They turned into a side road and passed through a gate into a field where Renny saw a farmer at work. He was arranging to buy a load of gravel from the farmer. The pit was at the far end of the field and near it was a small stream. Cora lightly jumped the stream but Prince Eitel, in a playful mood, refused. He danced and gambolled at its edge, while Dilly happily showed off her horsemanship for the benefit of the two men. Then he made up his mind that he would jump, but Dilly had allowed him to dance farther down the steam and the place where he went over was near the edge of the pit. He jumped with great power and, for an instant, made a brilliant picture against the sky, then landed with his forefeet in slushy gravel, looking straight down into the pit. Shouts of warning had been too late to prevent the near-disaster.
Terror shook Prince to his vitals. Rigid as a horse in bronze he kept his balance, like a rider in bronze Dilly gripped him with her thighs.
He uttered a snort of terror, glaring down into the pit. He then gave a trumpet-like scream, reared to his hind legs, turned short on them, and proceeded to express the violence of the fear he had experienced by a displaying of plunging, kicking, and shying. There was nothing the two men could do but watch and pray that Dilly would not be thrown.
She was not thrown, and when Prince Eitel had recovered himself she rode over to where Renny was, and exclaimed quite jauntily, though her cheeks were white — “What fun!”
Never had he admired her so much. But now admiration was fired by desire. He really wanted her, he thought, and, when they returned to Jalna, he would ask her to marry him. Yes, he would marry her and everybody would be pleased. It had taken him some time to be sure of his feelings but now he was sure. Dilly was magnificent.
And all the way home she did nothing to destroy the aura with which this incident had surrounded her. She was rather quiet, rather gentle, bending to speak soothing words to Prince and pat him.
In the stable-yard at Jalna there was a pleasant bustle. The old carriage had been brought out and was being washed and polished for the grandmother’s first spring outing. Wright was clipping the long hair from the legs of a team of farm horses. A hen was cackling so loudly as a stableboy drove her from where she had no business to be. A rooster was crowing. Piers had been exercising his favourite among the horses, an aged polo pony which followed him about like a dog and was now eating a carrot from his hand. Ben, the sheepdog, was supervising all this with an air of great sagacity.
Piers came to help Dilly dismount and she poured out the story of her narrow escape. It was surprising how this terrifying incident sounded no more than feminine exaggeration the way Dilly now related it. And she had been so cool, so collected.
“You’d never believe, Piers,” she cried, “how completely shattered Renny and I were. At first we simply rocked with hysterical laughter. Then we clung to each other, in tears. Didn’t we, Renny?”
“Of course. And we were still mounted when we did all this,” said Renny, his eyes now teasing rather than lover-like. “Take Dilly to the house, Piers, and give her a drink. She’s been through a good deal.”
“Aren’t you coming?” asked Dilly.
“Not yet. Scotchmere tells me there are two men waiting for me in my office.” He followed the old groom into the stable.
The two men were Messrs. Crowdy and Chase; the former was bubbling over with plans for winning the King’s Plate with a fine young horse he had lately purchased. Chase, in his quiet way, was as absorbed as Crowdy, yet both had seen Dilly from the little window in the office.
When their first greetings to Renny were over, Mr. Crowdy, spreading a thick palm, inscribed on it, with a stubby forefinger, a cryptic sign whose meaning was known only to himself, and said:
“A fine figure of a young lady. Very fine. A winner. In any class.”
And Chase added — “There’s no woman so satisfactory a companion as a good horse, Mr. Whiteoak. There’s something about a good horse that makes a man happy and peaceful.” By the time Renny joined the family for the evening meal the idea of making a proposal of marriage had quite left his mind. He felt free and untroubled.
Eden, throughout the long winter, wrote more poetry than ever before. He made a pretence of working at his books. He did indeed attend lectures and take notes, but in the seclusion of his own room he did little but read and write poetry. On the journeyings to and from the town he sat slumped in his seat in the train, with young Finch opposite, his eyes not seeing the wintry landscape, his imagination fiery from within. In its generous fire he scarcely was aware of what day of the week it was, except for the pleasure of the week-end when he was free.
“He gets lazier and lazier,” Renny observed to Nicholas. “I don’t know what to do with him. He’s going to fail in his exams again, as sure as fate.”
“He will be all right,” said Nicholas. “There’s good stuff in Eden. He may surprise us yet.”
“I don’t doubt that he’ll surprise us. But I do doubt that the surprise will be pleasant.”
“His poetry,” said Ernest, “is good. I stick to that. Has he told you he has had another poem accepted by Harper’s?”
“Yes.”
“Did he read it to you?”
“Yes. But he can’t live on poetry. When I talk of work he looks tragic.”
Eden was always a problem. Finch was often a problem. Doubtless Wake would be a problem. Of the four youngest Whiteoaks Piers was the only one to be depended on, a boy easily understood, thought his elders, little dreaming what was going on inside his head.
A professor with whom Eden had become friendly advised him to send a collection of his poems to a firm of New York publishers, Messrs. Cory and Parsons. The thought of doing this had not before occurred to him. He felt diffident about it, but Ernest, when he was told of the suggestion, agreed with enthusiasm. He urged the boy to bring all the verse he had written to his room and they would go over them together, selecting, choosing titles for the poems, polishing — if Eden would be willing to let Ernest offer a suggestion now and again. Eden was willing and a happy time they had together. New lyrics poured from Eden in an ardent stream. So eager, so careless was the flow that scarcely had the idea of a new poem been generated in his imagination before it had taken form and was transferred to paper. In this period of flowering, the anxieties, the tension of the days of Indigo Lake were forgotten. Ernest knew he was doing wrong in encouraging Eden to waste so much of his time but he could not help himself. Always he had hoped to have something of his own published and had not given up hope, though he had not yet brought himself to the point of submitting a finished manuscript to a publisher.
XXIV
INDOOR SPORT
All through the winter the house with its five chimneys seemed to be sunk in meditation. From the chimneys smoke rose, like its meditations made palpable. On one side or other of the roof the snow would melt, as the warmth of the sun increased, and the pigeons would come and sit on the sunny slope of it, and pass the word in low tones that a time was coming for love and rivalry and the wonder of eggs in the nest. Sometimes a mass of snow would slide off the roof with a loud rumble like distant thunder. The grandmother would speak of the old days when passenger pigeons would fly overhead in a cloud that darkened the sun, and bluebirds in a small blue cloud, a time when the wild birds had scarcely learned to be afraid.
“Ah, those were the days,” she said to Dilly. “The birds were scarce afraid. The people had not grown soft. They’d leave their grand home and come out here to the Colony and rough it. There was no fear in the land. We had a glorious time of it — my husband and I. We built this house, you know.”
“What fun!”
“Indeed, ’twas fun.” And she added, in a tone of melancholy unusual to her — “’Twere better I had been a man!”
“Why, dear Mrs. Whiteoak?”
“Because then I should have been dead long ago.”
“But why?”
“Ah, they don’t last as we do. They’re not made for lasting.�
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“I think men are magnificent,” cried Dilly. “See how they can fight in a war!”
“Ah, but they get killed or come home and die. We outlast them.”
Now she gave a grin of satisfaction. “Take my two sons. They’ll never live as long as me. Nicholas has the gout, Ernest has indigestion. When I was their age I had neither pain nor ache. I’ll live to be a hundred.”
“I am sure you will.”
“Aye. But the winter is long. Very long. What was that you said about fun?”
“I said you must have had fun in the old days.”
“We had indeed.... Heigho, I’d like a good laugh.”
“Let’s dress up,” cried Dilly.
“Dress up?”
“Yes. All the others are out or in their rooms. Let’s dress up for tea. One day when I was in the attic with Meg I saw all sorts of clothes. I could bring some here to your room. What a surprise we’d give everybody when they came to tea! Do say I may.”
It was not quite clear to old Mrs. Whiteoak just what Dilly meant to do. The girl talked so fast. But she liked Dilly’s animation. She longed to do something different, with a strange resurgence of youthful enterprise in her veins. She struck her knee with her clenched hand and said:
“Fetch the clothes! We’ll dress up.”
Dilly darted from the room and up the stairs. She flew up them, light as a baird, trying to rid herself of the feeling that this house gave her. It gave her the feeling that it was watching her, watching all the people under its roof. Thinking, there were four women and five men, all unattached, each living for herself or himself. This was, of course, excepting the Wragges, who were both for and sometimes against each other. Three virile young men and one lively young woman unattached. The house did not approve of this sort of situation and somehow communicated this disapproval to Dilly, or so it seemed to her, for she had an ardent imagination.
Upstairs the bedroom doors stood slightly ajar. She had a glimpse of Nicholas stretched on a chaise-longue, with Nip curled up on his middle. Bubbling snores came from under his drooping grey moustache. Sometimes he appeared to be dissatisfied with these noises and would substitute for them scornful hissing noises, like a locomotive getting up steam. The copy of Nicholas Nickleby which he had been reading hung from his handsome hand. Ernest did not snore, but lay with a sweet, peaceful expression on his bed, with the coverlet drawn neatly over him and his cat, Sasha, asleep on the pillow next his. Augusta sat at the writing bureau in her room writing letters, in her fine Italian hand. From Meg’s room came the sound of her voice reading aloud to Wakefield. The others were out.
Up in the attic Dilly threw open the door of a long dark cupboard that smelt of moth camphor. So dark it was that for a moment she despaired of finding anything. When she had been there with Meg they had had an oil lamp to light them. But now, light or dark, Dilly must do something to deck herself to astonish Renny. She went to the very end of the cupboard and groped for some things Meg had discovered to her.
In the meantime the grandmother had dropped asleep again. But Dilly was not one to steal away without disturbing her. She said, in her high clear voice:
“Mrs. Whiteoak, do you or don’t you want to?”
The old lady woke and without hesitation, answered — “I do want to,” though she had completely forgotten what was in question.
“Good,” said Dilly and flung down the armful of clothes. She was all excitement.
The garments were a rose-coloured crinoline with rose and white panniers, a pale-blue satin bodice trimmed with lace and little bunches of flowers, and a man’s hunting costume of breeches and pink coat. The former Adeline Whiteoak had brought with her in a sailing vessel from the Old Land, the latter had been worn by Nicholas when he rode to hounds in England.
“These things are so picturesque, dear Mrs. Whiteoak,” cried Dilly. “They will be just what is needed to brighten us all up at tea time.”
The grandmother leant forward in her chair to peer at the faded, camphor-smelling bundle.
“What are they?” she demanded.
“A crinoline of yours and hunting togs. Meg told me they belong to her Uncle Nicholas.”
“Bless my soul! And what are we going to do with them?”
“Dress up! Won’t it be fun? I’ve always wanted to know what I should look like in a crinoline and this is a beauty.” She began to undress.
“But me,” demanded the old lady. “What about me?”
“You are to wear the hunting clothes. You said just now you wished you’d been a man —”
“Never wished any such thing — except when I was going to have a baby.”
“But you said something that gave me the idea. I thought it would be such fun.” Dilly was now wearing the crinoline and struggling to fasten the bodice. “But what a tiny waist you had, dear Mrs. Whiteoak. This is practically killing me.” She was panting, her face was flushed.
Adeline Whiteoak watched her with an odd smile bending her lips.
Pictures from the past crowded into her mind. She heard the sound of a violin and the clatter of a hansom cab on the London street.
“My waist was small,” she said.
Dilly exclaimed — “And I can imagine how gracefully this crinoline swayed about you!”
“Aye. I moved well.”
Dilly could scarcely bear to take her eyes off her reflection. She swayed and twirled before the pier-glass. However, the little glass clock on the mantelpiece striking four brought her to the task on hand, to get old Mrs. Whiteoak into the hunting clothes. Almost she wished she had not thought of anything so absurd, but her high spirits had infected Adeline, who now said:
“Bring me the breeches.”
Scarcely able to bend for the tightness of the bodice Dilly extracted the breeches from the heap on the floor. Adeline threw back the skirt of her dressing gown and extended her legs, clad in long woollen stockings and flannel drawers. Dilly drew on the nether garments and, because she herself was strong as a boy, was able to divest her of her dressing gown and clothe her in waistcoat and pink coat. Adeline herself was now moved to an amazing alacrity of both body and mind. She stood, leaning on her stick, critically surveying her reflection in the pier-glass. She said:
“I need boots, a cap, and a stock. Open yon little drawer and you will find large linen handkerchiefs in it. They were my Philip’s. One of them will make a stock.”
Neat-fingered, Dilly folded the linen into the semblance of a stock and secured it with a brooch. She said:
“I’ll bring shoes and cap in a jiffy.” She flew up the stairs to Renny’s clothes-cupboard and there found his shining riding boots and black velvet cap. His belongings had a fascination for her. On the way down she hugged the boots to her bosom and kissed the cap.
Scarcely was she back in the grandmother’s room when the rest of the family began to assemble in the drawing-room for tea. Wakefield came sliding down the banister pursued by Meg upbraiding him.
The approach of Nicholas was heralded by the shrill barking of Nip, whose favourite hour of the twenty-four this was. Augusta and Ernest descended together amiably conversing. Piers came, innocent and pink-cheeked, from a stolen interview with Pheasant. Finch came, brooding on a girl he had seen in the street the day before. He did not know who she was. He did not want to know, but he could not get her out of his mind. Eden came, a letter from Messrs. Cory and Parsons, the New York publishers, burning in his breast pocket. Renny was the last to come. His eyes swept the family circle, the blazing fire, the laden tea-table, the unusual sight of his grandmother’s empty chair. He demanded:
“Where’s Gran?”
Ernest answered — “She and Dilly are closeted in her room. They’ve some sort of secret. They’ll be here.”
“That girl,” said Nicholas, “is not capable of assisting Mamma. I must go.”
“I’ll go,” said Renny.
He turned out into the hall and there encountered one of the strangest sights he ever had
seen. He stood dumbfounded as the pair approached him. His face was well moulded by nature to express astonishment, from the arched eyebrows, the carven nose, to the spirited mouth. His features now expressed that emotion to its utmost. Here was an elegant young lady of the eighteen-fifties who resembled Dilly Warkworth, accompanied by a very elderly gentleman in hunting costume who bore a bizarre likeness to a portrait he had seen in Ireland, of his great-great-grandfather, the old Marquis of Killiekeggan.
In truth, Adeline Whiteoak, nearing the century mark in age, was swept, at this moment, by an amazing rejuvenation. It had been a struggle to get herself into the male attire. The boots had been hardest of all. But it had been the change from the lace-trimmed cap to the velvet cap which had worked the greatest transformation. More even than the breeches. With her hair tucked out of sight, with the shadow of the cap’s peak on her face, she no longer looked the feeble old woman, but a handsome elderly rake of the Regency period.
Scarcely leaning on Dilly, she passed Renny and entered the drawing-room with a jaunty air. The effect of this entrance was galvanic. The company, seated like an audience, now rose like an audience, drawn to their feet by that superb but fantastic entrance. Ernest was the first to recognize his mother.
“Mamma!” he exclaimed.
Then Augusta put all the force of her amazed disapproval into the same word.
Their mother, with an ancient, rakish elegance, half-tottered, half-swaggered toward her chair. The parrot, Boney, as though the better to see her, hung head down on his perch.
“So is it really my grandmother?” cried Wake.
“It is,” said Meg, “and I call it wicked.”
The young men, Eden and Piers, were charmed. They addressed her as “Your Lordship,” placed her chair for her, and brought her tea. Dilly danced round the room, swaying her crinoline, her burning eyes on Renny. Everybody began to talk at once — Nicholas to recall the time when he had last worn that hunting pink — Ernest to bring out an old daguerreotype of his great-grandfather and point out the likeness between it and the figure in the wing-chair. Boney could not recognise his mistress and shouted his bewilderment and outrage. Wragge, bringing in a second supply of tea — for everyone was unusually thirsty — all but dropped the pot.
06 The Whiteoak Brothers Page 27