Читать книгу Young Renny - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 4

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Everything about the house had been put in perfect order. Workmen had been there to mend the roof, tighten the supports of the shutters, and give the woodwork a glossy coat of new paint. They had cut back the Virginia creeper which, in its exuberant growth, would have completely covered the windows and so excluded even the peering sun from the doings of the Whiteoaks in this early summer of nineteen hundred and six.

The gravel sweep had been raked into a pattern by the gardener and Philip Whiteoak hesitated a moment before crossing it. It seemed a pity to disarrange it, though he considered the making of the pattern rather a waste of time. Still, he could not deny that the house looked very spruce, somewhat like a man with a close haircut and shave, and a new cravat about his neck.

Philip himself looked the very reverse of spruce. A stained corduroy coat covered his broad shoulders and muddy top-boots his powerful legs. He carried a fishing-rod and a basket in which glistened a dozen speckled trout. One of these had life in it still and now and again drew itself into a sharp contortion above the bodies of its fellows.

As Philip lounged across the gravel and up the shining steps into the porch, he wondered lazily which of his family he would first see when he entered the house. He rather hoped it would not be his mother, with whom he had had words that morning, or his wife who would make him feel that he should have come in by the side entrance with his mud and his fish.

As a matter of fact it was his wife whom he now saw descending the stairs in a white embroidered dress with a wide flounced skirt. He went toward her, smiling a little sheepishly, yet really unashamed.

“Hello, Molly,” he said. “You look as pretty as a picture.”

She stood, just out of his reach, critically looking at his fair, flushed face and disreputable clothes.

“Oh, Philip,” she exclaimed, “your boots are muddy! You might have gone——”

“No, I mightn’t,” he interrupted. “I wanted to bring my catch straight in to show it you. Aren’t they beauties?”

She ran down the steps that separated them.

“Pretty things!” She clasped her hands on his shoulder and peered into the basket.

“We’ll have them for breakfast. One is still living! I hate to see it gasp like that.”

“He feels the heat, just as I do. I always suffer in the first warm days.” He set down the basket and put his arms about her. “Give me a kiss, Molly!”

She drew down his head and pressed her cheek to his.

“I say, Molly, your cheek is just like a flower.”

“And yours is like a grater! You have not shaved to-day.”

“If you scold me I’ll grow a beard and do the heavy Patriarch. It might be a good idea. I don’t get the respect I should.”

“No wonder, with your mother so arrogant!”

“Never mind, never mind! She knows she can’t bully me—and never could!” He smiled magnanimously and his eyes, of a particularly fine blue, flashed amiably.

When he was with Mary she felt that nothing else mattered. Her tall delicate figure swayed beside his. The light from the stained glass windows on either side of the front door threw amber and green splashes over her, hardening her fair hair into a metallic brightness.

“What has been going on this afternoon?” he asked.

“Nothing in particular, except that Meg is in town shopping and Peep has got his new tooth through.”

He had a grunt of satisfaction for the last statement and for the first the exclamation:

“I’ll be glad when this trousseau is completed! Meggie can’t get enough to satisfy her.” But, though his tone was complaining, he smiled complacently.

“I suppose she thinks it’s the last she’ll get from you.” Then, she added quickly—“Of course, an occasion like this comes only once in a girl’s life. She’s bound to want to make the most of it.” In truth Mary Whiteoak was so glad that her stepdaughter was to be eliminated from the family circle that she was willing to condone all Meg did. The thought of being free of that stubborn girl, always making things difficult for her, always clinging about her father’s neck, filled her with bliss.

“Who took her in?” asked Philip.

“Renny drove them to the train. Vera Lacey went with her. She should be back at any moment.”

“Hm. I hope Vera comes with her. Charming girl.”

A severe-looking parlour-maid appeared from the dining-room and announced that tea was ready. At the same moment a door at the end of the hall opened and old Mrs. Whiteoak entered. She had passed her eightieth birthday but she moved strongly and her broad shoulders were just beginning to stoop. Although the May day was summerlike she wore a heavy black cashmere dress with a much shirred and pleated bodice and a wide band of black velvet on the bottom of the long skirt. A lace cap trimmed with rosettes of mauve baby ribbon added to her already commanding height. Her eyes which had once been large, were still of an intense and brilliant brown. Temper and race were implied in the lines of her mouth and her strongly arched nose defied her fourscore years.

“Late for tea, as usual, Philip,” she exclaimed, in a strong voice, with more than a hint of Irish accent.

“No, I’m not late, Mamma,” he returned. “I’ve been in for some time.”

“You are late,” she persisted. “You’re not ready. Look at your boots and your coat and your hands. Look at him, Molly! He’s a sight, isn’t he?”

“I like the way he looks,” said Mary contradictorily.

“Of course, you do! You’re that sort of woman.”

Philip handed the basket of fish to the maid.

“Here, Eliza,” he said, “take these to the cook.”

“Wait a minute, till I have a look at them,” put in his mother. She bent eagerly over the basket. “Fine catch, eh? I’ll have one for my supper, with lemon and parsley. Don’t forget about the lemon and parsley, Eliza.”

“No, Ma’am.” The maid was about to descend the stairs to the basement kitchen, when a side door giving on to the lawn opened and Philip’s two elder brothers came in and demanded to inspect the fish. Their mother took an arm of each and looked approvingly into their faces flushed by exercise.

“Had a good game, eh? I could see you from my window. That’s the way to keep supple”—she pronounced it soople—“a good game of lawn tennis before tea.”

“I think,” said Nicholas, brushing back his thick greying hair, “that I’m getting a bit heavy for tennis. I get very hot. And I’m fifty-three, you know. I think I ought to go in for croquet or golf.”

His mother gave him a thump on the shoulder. “Get along with you! When you’re my age, you may talk of taking care of yourself.”

“I’ll never be what you are, Mamma. You’ll live to be a hundred.”

“We’ll see, we’ll see.” And still clinging to her elder sons, she led the way to the dining-room.

A substantial tea was laid on the mahogany table. A plate of scones had been split, buttered, and spread with grape jelly. There was a silver dish of toasted crumpets and a glistening section of honey in the comb. There were mounds of fresh white bread thickly buttered. The old lady’s eyes lighted and her strong lips parted in a smile that showed teeth that had once been fine but were now loose and discoloured.

“Tea, Mary,” she demanded, “and let it be strong. Three lumps of sugar.”

Molly Whiteoak raised the heavy silver tea-pot, and her white forearm curving below the elbow sleeve of her dress held the eyes of her husband. He did not at once see the cup of tea that Ernest handed to him.

“Wake up, Philip,” said Nicholas. “What are you dreaming about?”

“What should he be dreaming of, but his daughter’s wedding?” said their mother. “It’s going to be a great occasion, I can tell you. Nothing so fine has happened to this family for many a day. Very different from your marriage, Nick, that cost you a pot of money and landed you in the divorce court.”

“All that was fifteen years ago, Mamma,” observed Nicholas tranquilly.

“Hm—well—” she returned, with a snort, “there have been marriages since”—and she mumbled under her breath—“no better.”

Philip’s full blue eyes were staring at her challengingly. He said:

“There’s been our marriage, Mamma. Molly’s and mine. If Meggie and Maurice are half as happy, they’ll be lucky.”

“I’m not talking about any flibbertigibbet happiness,” retorted old Adeline, hotly. “I’m talking about a marriage that is uniting two good families and two large estates. Meggie is doing well. I’m glad she is staying in the neighbourhood, too.”

“Yes,” said Ernest, dubiously helping himself to a crumpet, for he had inherited his mother’s love of food without her digestion, “it would have been sad to lose our only girl. How our family runs to males! Mamma was an only daughter in a family of boys. She had three sons and only one daughter. She had three grandsons and only one granddaughter.”

A shadow fell across Mary’s face, for she had buried a five-months-old daughter. She cast a reproachful look at Ernest which he interpreted as a warning against eating the crumpet.

“Hm, well,” he muttered. “After a strenuous game of tennis, I don’t believe one crumpet will hurt me.”

“Don’t come to me for sympathy,” said his brother, “if you have wind on the stomach.”

Ernest returned crisply—“I should never expect sympathy from you.”

“Listen to the hardy athletes!” said Philip, spreading clotted cream on his scone and introducing it in one bite into his mouth.

Nicholas and Ernest smiled good-humouredly. Philip, at forty-four, was very much the younger brother to them, and they could afford to be tolerant toward him, for his generosity never questioned the length of their visits in his home. They had had their share of their father’s fortune. His house and land, with a fair income, had been left to Philip, his youngest and favourite son. As long as their money had lasted, Canada had seen little of Ernest and Nicholas. London was their natural home and they had only returned to Jalna when there was nothing else to do. Ernest still hoped, if some of his investments recovered, to spend at least a part of each year in England.

As for their mother, old Adeline, her feelings toward Philip baffled even herself. She loved him and sometimes almost hated him. She resented his being the master of Jalna which, she felt, should have been left to her absolutely. How she would have brandished that ownership as a bludgeon and as a bait over the heads of her three sons! Unlike Nicholas and Ernest she felt no tolerance toward Philip because of his hospitality. She was saving of her own fortune and established an air of mystery about it.

She resented Philip’s physical resemblance to her own Philip, the husband she had loved with all the force of her fiery nature. But perhaps it was less his resemblance than his differences to his father that irritated her. Captain Whiteoak had been a soldier, with a body as straight as a sword. Philip was an easy-going gentleman-farmer with an incurably indolent slouch. Captain Whiteoak had rapped out his words with military explosiveness. Philip spoke indolently. Captain Whiteoak had been a martinet to his children. Philip indulged his to the point of spoiling. Captain Whiteoak had thought a good deal of the importance of his position in the Province, for, though he had never gone into politics, his opinion had carried weight in public questions and it had been usually voiced with vigorous conviction. Philip did not care how unimportant he was.

Yet father and youngest son had one trait in common. That was their imperviousness to criticism. It was this trait that baffled Adeline. She stared fiercely at Philip in his ruffianly-looking fishing-jacket, his dishevelled hair, and realised that it was beyond her power to change him. He refused to tidy himself before coming to the tea-table to please his old mother. Her cup trembled with anger as she raised it brimming to her lips and some of the tea was slopped.

“Mamma,” said Ernest, nervously, “must you”—he hesitated.

“Must I what?” Her eyes moved from Philip’s face to his.

“Slop your tea.” He finished the question with an apologetic air.

“Yes, I must,” she retorted fiercely. “I must—I must—I must—and no wonder! If my son comes to table looking like a pig, is it any wonder I eat like one? I must get a trough. Philip and I will muzzle our food in a trough and grunt together, eh, Philip?”

“Yes, old lady,” agreed Philip. Not to be outdone in coarseness by his mother, he added—“Have some of the clotted cream. It takes a grand hold o’ the gob.”

Ernest and Nicholas chuckled but Molly exclaimed:

“Philip, you’re disgusting!”

There was a sound of horses’ hooves on the drive and then a burst of young girls’ laughter in the hall. The door was thrown open and Philip’s daughter and her friend Vera Lacey came into the room. Vera, the young London relative of neighbours, was spending the year with her aunts. Her parents had sent her on this visit because of an undesirable love affair and she had made up her mind to turn the punishment into a thoroughly good time. Her piquant face was powdered, in contrast to Meggie’s, which shone from heat and excitement. Meg cast herself on her father’s knee and threw her arms about his neck.

“Mm” ... they cooed together, gazing into each other’s eyes.

“Isn’t Meggie a spoiled creature!” exclaimed Vera. “She should have my father for a while. She’d get no hugs from him.”

Mary Whiteoak threw an irritated glance at father and daughter. She had been Meg’s governess before she had married Philip and the girl had the same power of tantalising that had made the child a pupil to be dreaded. Mary said:

“Your father’s tea will be getting cold, Meg. Aren’t you going to tell us what you bought? Did you have your fitting at the dressmaker’s?”

Meg ignored her and pressed little nibbling kisses against her father’s cheek.

Before the coming of the two girls Mary Whiteoak had appeared, in the company of the three middle-aged men and the old woman, as nothing more than a girl herself. Now, before the exuberance of their authentic girlhood, she paled into a fragile woman, worn by child-bearing.

“Yes, yes,” urged old Mrs. Whiteoak, agreeing for once with her daughter-in-law, “leave off your snuggling, Meggie, and tell us about the town.”

Philip put his daughter from him and turned to his tea. “This wedding,” he said, “is going to put me on the rocks.”

“It was such fun!” cried Meg. “And what do you suppose Vera did? She went up to a customer in Murdocks’ and began to examine her dress, thinking she was a dummy! You should have seen the customer’s face!”

“The shops are amusing after London,” said Vera. “But let me tell you what Meggie did.”

Meg interrupted her, and the two went into peals of laughter. Exhilarated by their bursting health, Adeline helped herself to more jam and demanded another cup of tea.

“You should have seen my trousseau,” said old Mrs. Whiteoak. “There was elegance for you. I took it all the way from Ireland to India in eleven large trunks. My father hadn’t got it all paid for, they said, at the day of his death.”

Agreeable talk was at its height when the chenille curtains that hung at the folding doors which led into the library were pushed aside and Philip’s eldest son, Renny, surveyed the group about the table. He was two years Meg’s junior and was just entering manhood.

“Come in, come in,” said Ernest, testily. “You are letting an abominable draught on the back of my neck. I have been overheated playing tennis.”

“Why is he always late for tea?” growled Nicholas.

“Please don’t bring that muddy dog with you!” cried his sister, and the two girls shrieked as the cocker spaniel padded about the table, his fringed tail waving.

With a grimace, half-deprecating, half-impudent, Renny disappeared behind the curtains, put his dog outside and reappeared at the door leading from the hall.

He was a tall thin youth with a look of wiry strength, whose arrogant features already bore a striking resemblance to his grandmother’s. His skin, which in young boyhood had been creamy, was now becoming weather-beaten by exposure to sun and wind in all seasons. His vivid brown eyes flashed beneath brows so expressive that already a horizontal line across his forehead marked their animation. His hair, brown in shadow, flashed into burnished red when the light touched it. This rather extraordinary hair covered a head of definite, statuesque modelling of which Meg had once observed that if it came to beating it against a stone wall, the wall might get the worst of it. As growing boy and heir to Jalna he had been the object of so much criticism from his grandmother, parents, aunts, and uncles; his doings had been the focus of such constant speculation, encouragement, and reproof that he carried himself with an air of wariness as though always prepared to face attack.

With his entrance the attention of the two girls was fixed on him and Nicholas was forced to raise his voice and repeat to Meggie that he had had a letter from his sister and that she and her husband were sailing the following week for Canada.

“That will be nice,” said Meg, vaguely, then added, with more warmth, “I do wonder what they will bring me for a wedding present!”

“Some cast off bit of jet or pinchbeck of your aunt’s,” said old Mrs. Whiteoak, scraping the jam pot.

Meg pushed out her pretty lips. “They ought to bring me something really handsome.”

“I am sure Augusta and Edwin will bring you a charming present,” said Ernest.

“I don’t see what makes you think so,” said his mother. “Their presents are always tarnished or stink of moth balls.... More tea, Molly! Have you gone to sleep behind the tea-pot? Ha—that’s right—plenty of sugar.”

Nicholas put in—“They are bringing something more interesting than a present for you, Meggie. They are bringing a wedding guest, your cousin, twice or thrice removed—Mr. Malahide Court.”

Meg stared. “I’ve never heard of him. What a name!”

Her grandmother glared across the table at her. “Don’t you dare to poke fun at that name, Miss!”

“I wasn’t! I only said what a name!”

“You jeered! You know you did! I won’t have it! I was a Court and there’s no finer family living. And Malahide is a good old Court name. The Malahides married the Courts and lived in their castles when the Whiteoaks were yeomen, let me tell you! Perhaps you’ve forgotten that I am the granddaughter of an earl, hey? Have you forgotten that?”

Grandmother was working herself into a temper. She rapped the table with her spoon to punctuate her sentences.

“Keep you hair on, Mamma,” soothed Philip. “We all know about our noble ancestors and realise that we’re only poor Colonials ourselves. There’s no need of getting upset about it.”

“Malahide Court,” said Ernest sententiously, “must be well past forty. I remember that he came to my school in England just as I was leaving.”

“What was he like?” asked Nicholas.

“A miserable little shaver.”

“Had he the Court nose?” demanded old Mrs. Whiteoak.

“Hm, well, I don’t remember that but I know he was no beauty.”

“I am anxious to see him. I hope he will stop the summer.”

Philip raised his eyebrows. “Let us see him before we hope that, Mamma.”

Small feet were heard running in the hall and Mary’s face turned, all alight, toward the door. It opened and her elder son, Eden, pranced in.

“I’m a pony,” he declared, and galloped round the table. Mary stretched out her hand to catch him as he passed. She had lost three infants before his advent and felt no security in her passionate possession of him. He eluded her hand but was seized by Meg and rapturously kissed. Both she and Renny evinced a demonstrative affection for their little half-brothers, taking, as Mary saw it, a perverse pleasure in coming between her and them.

Now Meg asked of him—“What do you suppose I have brought from town?”

“I don’t know. A little engine for me?”

“You silly, no! But I have brought your page’s suit. White satin with a lace collar.”

“Oh.” He was impressed. “May I try it on, now?”

His mother spoke sharply. “No, Eden, you must wait till to-morrow. Your hands are probably dirty and it will soon be your bedtime.”

“See, my hands are clean!” He spread them out for inspection.

Meg took him on her knee. She put her lips close to his ear and whispered something which apparently satisfied him. He took the piece of cake Renny offered and, with a daring glance at his mother, began to eat it. The older people were still talking about Malahide Court and speculating on the reasons for his visit.

After tea the two girls took Eden to Meg’s room and locked the door.

“The idea of mother saying he must not try on his page’s suit!” exclaimed Meg. “That is always her way—to spoil our pleasure if she can.”

“It must be horrid,” said Vera, “having a stepmother.”

“It’s abominable! Especially when she was once one’s governess. She attacks one from both angles. But Renny and I don’t knuckle under.” She dipped the corner of a towel in her ewer and wiped Eden’s face and hands. He looked earnestly into her face.

Vera unfolded the suit from its wrappings. “It’s nice,” she said, “that you are so fond of her children.”

“Please don’t call them hers! She had them—the best thing she’s ever done—but they are perfect Whiteoaks.”

“This one looks like her, doesn’t he?”

“Hm, he has her colouring, but he’s just himself.”

She had taken off his sailor suit and he stood in his vest before them, white, fragile, yet proudly built. Meg began to dress him in the white satin garments.

When they went down they found that the family had moved out to the lawn to enjoy the late sunlight. Philip, Nicholas, and Ernest stood together admiring the house. It faced the sun serenely as though conscious that everything about it was in exemplary order. No crumbled brick or rotted shingle or sagging shutter was there to take from its air of solid well-being. The bulk of the stables was concealed by a group of stalwart evergreens, and stretching far behind it were spread the six hundred acres of farm and woodland, pasture, ravine, and winding stream that had been, half a century before, reclaimed by Captain Whiteoak from the wild.

Renny had picked up a tennis racquet and was sending balls into the net. Old Mrs. Whiteoak possessed herself of the other racquet and faced him.

“Now then! Now then!” she challenged. “A ball to your grandmother, young cock!”

Renny, laughing, sent one softly bouncing toward her. She ignored it and stood with the racquet four-square to her shoulder, formidable-looking in her large ribboned cap.

“You call that a ball! D’ye think I’m so weak as that? Come now—a good one!”

Renny eyed her menacingly.

“Renny!” cautioned Ernest, “be careful.”

“Mind your own business, Ernest!” she ordered. “Am I playing this game, or are you?”

A ball shot straight at her cap.

She caught it on her racquet and returned it over the net with no mean blow, but she could not risk another. She grinned triumphantly.

“Well, now, do you say I can play tennis?”

“You’re a marvel, Gran!”

He laughed across the net and came to her. She took his arm and squeezed it.

“The girls are coming. See what they’ve done?”

Meg and Vera descended the steps to the lawn with Eden between them.

“Look, Daddy!” cried Meg. “A rehearsal!” She put the hem of her dress in Eden’s hands and moved sedately across the lawn followed by Vera.

“Splendid!” exclaimed Nicholas.

“By Jove, the child looks beautiful!” said Ernest.

Philip met his daughter and she laid her hand on his arm. “Now then, Mamma, you’ll have to be the parson. Renny, can’t you produce the groom?”

“I don’t like rehearsals of solemn things,” said his mother. “They bring bad luck. Come to Granny, darling, and show her your fine new suit.”

But Eden kept fast hold of Meg’s skirt, bearing himself with dignity.

Renny gave a shout. “Hello, here’s Maurice! Come along, Maurice! What price the laggard groom!”

Maurice Vaughan advanced through a small wicket gate set in a hedge of cedar. He had crossed the ravine which divided his father’s property from Jalna and had picked on the way a bunch of white trilliums.

“Good man!” exclaimed Philip, delighted. “He’s here—nosegay and all!”

Nicholas began to boom the Wedding March.

“What’s it all about?” asked Maurice.

“A rehearsal,” said Mrs. Whiteoak, “and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I’ve a superstition about it.”

Maurice came to his fiancée and put the lilies into her hands. He made a little old-fashioned bow, but there was a gravity in his face, a heaviness in his eyes that took the light from Meggie’s. She held the flowers to her, and asked:

“Is anything wrong?”

He shook his head. “No. Well, my father is not very well. Mother and I are worried about him.”

“I’ve known your dad all my life,” said Philip, “and I’ve never known him well. Don’t you worry about him. He’ll outlive us all.” He tossed up Eden. “Now what do you think of this for a page?”

Maurice smiled and Meg’s face cleared.

Mary now came out of the house carrying her younger child, a boy of twenty months whom they called Peep. He sat very straight on her arm determined not to be sleepy, though he knew he was being brought out to say good-night. He had a skin of exquisite pink and whiteness, thin fair hair and intensely blue rather prominent eyes.

“Oh, I call it a shame to have put that suit on Eden!” she said angrily. “He will be getting a spot on it.” But she smiled in delight at his beauty when he darted to her side.

“See me! See me!” he cried.

Renny followed him. “Give Peep to me,” he said. “Then you can look after Eden.”

Half reluctantly she surrendered the baby. He leaped, crowing, into Renny’s arms who carried him to where Maurice had moved apart.

Renny thrust the child’s downy head against Maurice’s face. “Take him,” he laughed. “You’ll be dandling a kid of your own one day. Let me see how it becomes you.”

Maurice drew back as though struck.

“For Christ’s sake, keep it away from me!” he said, thickly. “Renny, I must see you alone! You must get rid of those girls and come with me into the ravine. I’ve something terrible to tell you.”