Whiteoaks of Jalna/Chapter 15
That same afternoon Renny and Wakefield descended the slope that led from the lawn into the ravine, crossed the bridge over the stream, and reascended the opposite slope, along the winding diversities of the continued path which led them, at last, to an open oak wood, the property of Maurice Vaughan. The house itself stood in a hollow, and so thick was the foliage of the surrounding trees, following a month of rains, that only the smoke from one of its chimneys, rising in a delicate blue cloud, was visible to them, though they could hear the sound of a woman's voice singing inside.
A field of corn lay between them and the lawn. In it a village boy stood beating indifferently on a pan to ward off the crows. The crows circled above him or fed at a short distance, with derisive side glances in his direction. Walking among them were two white gulls, flown all the way from the lake for this inland recreation.
The boy was startled by having his pan and stick snatched from him. "Think you'll frighten crows by those feeble taps?" demanded Renny. "Listen to this!" He created a terrible din, not far from the boy's ear. The crows rose straight in the air, screaming. The gulls, flying low abreast, sailed in the direction of the lake.
The brothers walked on, the little one clutching his elder's sleeve. By the time they had reached the gap in the cedar hedge which bordered the lawn, the beating on the tin had grown faint, and did not noticeably oppose the full clear tones of the woman's voice, singing inside the house.
"Renny!" Wakefield tugged at the sleeve. "Why did Piers bring Pheasant and Mooey over here, just when Eden and Alayne have come?"
"Because Piers can't abide Eden."
"Why?"
"You couldn't understand."
"Did Piers and Pheasant come over here so that Eden could come home and be nursed?"
"Yes."
"But I thought Meggie couldn't abide Pheasant."
"Well, she's made friends with her for Piers's sake—and Eden's."
Wakefield's eyes, though dark with thought, were troubled. "I find it hard," he said, "to keep things straight in my mind."
"You don't need to. The less you think about them the better."
"But I've got my own ideas, just the same." His tone was truculent.
"You've too many ideas. You're too inquisitive."
Wakefield raised his eyes, with the perfect touch of appeal in them. "I suppose it's my delicate health," he said. How well he gauged his elder! He was drawn against his side as they went into the house.
No one in the dim parlour. The sitting-room, the dining-room, empty. Still, the sweet, full woman's voice flooded the house. They went up the stairs. Wakefield ran along the hallway, knocked on a door, and, almost immediately, opened it.
The room discovered was splashed with sunshine coming through the swaying branches of trees. It was bright with highly glazed, gaily coloured chintz. A vase holding daffodils stood on the centre table. On the table also was a silver tray bearing a teapot, a plate of scones, and a small piece of honey in the comb. Meg was enjoying one of her little lunches.
"Ha!" said Renny. "Nibbling as usual, eh?" He bent and kissed her.
Wakefield pressed against her back, holding his hands over her eyes. "Guess who it is!"
She drew down his hands till they lay on her breast, and turned her face back to his. They kissed. "Oh," he exclaimed, "I taste honey on you!" He looked greedily at the square of honeycomb.
"I had no appetite for dinner," she exclaimed, "so I began to feel a little faint, and had this brought to me. I don't really want it. You may finish it, Wake, darling."
He took the honeycomb in his fingers and began to devour it, Meg regarding him with indulgence, Renny with affectionate concern.
Renny asked: "Do you think that is wholesome?"
"Oh, yes. It's a natural food. It couldn't possibly hurt him."
"To think," she exclaimed, "that you have been in New York since I saw you last!" She regarded him as if she expected to find something exotic in him. "What you must have seen! But before any of that, tell me about Eden. This is a great shock. Is he very ill? If he is in danger, I don't know how to bear it. Poor lamb. And he was always so well. Everything started with that wretched marriage of his. The day he first brought that girl to Jalna, I saw trouble ahead." She screwed up her courage. "Renny, is Eden going to" She glanced at the child. He must not hear anything terrible.
"Well, he has a spot on one lung. He's very thin. . . . I think he isn't quite so ill as that doctor made out. But he'll need a lot of nursing." He thought: "What will she say when I tell her that Alayne is here?" He continued: "Everything depends on fresh air and good nursing."
Meg exclaimed: "I should be the one to nurse him! But there's Baby. I can't expose her."
He reckoned with her indolence. "What about this 'mother's help'—whatever you call her—couldn't she look after the youngster?"
Meg moved on her chair to confront him. Her short, plump arm lay across the table, her milk-white sensuously curved hand drooping over the edge. Her voice was reproachful. "Trust my baby to Minny Ware! She's a featherbrain. One never knows what she will do next! Sometimes I wish I had never seen her."
They were silent a moment. The voice of the singer came cooingly from a distant room. He could not tell Meg yet that Alayne was at Jalna.
She said: "It seems terrible to me to banish Eden to the Hut."
"It isn't safe to have him in the house with the boys."
"And Finch is back! What a frightful responsibility life is for some people! While others . . . That is what takes my appetite—worry."
"Finch will be all right, now. . . . He's a queer young devil. You can't get at him."
She observed, with complacence: "Finch would never have run away if I had been at home. Aunt Augusta simply cannot understand boys."
Renny was listening to the voice. He asked: "Is that girl always singing?"
His sister nodded, as though in confirmation of inexpressible things. She bent toward him, whispering: "You know, it's going to be terribly trying for me having Pheasant here. Nothing but my love for Piers would induce me. She made up to Minny Ware at once. Already they are talking together in corners. . . . I ignore them."
A heavy step was heard in the hall. A knuckle touched the panel of the door.
Meg's smooth brow showed a pucker, but she murmured: "Come in."
The tap came again. "He didn't hear you," said Renny. "Hello, Maurice!"
The door opened and Vaughan appeared. His greying hair was rumpled, his Norfolk jacket hung unevenly from his broad shoulders.
"Been having a nap?" asked Renny.
He nodded, grinning apologetically. "Anything private under discussion? I only came for my pipe. Left it somewhere about." He thought: "Why does Meggie look at me that way? A damned funny look."
"I was just asking Meggie whether Miss Ware ever stops singing," said Renny. "A joyous sort of being to have about. I wish we could borrow her for Jalna." He thought: "Marriage is the devil. She's got old Maurice just where she wants him."
Meg thought: "Why is it that I can never have my own brother to myself? Is there no such thing as privacy when one is married?"
Vaughan had found his pipe and tobacco-pouch. He filled the pipe deftly, considering that his right hand had been crippled in the war.
Meg's full blue eyes were fixed on the crippled hand, and the leather bandage worn about the wrist. It was the sight of that which had melted her heart toward him. Yet now its movement had the power to irritate her. It was abnormal, even sinister, rather than pathetic. She said, reproachfully: "Renny says that he does not think Eden is very seriously ill. You had me so terribly frightened." She turned to her brother. "Maurice said Eden looked half dead."
"He looked that way to me," Vaughan said, doggedly.
"He did look pretty seedy after the journey," agreed Renny. "But he had a sleep and something to eat, and he's more like himself now. We've got him moved into Fiddler's Hut." In a moment more he must tell her that Alayne was returned. He felt a constriction in his throat.
She asked eagerly: "How did you get him there? Could he walk so far over rough ground?"
"Wright and I took him. Half carried him. . . . They've rigged it up very comfortably. You'd be surprised. Gran had a glorious time ordering everyone about, and Aunt Augusta has the hump." No, he could not tell her yet. . . .
Vaughan knew what was on Renny's mind. He observed, staring at the bowl of his pipe: "He'll take a lot of nursing. Lord, did you notice his wrists and knees?"
"There you go again!" cried his wife. "You seem determined to frighten me." She placed a hand on her heart. "If you knew what a weight I feel here!"
"I'm sorry," said Vaughan. "I seem destined to put my foot in it. . . . I only meant"
"Please stop," she interrupted, dramatically. "Let me see for myself how he is. . . ." Her agitation found vent in correcting Wakefield. He was wiping his fingers on the edge of the traycloth.
He was sticky, argumentative. Before he was quelled, another knock sounded on the door, this time a quick tattoo, signalling a delicate urgency.
"It's Baby," said the singer's voice. "She's been crying for you."
Wakefield flung wide the door. A blonde young woman stood there, holding in her arms a plump infant.
Meg's face was smoothed into an expression of maternal adoration. Her lips parted in a smile of ineffable sweetness. She held out her arms, her breast becoming a harbour, and received the child. She pressed a long kiss on its flower-petal cheek.
At forty-two she had been made a mother by Vaughan, and he had realized his dream of becoming the father of her child. But their inner selves had not been welded together by the birth. She who had never yearned toward motherhood now became extravagantly maternal, putting him outside the pale of that tender intimacy. Sometimes he found himself with the bewildered feeling of a dog whose own door is closed against it. He loved this child as he had never loved Pheasant, who had been so lonely, so eager for love. Meg had named it Patience. "But why?" he had exclaimed, not liking the name at all. "Patience is my favourite virtue," she had replied, "and we can call her Patty for short."
It was an odd thing that while "Mooey," as he was nicknamed, the child of the boy and girl, Piers and Pheasant, was a serious infant, staring out at the world from under a pucker in his brow, Patty, the child of middle-aged parents, was lively, with inconsequent exuberance. She bounced now on her mother's lap, kicked out her heels, and showed her four white teeth in a hilarious grin.
Her uncle poked her with his finger. She reached for his red hair. "Ha," he said, "you young vixen! Look at her, Maurice."
"Yes. She can give a good pull, too"
Meg turned smiling to Minny Ware. "Don't go," she said, graciously. "Sit down, please. I may want you to take Baby again."
Minny Ware had had no intention of going. The infant had not so longed for the society of its mother as she had longed for the society of men. It was ill going for her when there was a man about and she not bathed in his presence. At this moment of her life it was her hot ambition to capture the master of Jalna. But he had a wary eye on her. She almost feared that he scented her desire.
She sat with crossed knees, watching the family group about the baby. A bright blue smock, very open at the throat, showed her rather thick milk-white neck and full chest. The smock was short, and beneath it were discovered excessively pink knickers, and stockings such as only a London girl would have the courage to wear.
She had, as a matter of fact, been born, not in London, but in a remote part of England, where her father had been rector of a scattered parish. She had rarely known what it was to have two coins to rub together. When her father had died, two years after the close of the War, she and another girl had gone up to London, keen after adventure, strong and fresh as a wind from their native moor. For several years they had earned a precarious living there. They managed to preserve their virtue, and even kept their wild-rose complexions. But life was hard, and after a while they thought of London only as a place from which they longed to escape. Mercifully, the friend had a small legacy left to her, and they decided to go to Canada. A short course was taken at an agricultural college. Armed with this experience, they set out to run a poultry farm in Southern Ontario. But they had not sufficient capital to support them while they became accustomed to conditions so different. The seasons were unfavourable; the young chicks died in large numbers from a contagious disease; the turkey poults were even more disappointing, for they succumbed to blackhead. The cost of putting up the poultry houses had been greater than they had expected. Grain was very expensive; food was dear. At the end of two seasons they were stranded, with just enough left to pay their debts. They did this, for they were inherently honest, and turned their thoughts again cityward.
If they had been stenographers, they might easily have got situations. As it was, they tried unsuccessfully to get taken on by the proprietors of small high-class shops, as doctors' or dentists' assistants. At long last they got employment as waitresses in a tea-shop. A year of this, and Minny Ware's feet became afflicted. To stand on them all day, to carry heavy trays, was an agony too great. One night she read an advertisement for a "mother's help" and companion—a Mrs. Vaughan the advertiser. The place was in the country, the child an infant. She longed for the country, and she "loved babies." She applied for the position by letter in excellent old-country handwriting. She explained that she was the daughter of a clergyman, and had come to Canada to raise poultry. Having failed in that, she felt that nothing would be so congenial to her as a position in charge of a young child. She did not mention her experience as waitress. The fact that she had failed in an undertaking commended her to Maurice. He had always a fellow-feeling for failures. Meg liked the idea of her being the daughter of a parson. Minny Ware had now been with them for five months.
As soon as there was an opportunity, she said in a low tone to Renny: "New York must be great fun."
"I suppose it is," he returned. "I wasn't there for fun. I dare say you would like it. Do you want to go there?"
"Who doesn't? But do you think they would let me across the line?"
"Not with that London accent, I'm afraid."
She gave a rich, effortless laugh, which, having passed her lips, left her face round and solemn, like a child's. She said: "You must teach me how to speak, so they will take me in."
"Are you so restless, then?" His eyes swept over her, resting on the freckles that accentuated the whiteness of her rather thick nose. "You have looks that are unusual. You've got a voice. What are you going to do with them?"
"Exploit them in the States. There's nothing to keep me here." Her eyes, of an indeterminate colour, narrow above high cheek-bones, looked provocatively into his.
The frustrated torrent of his passion for Alayne turned, for a moment, toward this girl. As he realized this, he felt an intense, inexplicable irritation. He looked beyond Minny Ware to his sister.
"Alayne," he said, "has come back to look after Eden." Let Meggie fly into a rage, if she would, before an outsider.
"Alayne come back . . ." she repeated the words, softly, curling her lip a little.
"Eden begged her to come."
"She has not much pride, has she?"
"She's full of pride. She's too proud to care what you or anyone else thinks."
"Even you?" Her lip curled again.
Minny Ware looked eagerly from one face to another. Could she make herself a place here?
Renny did not answer, but his eyes warned Meg to be careful.
She sat, winking very fast, as though to keep back tears or temper, her full cheek rested against her closed hand. She was, in truth, blinking before a new idea. . . . If Alayne and Eden were reconciled, so much the better. Let Alayne provide for the poor darling. There was no use in Alayne's pretending she was poor. Americans always had plenty of money. Eden might be delicate for a long time. And if he—if Alayne fancied that he were not going to recover—that she could capture Renny through Eden's death—she would find how mistaken she was!
In any case Renny must be protected from Alayne. There was only one way by which he could be protected. A wife. And here, at hand, was Minny Ware. Meg's perceptions, slow but penetrating, left no doubt in her mind that Alayne loved Renny—that Renny was intensely aware of Alayne. Very different this controlled awareness from the calculated passion and abrupt endings of his affairs with other women, which Meg had sensed rather than observed. Affairs which her stolid pride had made her overlook.
She absorbed the picture of Renny and Minny Ware side by side. Should she, she asked herself, be willing to see them so attached for the rest of their days? Her heart's answer was in the affirmative. Though she was ready to find fault with Minny—for being careless, for making up too readily to Pheasant—it was certain that Minny was the one woman she would be willing to accept as a sister. She knew already what it was to hate two women married to her brothers. From the first, Minny's lavish light-heartedness, her physical exuberance, her good temper under correction, her willingness to be at another's beck and call, had caused Meg to look on her with favour, even an approaching affection.
Could Renny have a wife better suited to him? People would say that he had married beneath him. That prospect did not trouble Meg. It was her opinion that, no matter where a Whiteoak should seek his mate, the fact that he married her placed her above questioning. And, whatever Minny had been forced to do, the fact remained that she was the daughter of a clergyman, and had been nicely reared. Even though her skirts were too short and her stockings strange—well, life in post-war London was doubtless strange. She had rebuked Minny for the flamboyancy of her clothes, but the girl had been adamant. She had said, in effect, that, if Mrs. Vaughan did not like her clothes, she would go. She could not dress soberly to fit her situation. It would break her spirit.
To understand Meg Vaughan, it must be remembered that she had led a life of extraordinary isolation. She had been educated by governesses. She had made no friends. Her brothers, her elderly uncles, her grandmother, had sufficiently filled her life. During the long years of her estrangement from Maurice, she had acquired a taste for solitude. Those long hours in her chamber—what did she do with them? Brush her long hair that showed a feather of grey above the forehead? Eat comforting little lunches? Dream, with her head supported on her short plump forearm? In winter three weeks would pass in which she would not set foot out of doors except to go to church.
Now here she was, with a husband and a baby, and a companion whom she desired to marry to her favourite brother. She was as comfortable as a plump rabbit in its burrow. She longed to secure Renny in a peace as nearly approaching hers as was possible to his turbulent nature. One's mate must not matter too much, if one were a Whiteoak. Maurice did not; Minny would not. One's children mattered terribly. Her breast rose in a heavy sweet breath when she thought of Baby.
Meg did not know what it was to be socially ambitious. How could she, since they were the most important people thereabout? She did not take into account rich manufacturers or merchants who had built imposing residences only a few miles away on the lake shore. She had not changed the position of a piece of furniture since she had come to Vaughanlands.
During the rest of Renny's stay she was sweetly, solidly acquiescent toward him. He left thinking how perfect she was. In Maurice's stable, looking over a new mare from the West, he told Maurice that Meggie was perfect, and Maurice agreed.
When the two women were alone, Minny Ware exclaimed: "Let me brew a fresh pot of tea. They spoiled your little lunch."
"Do," said Meggie. "We'll have it together."
They looked into each other's eyes and smiled. Then Minny's eyes filled with tears. She snatched up the infant and kissed it extravagantly.