renny,” he said.
“There’s nothing in me to understand — except as you might understand the colt.”
“Well — I guess he’s not easy to understand.” It was a relief to speak of the colt. “But I’m glad you’re to have him. Shall you school him for the Show?”
“Yes. I don’t know what I can make of him, any more than my father knows what he can make of me.”
“I’m terribly sorry that I led you into this,” said Maurice. “It was all my fault.”
“I didn’t need any leading. I should have found my way.”
Maurice had a moment’s chagrin. He had felt superior to Renny as an experienced man to a boy. Now Renny seemed to have advanced beyond him. His affair with Elvira seemed immature and trifling. He said: —
“Will you tell me something about Lulu? What is she like to talk to? She always seemed to be laughing at me.”
“Oh, I can’t remember anything she said!” He began to paddle strongly. The canoe moved swiftly forward. The clouds at the horizon had merged into a great conflagration of colour that engulfed sky and lake.
XVI
AN EXCHANGE OF PRESENTS
IT WAS LATE when Renny went to his room. He found on his dressing table a pair of ivory hair brushes and beside them a card bearing the words — “A token of affection from Cousin Malahide.” He looked at the brushes and the card, not believing his eyes. He turned back to the door, then again came to the dressing table and reread the message.
“The dirty dog!” he ejaculated. “As though I’d have his brushes!”
He took one in either hand and examined them. Handsome ones, certainly. He had admired them in Malahide’s room when first he came. But to have them given to him as a token of his affection, at a time like this! He began vigorously to brush his hair with them. Back from his forehead and temples, up from his ears, down to his nape. Good brushes — excellent brushes — he should like to take them to Cousin Malahide’s room and give him a whacking with them.
Instead he took them to his sister’s door.
“Meg,” he whispered, tapping, “may I come in?”
Her light was still burning. Her voice came heavy with drowsiness. “Come in. I was just going to put out my light.”
He closed the door behind him and came and sat on the side of her bed.
“Look,” he said, holding out a brush in each hand, “what Malahide has given me! He left them on my dressing table — ‘as a token
of affection’! What do you think of that? What the devil shall I do
to him?”
Meg examined the brushes. “I’d certainly keep them,” she said.
She looked charming sitting up in her frilled nightdress with its long sleeves and high neck, above which her girl’s face blossomed and her tendrils of bright brown hair shone in the lamplight.
“Keep them!” he repeated, fiercely. “Keep them! What I want to think up is the most insulting way of returning them.”
“Well, after all,” she said, “he ought to give you a present. He knows he has been horrid to you and he is trying to make up for it. Besides, Granny has been giving him presents, so it is only fair he should return the compliment.”
“What a mind you have!” he exclaimed peevishly.
“I have a logical mind,” she returned, “which you have not and never will have.”
He gav
e her a long, searching look, trying to read her, trying to understand this being, so close to him, of the very flesh of which he was made, yet uncomprehendable as a book in a foreign tongue.
He gave up the effort and said — “What I am afraid of is that he will not leave when Auntie and Uncle Edwin do. If he doesn’t, God knows when we shall be rid of him. He may stay till Christmas — all the winter!”
“Oh no,” cried Meg, “that would be too horrible! We must make it so unpleasant for him here that he will be glad to go!”
“When are they leaving?”
“In a fortnight. They’re seeing about tickets tomorrow.”
“Meggie, can you think of anything we might do to get even with him for what he’s done to me? Something so insulting that he’ll be bound to go, after it?”
“Let me think,” she said, and covered her face with her hands.
There was silence while she sat with bowed head and he gazed hopefully at her. The grandfather clock in the hall struck its twelve sonorous tones.
“You’re not going to sleep, are you?” he asked.
She uncovered her face and turned it reproachfully on him.
“Do you imagine,” she said, “that a plan to get rid of such a bundle of black iniquity can be thought of in a second?”
“I suppose not. But have you got an idea?”
“Yes…. But it will all depend on how well we can do it. Supposing we write an insulting verse to him and teach it to Eden and have Eden recite it in front of everyone.”
He was disappointed at the suggestion. It lacked the violence he desired, but he said, encouragingly: —
“That’s a good idea. But you’ll have to write it. I’m no good at that sort of thing.”
“We’ll write it together!” Her face brightened with a mischievous light he had not seen there for a long while. He grinned in response.
“How shall we begin?” he asked.
“We’ll begin with the vocative. I’ll do the first line….
“O Malahide —”
Now you go on.”
“I can’t abide,”
he added at once.
“Good!” she exclaimed.
Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny Page 107