01 The Building of Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  Nicholas did not care whose he was. He took a large magnanimous view of life. His chief occupation was to destroy what was nearest.

  “You angel!” cried Adeline. “Oh, Nurse, how he grows! Aren’t his dimples enchanting?”

  “They are indeed, ma’am,” answered the nurse, as smugly as though she had put them in with her own finger.

  Gussie came forward carrying a doll Wilmott had given her. It had a pink-and-white face and black curls all painted on its china head. It wore only a chemise.

  “Look,” said Gussie, holding up the doll.

  “Oh, how pretty!” said Adeline, but her eyes returned at once to Nicholas.

  “Look,” said Gussie, drawing back the doll’s chemise and displaying its body.

  “It’s a marvel,” said Adeline, but she did not look.

  Gussie laid the doll in the bath and pressed it firmly down. As it sank, an odd look came into her eyes. She remembered something. She turned to her mother.

  “Huneefa,” she said.

  Adeline was startled, almost horrified. What did the child remember? Why had she said the ayah’s name?

  “There she goes, at her naughtiness!” exclaimed the nurse. “All day long I can’t keep up to her. If it isn’t one thing it’s another. If you would punish her, ma’am, it might do some good.”

  Gussie began to cough from whooping cough, ending in that strange crowing noise. The cough shook her tiny frame. It was pathetic to see her supporting herself by grasping the arm of a chair. When the paroxysm had passed her face was crimson and her forehead moist with sweat. Adeline wiped it with her own handkerchief.

  “Poor little Gussie,” she murmured, bending over her. “How you do cough! This is what comes, Nurse, of her going to tea with the young Pinks.”

  “Well, ma’am, it was your own wish. I didn’t like the idea myself. You can’t be too careful — not with a baby in the house.”

  “Good heavens, how was I to know the little Pinks were taking whooping cough?”

  “You never can tell what clergymen’s children will be taking, ma’am.”

  A step came on the stair. There was a quick knock at the door.

  “It is the doctor,” said Nurse, enfolding Nicholas’s nakedness in a huge bath towel.

  Adeline opened the door and Dr. Ramsey came in. He was a young man of just under thirty, of bony frame but particularly healthy appearance. His high cheekbones and firmly cut lips gave him a look of endurance, even defiance. His manner was somewhat abrupt. After greeting Adeline he turned to his little patient.

  “Hullo,” he said. “Another bout of coughing, eh?”

  Gussie gravely assented. She passed her hand across her forehead, putting back the curls that clung moistly there.

  Dr. Ramsey sat down and took her on his knee. He laid his fingers on her tiny wrist but his eyes were on Adeline.

  “I wish,” he said, “we had some way of isolating her. I shall be very sorry if you develop whooping cough, Mrs. Whiteoak.”

  “There is little likelihood of that, since I did not take it when all five of my brothers had it at one time.”

  “I wish you had taken it then,” he returned.

  “Indeed then, I don’t, for I should have missed the races in Dublin, to which my grandfather took me, and all my five brothers whooping away at home!”

  “Better the miss of some races,” he returned, “than the miscarriage of a child.”

  Adeline varied between having complete trust in Dr. Ramsey and disliking him. The dislike did not impair the trust but it tarnished it. She said: —

  “All I worry about is my baby. He has never yet had a day’s illness.”

  Dr. Ramsey turned to Nicholas, sprawling in supreme comfort in his nurse’s lap.

  “If he contracts this cough,” he said, “it will take off some of that flesh of his.”

  “If only Miss Augusta would keep away from him,” said the nurse, “but she won’t.”

  If only Mrs. Whiteoak would keep away from Augusta!” said Dr. Ramsey.

  Philip found Adeline dressing in their room. Between Mrs. Vaughan’s criticism of her visits to Wilmott’s house and a certain irritation provoked by Dr. Ramsey, Adeline’s mood was not an amenable one. Her head in her wardrobe, her voice came out to Philip on a note of dissatisfaction.

  “I declare,” she said. “I am sick and tired of considering other people’s feelings. From morning to night I am put to it not to give offence. My clothes are all in a heap. My children are in a heap. You and I are in a heap.”

  “What’s up?” asked Philip laconically, unbuttoning his waistcoat.

  “It’s all very well for you! You live unhampered. You are free as air. You are not chided for visiting your neighbor. You are not going to have a baby. You haven’t seventeen crinolines hanging on one hook!”

  “I have to sit with my head out of the window or up the chimney when I smoke a cigar,” he returned mildly. “Was it about going to Wilmott’s that Mrs. Vaughan spoke to you?”

  She withdrew her head from the wardrobe and faced him with disheveled locks and flushed cheeks. “Yes. Who told you?”

  “Vaughan. He thinks it is rather too unconventional of you and I expect he is right. I have given you a loose rein, Adeline, because I think it is the best way with you, and I believe Wilmott is a decent fellow. I told Vaughan I would speak to you.”

  “You needn’t have troubled. I’ve told Mrs. Vaughan I shall not go to Wilmott’s again while I am here.… Dr. Ramsey says it will go hard with me if I get whooping cough.”

  Philip looked aghast at the thought. “You are to keep away from those children. I command you.”

  “I am not worrying. It is just that I don’t very much like Dr. Ramsey. I wish Dr. St. Charles were here. Do you think perhaps he would come and look after me if we asked him?”

  “I’m afraid it is rather too far. For my part, I think Ramsey is a very capable fellow. What is that you are putting on?”

  She had taken a green taffeta dress from the wardrobe. It was cut very low and to Philip seemed extreme in fashion for such an occasion. He told her so.

  Adeline threw it on the floor and desired him to find her something hideous enough to grace the moment. He looked at his watch.

  “We are going to be late for dinner,” he said. “Your head is like a hayrick. If you want to appear with your head like a hayrick and your body overdressed, I shall try to endure it but, I promise you, I shall be ashamed.”

  She sat down gloomily, looking out of the window. “How sweet it is in County Meath at this time of the year,” she said.

  “Aye,” he returned, “and it’s nice in Warwickshire, too.” “Ah, you English have no heart for your country! You don’t know the deep, dark, hungering love we Irish know for ours.”

  “And a very good thing, too. Else we should be where Ireland is.”

  “It is you English who have made us what we are!” she flared.

  “We can do nothing with you and you well know it.”

  She laughed, a little comforted. She began to play a tune on the window sill. “How out of practice I am!” she exclaimed. “I can feel my fingers getting quite stiff and I used to be able to play ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ with only three mistakes.”

  Philip came behind her chair, put his hands beneath her arms and raised her to her feet.

  “Now,” he said, “you dress for dinner or I’ll take a stick to you!”

  She leant back against his shoulder and sighed. “I’m tired,” she said. “If only you knew the day I’ve had!”

  She did not wear the green dress to dinner but a much simpler dress of maize-coloured India muslin, and had time only to twist her hair into a sleek knot. But she was able to show off a little with long yellow diamond earrings and a late yellow rose in her hair.

  Wilmott was extraordinarily lively at table. He was always either more or less animated than those about him. His mood never quite fitted into the mood of the moment. When his eyes met Adeline’s the
y would exchange a look of understanding. The image of Henrietta flashed between them. Mrs. Vaughan intercepted one of these glances and she had a disconcerting sense of being surrounded by intrigue. The behaviour of her niece did not make her any happier. Daisy so obviously was straining to capture the attention of Dr. Ramsey. She had made up for the simplicity of her dress by an elaborate arrangement of her hair that hung in a glossy dark waterfall to her shoulders. Mrs. Vaughan had a dreadful suspicion that Daisy had rouge on her cheeks. She laughed too much, showing too many teeth. She leaned too far across the table to attract the young doctor’s eye. He had just returned from a hunting trip and Philip was eager to hear its details. He planned next year, when he had his family installed at Jalna, to join the party. Daisy cried out to hear of the hazards endured by the hunters, and the magnificence of the quarry. Deer, a moose, and a bear, had been killed. Wilmott maintained that no man had a right to kill more than he could eat and he also maintained that, sitting in his own boat on his own river, he had as good sport as any man needed. Daisy took sides almost fiercely with the doctor and declared that, if she were a man, she would go to India and shoot tigers as Captain Whiteoak had. She had a mind to marry some big-game hunter and accompany him on his expeditions.

  “You would very soon get enough of it, Miss Daisy,” said Philip.

  “It would depend entirely on the man,” she returned. “With the right man, I would face any danger.”

  “You had better come with us on our hunting trip next year, as a preparation,” said Dr. Ramsey.

  “Ah, but would the right man be there to give me the moral support I need?”

  “At any rate, Dr. Ramsey could attend to your physical injuries,” said her uncle.

  This turned the conversation to arduous journeys the doctor had had to make in his profession, to remote places in the depth of winter. When the ladies had left the room he was encouraged to enlarge on these. Colonel Vaughan again circulated the decanter of port.

  “You would be surprised,” said Ramsey, “to see what shift I can make when I am put to it. A few weeks ago I was visiting a patient, when a neighbor came in a great excitement to fetch me. Her husband had given his foot a great gash with an axe. Well, when I reached their little farm, there was the man looking pretty weak. It was a bad wound. I had nothing with me for sewing it up. There was no linen thread in the house. So I just went to the barn and pulled a few good white hairs from the tail of one of their nags and they did the trick. Not very sanitary, of course, but that gash healed as well as any I’ve seen.”

  He told other experiences which were shocking to Wilmott. He bolstered himself with the port. No one noticed that he walked rather unsteadily when they returned to the parlor, or that he had become very quiet. He went and sat beside Adeline. Rain was beginning to fall. They could hear it beating against the windows.

  “I am glad to hear that rain,” said Colonel Vaughan. “It is badly needed.”

  “I wish it had waited till I reached home,” said Dr. Ramsey. “It will be an uncomfortable ride. My mare never fails to step in every hole and puddle. Just listen how it’s coming down!” He turned to Wilmott. “Were you on horseback, sir?”

  Wilmott looked bewildered. “Yes — yes,” he began slowly. “I hope to buy a good horse. A team — yes — and in time — a saddle horse.”

  “I asked,” returned Dr. Ramsey, irritably, “if you rode here.”

  “No — no — I never ride.”

  Philip, seated on the other side of the room on a sofa beside Daisy, knew that she wanted to be urged to play on the piano. He said to Mrs. Vaughan: —

  “I wish you could persuade your niece to play for us. She’s adamant to my implorings.”

  “I think it would be very nice,” said Mrs. Vaughan. “Do play something, Daisy.”

  “Oh, Aunt. I perform so horribly! Please don’t insist.”

  “I don’t wish to insist, Daisy, but I think it would be agreeable to everyone.”

  “Not to Dr. Ramsey, I’m sure. I am positive he hates the piano-forte.”

  “I don’t know how I gave that impression,” said the doctor. “I myself can play ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’ with one finger and take great pride in it.”

  “Oh, please do! I should so love to hear you.”

  “After your performance.”

  “Come, Miss Daisy,” urged Philip, “ don’t be obstinate. It’s not becoming in a young girl.”

  She rose, gracefully reluctant, and went to the instrument. It required some twirlings of the piano stool to make it of the height to suit her. Philip assisted in this and also in the finding of her music.

  Adeline said in an undertone to Wilmott — “If the creature didn’t pose so, I could tolerate her.”

  “I hate all women but you.”

  There was something uncontrolled in his voice that made Adeline turn to him quickly.

  “What is the matter with you, James?”

  “Nothing,” he answered. “Except that I’ve had a little too much to drink.”

  Daisy was sailing brightly through a Strauss waltz, while Philip turned the pages for her.

  “Oh, to waltz!” sighed Adeline. “What wouldn’t I give to waltz?”

  “Why not waltz then? I should like nothing better.”

  “In this room! On this carpet! Come, be sensible … I mean in a real ballroom and to a waltz played sensitively — languorously.”

  There was a murmur of approbation as the music ceased. Daisy refused to play another piece.

  “My heart is set,” she said, “on hearing Mrs. Whiteoak and Mr. Wilmott sing together from The Bohemian Girl. I know they do it excessively well because Captain Whiteoak has told me. Do command them to do it, Captain Whiteoak.”

  “It is impossible,” said Philip, “for my wife to keep on the tune. But I’ll engage to make her sing, if the company demands it.”

  “I demand it,” said Dr. Ramsey.

  “What about it, Wilmott?” asked Philip. “Do you think you can keep Adeline to the tune?”

  Wilmott rose with sudden alacrity.

  “Come,” he said to Adeline, “we’ll show them what a really finished performance is.” He held out his hand to her.”

  She allowed herself to be led to the piano but she gave Wilmott a look askance. She was a little mistrustful of him. However he sat down before the keyboard with an air of confidence. He knew the accompaniment by heart. He played the opening chords. But his first vocal note was a kind of discordant groan. He looked up at her in astonishment.

  “Is anything wrong?” asked Colonel Vaughan.

  “No, no,” said Adeline. She bent over Wilmott. “Are you going to shame us both,” she whispered, “or are you going to sing?”

  “Going to sing,” he muttered.

  Philip beat a tattoo with his heels. He would have liked to be a little rowdy, but was afraid of Mrs. Vaughan.

  Wilmott struck the opening bars afresh. Then, abruptly he took his hands from the keys, crossed his arms on the music rack and laid his head on them. Mrs. Vaughan sprang up.

  “Is Mr. Wilmott ill?” she asked.

  “No,” answered Adeline, “not really ill, just a little faint.”

  “I’ll get my smelling salts.” She hurried down from the room.

  Philip came and looked down into that part of his friend’s face which was visible. Dr. Ramsey also bent over him.

  “Are you aware what is wrong with him?” asked the doctor.

  “Yes. I’ve been suspicious of him ever since dinner. We’d better get him out in the air before Mrs. Vaughan comes back.”

  Philip turned to Adeline. “You and Daisy must go to Mrs. Vaughan and tell her we’ve taken Wilmott outside. Hadn’t you the wit to see that he was tipsy? You should not have attempted to sing with him.”

  She stood abashed for once. Then she murmured — “He’s had such a day — the poor man!”

  “You can tell me about that later.”

  He and Dr. Ramsey got Wilmott to his
feet and steered him across the room. The two young women went to find Mrs. Vaughan. Colonel Vaughan followed the other men. The rain was beating in on the verandah. He said: —

  “You can’t take him out there.”

  “It will do him good,” said the doctor.

  They placed Wilmott in a rocking chair. It swayed with him so that his head rolled against his shoulder. Philip winked at the doctor.

  “He looks pretty seedy, doesn’t he?”

  Dr. Ramsey nodded grimly. “He’ll not go home tonight.”

  Wilmott opened his eyes and looked at them. “I’m afraid I can’t sing,” he said.

  “We’ll excuse you, old man,” said Philip. He went to the Colonel. “Do you think you could put him up for the night?” he asked apologetically.

  Colonel Vaughan replied coldly — “Certainly. He may have Robert’s room. We must keep this from my wife. Her feelings would be outraged.”

  “Upon my word,” said Philip to Adeline, as they were getting ready for bed, “I shall be glad when we are in our home. I like to be able to put a friend to bed when he needs it, without all this secrecy. Vaughan has thoroughly spoiled his wife. But why did that fool, Wilmott, choose this house, of all places, to get tight in?”

  “He was so tired, poor man.”

  Philip turned his full blue eyes on her. “Tired of what? Sitting in a punt fishing? Or teaching young Tite to make pothooks?”

  “Ah, he has worries you will never know.”

  “What worries?”

  “I’m not at liberty to tell them.”

  “Now, look here, Madam,” said Philip, “I don’t want you to be made the confidante for Wilmott’s past. If his past is such as to make him drink too much at the mere thought of it, let him keep it to himself or confide in another man.”

  “True,” said Adeline mildly. “True.” Then with a long-drawn breath she added — “I feel ailing tonight. D’ye think I am perhaps going to have a miscarriage?” She crept into the deep feather bed.

  Philip’s expression became one of concern but he said stoutly — “I think you are tired and a bit worried about Wilmott’s behaviour. What you need is a good night’s rest.” He drew the blankets snugly about her. “There now, isn’t that cozy? I’ll be beside you in a jiffy. Egad, listen to the rain! It’s coming down in a torrent