02 Morning at Jalna (17 page)

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Whiteoak.”

“Mrs. Whiteoak!” she cried. “This is the last straw! To think that after all these years of friendship, I should be no more than Mrs. Whiteoak to you!”

Wilmott bit his nail in discomfiture.

“To think,” she went on, “that after all my many vicissitudes —”

This brought a smile to Wilmott’s sensitive lips. “
Your vicissitudes
, my dear. But, feel as sorry for yourself as you will, everybody envies you. You lead a delightful life.”

“But it is monotonous. You can’t deny that it is monotonous.”

“Better monotony than the changes that the Sinclairs have endured. Did Mrs. Sinclair tell you what is the condition of their plantation?”

“Ruin, James, ruin. But Curtis Sinclair has bought a fine house in Charleston, or what is left of Charleston. They beg us to visit them when conditions are more favourable.” She gave a start as the scampering of feet and shrieks of children came from above.

“Listen to them,” she said. “It’s a horrid game they play. Old Witch they call it.”

“Who takes the part of the Witch?”

“Gussie — and she’s even worse than the boys.”

“Dear me,” said Wilmott, “I thought Gussie was much too dignified for such a game.”

“She is at a ridiculous stage. Sometimes a wild child. Sometimes a prim miss. Sometimes shy. Sometimes forward … Listen to that! Even our youngest is into it.”

It was true. Baby Philip was noisiest of all.

Adeline sprang up. From the bottom of the stairs she called, “Children! Come straight down here!”

Reluctantly they trailed down the stairway, Augusta leading the youngest.

“You are driving me,” said their mother, “into nervous frustration. Oh, how I miss that nice Mr. Madigan! We had peace in the house when he was here.”

“It is the first time I’ve heard you say that, Mamma,” said Nicholas. “Always you said he had no discipline whatever.”

“You may thank your stars, my lad,” Adeline brought out in solemn tones, “that Mr. Wilmott is here or I would show you what discipline can be.”

“Discipline, my eye,” said Ernest.

Adeline let herself go in something approaching a scream. “Merciful heaven!” she cried. “Have I lived to see the day when I should get such sauce from a child of mine!”

“Apologize quickly, Ernest,” implored Gussie.

“Sorry,” said the little boy. “I didn’t mean nothing.”

An observer might well have thought that Adeline was about to faint were it not for her excellent colour. Now she spoke in a deep tone of sorrow.

“Bad language and bad grammar,” she mourned. “Whatever am I to do with him?”

“It’s nothing,” said Wilmott, “but association with the illiterate. He will soon forget.”

Baby Philip, seeing that Ernest was in disgrace, doubled up his little fist and hit him, but Ernest was not even aware of the blow.

“It is a puzzle to me,” said Adeline, “how these wretched children are to acquire an education in this wild country.”

“Is it wilder than Ireland, Mamma?” asked Nicholas.

“Ireland,” returned Adeline, “is the oldest Christian country in Europe. It was from Ireland that Joseph of Arimathea went to England as missionary to the barbarians of that country.”

When the children had drifted away Adeline said:

“I have engaged Elihu Busby’s daughter, Amelia, the one who was deserted by her husband, Lucius Madigan, to come as governess to my children till next spring. Then we shall take the two eldest to school in England.”

“Why don’t you send Nicholas to Upper Canada College?” asked Wilmott. “It has a quite passable reputation.”

Adeline chuckled. “Because I’m dying for a change.”

“This is extraordinary,” said Wilmott. “I had thought you were content at Jalna since your houseful of visitors has gone.”

“Everybody likes a change,” said she.

“Everybody but me,” said Wilmott.

“Lucky you!”

“Unlucky me — when you are away.”

He gave her a look half-quizzical, half-tender. It was seldom that he made a remark approaching the affectionate, and she sunned herself in it. “Poor pioneer wife that I am!” she ejaculated.

“There is one nice thing about you, James,” she added. “You understand what I mean, though I only half say it.”

“I’m glad there is at least one nice thing about me.” He now used his most distant voice.

Adeline suddenly rose and struck a somewhat flamboyant pose.

“Do you see anything remarkable about me?” she asked.

“There is nothing about you that is not remarkable, but what strikes me at the moment is that you are wearing one of those new-fangled bustles.”

She laughed, and demanded through her laughter, “Do you like it, James?”

“I find nothing to like or dislike about a bustle,” he said.

“But do you think it becomes me?”

He countered with another question.

“Does Philip like it?”

“No.”

“Then neither do I.”

Adeline pushed out her underlip in a pout which Wilmott found more attractive than the smiles of other women, but he thought the bustle was disfiguring.

Steps were coming down the stairs. The four children appeared, Gussie leading the little Philip.

“What? Are you back?” cried Adeline.

“A lovely present for you, Mamma,” said Nicholas. “We were investigating Mrs. Sinclair’s bedroom and we found these tied up in a neckerchief with a note saying ‘To be returned to my dear friends’ — but she forgot, do you see?”

“My pearl necklace,” Adeline cried, snatching it.

“My watch and chain,” said Nicholas, appropriating them.

“My moonstone ring!” Gussie put it on her slim white finger and held it up to catch the light.

“Me’s pin,” said Baby Philip, feeling it on the front of his pinafore.

“What about me?” quavered Ernest. “What about me and my gold pen?”

“Never mind, my angel.” Adeline clasped him to her. “I will give you Papa’s best pen.”

XVII

The Ivory Pen

“Where is my ivory pen?” roared Philip, from the library. “Has anybody seen my pen?”

Ernest upstairs giggled, then clapped his hand over his mouth. He waited for his mother to reply. She did. “Your ivory pen, Philip?” she called back. “Your best ivory pen?”

“You know very well,” he roared, “that I have only one ivory pen. I want to know who took it.”

“Did you by chance give it to anyone?” she asked, with a wink at the children.

“I want to know where it is,” he shouted. He was now at the bottom of the stairs. “I’d not be such a fool as to give it to anyone.”

“Perhaps Mrs. Sinclair took it.”

“I had it yesterday. Somebody in this house took it and I pity him.” His eyes ran over the group at the top of the stairs, coming to rest on Ernest.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Adeline, her voice full of sweetness. “We’ll all go down and help you search for it. Come, children.”

They trooped down the stairs. At the bottom she said to Philip, “Have you thought of the possibility of Nero’s having taken it? He might have looked on it as mere bone and chewed it up.”

“Nero would not have taken it off my writing table.”

Nero, from his place on the bearskin rug, rolled up an innocent eye. He yawned, as though to prove that no morsels of ivory clung to his teeth. Never, he intimated, would he offer any criticism of the family, but it was necessary for him to defend himself.

Ernest squatted, looking into Nero’s mouth, again stretched in a yawn. “I see no signs of a pen,” he said.

Nicholas also squatted in front of Nero. He said, “His tongue certainly would be bloody.”

Nero now rolled over on his back, as though posing his body for inspection.

“His feelings are hurt,” said Augusta.

“He is innocent,” said Philip, “but someone has meddled with my things and I’m going to find out who it is.”

“The best thing to do,” said his wife, “is for all of us to search together. Come, children.” They began to ransack the room. Augusta was of an age to be critical of her parents. She asked herself, “Why should they go on like this?” Listlessly, knowing there was no hope of discovering the pen — she had seen it in Ernest’s room — she peered into corners. To Nicholas it was great fun. He began to open the drawers of the bureau bookcase and examine their contents.

“I have an idea,” exploded Philip.

“Have you really?” answered Gussie. She intended to be polite but Philip did not like the remark. His eyes became prominent. “What is there peculiar in my having an idea?” he demanded.

“It depends on the idea,” she said, but she trembled a little at his expression.

“Ideas are more often mine,” said Ernest.

“If I hear anything more from you,” said his father, “I’ll put you across my knee.”

Philip went on, now addressing Adeline, “What I think is that Boney has stolen my pen.”

In great good humour Adeline led the way to the bedroom shared by Philip and her. Boney was in his cage hanging head downward from his swing. He gave a malevolent look at Philip. “I hate Captain Whiteoak,” he enunciated clearly.

“Of course you do,” said Philip, “you old devil, and that’s why you’ve stolen my pen.”

All began to search the room while Boney, head down, cackled derisively. On Adeline’s dressing table Ernest found a bit of treacle toffee wrapped in paper. He put it in his pocket.

Finally Philip said, “I can’t waste any more time. I must use my old pen. One thing is certain, I will not have any more birds in this house.” He stalked out. At the door he turned. “If one of you children should find the pen,” he said, “you’ll get a reward.”

“Now is your chance,” Adeline said to Ernest, “to get a nice reward.”

“I prefer the pen,” he said.

However, the more he thought about his moral responsibility, the less happy he was. With the lump of treacle toffee in his cheek he lay on the sofa in the schoolroom considering his position. He had not stolen the ivory pen. His Mamma had stolen it — then given it to him. Yet once she had told him that what belonged to husband belonged to wife also. Children for instance. If Mamma had not stolen the pen, who had? Yet Gussie had once told him that to receive stolen goods was as bad as stealing.

Gussie now came into the room. He asked her, “What should I do with the pen, Gussie?”

She answered firmly, “Give it back.”

“To Papa?”

“Certainly.”

“But he would be hard on me. Oh, Gussie, I don’t like to be whacked.” Tears filled his eyes.

“Then give it to Mamma.”

“But I can’t bear to part with it.”

Gussie came and looked at him. Her eyelashes were a black fringe on her long pale eyelids. She had fastened a small sofa cushion under her skirt at the back to represent a bustle. “Do you like it?” she asked.

“It’s lovely.”

She turned her profile to him, that he might the better view the bustle.

“It may be a bit too big,” she said.

“The bigger the better.”

Gussie looked at him with disapproval.

“How can you know? You have never seen a bustle in your life till Mamma’s.”

“I like them big,” he persisted. “And I like hoops big and I like waists small.”

“Oh, Ernest,” suddenly she broke out, “I wish I were pretty.”

He was astonished. “I thought you were,” he said. “I thought all girls were pretty.”

“No, indeed,” she said. “Now
you
are pretty. I heard Mrs. Sinclair say to Mamma that you should have been a girl, that you are too pretty for a boy.”

Nicholas had that moment come in. He heard what Gussie said and he danced about the room chanting, “Oh, what a pretty little boy, and what a jolly good licking he’s going to get when Papa finds out about the pen!”

Ernest took the pen from under him and gazed at it proudly. “I’m not going to give it up,” he said. Augusta swept across the room to his side, the bustle prominent. “You’ll never be happy,” she said, “while the pen is in your possession.”

“Why?” he demanded, in a trembling voice.

“Because you have a conscience. Nicholas,” she went on, “has no conscience. He will be able to enjoy wrong things without ever thinking — are they right or wrong? But you will have to keep your conscience clear.”

It pleased Ernest to hear himself so analyzed. He could not always understand Gussie but she had a way of talking almost as good as Mr. Pink’s. “That is why it is strange,” she went on, “that you should so often do bad things.”

“I try not to,” he said.

“You must try still harder, now that Mrs. Madigan is coming to live here and to teach us.”

“How can she be Mrs. Madigan?” asked Nicholas.

“Because she married him.”

“Then why didn’t she go off to Ireland with him?”

For a moment Gussie was shaken by silent laughter. Then she whispered, “Because he ran off and left her.”

“Why?”

“Because he hated her.”

“But married people can’t behave like that. They’ve got to stay together and have children,” said Nicholas.

“Not the Irish.”

“But Mamma is Irish,” said Nicholas. “Is she likely to run away?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Augusta.

Mrs. Madigan came to Jalna that afternoon bringing two portmanteaux and a bonnet box with her. She did not wear a bustle and looked askance at Adeline’s. As she had been a school mistress before marriage she felt quite capable of instructing the young Whiteoaks and keeping them in order. Her brief marriage with Lucius Madigan had made a deep impression on her. She hoped and occasionally prayed, in a cool Presbyterian way, that he would return to her.

“Do you think it would be seemly,” Adeline asked of Philip, “to put her in the bedroom that was occupied by Lucius?”

“It would be the next best thing to having him, I should say,” he grinned.

So it was arranged, but the children did not want her on the attic floor with them. When she appeared there, looking buxom and abnormally clean, the three gathered about her doorway, with looks more forbidding than welcoming.

“This room,” said Augusta, “is generally occupied by my dove.”

“A dove and a parrot in one house,” exclaimed Mrs. Madigan. “Well, I never! And flying loose! Don’t you find that they’re rather dirty?”

“We don’t mind dirt,” said Nicholas.

“We like it,” said Ernest, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

Mrs. Madigan gave him a sharp tap on the wrist. “Disgusting boy!” She spoke with severity. “I’m astonished at you.”

“He’s been told, time and again,” said Augusta, “but he forgets.”

“He’ll not forget when I’ve been here a little while.” There was something really threatening in her high-coloured face.

After a little she spoke again. “Don’t allow that bird in my room in future,” she said to Augusta. “It smells.”

“Mr. Madigan smelt,” said Ernest, and he hastened to add, “My Mamma said so.”

“He couldn’t,” she almost screamed. “It’s impossible!”

“He scarcely ever washed,” said Nicholas.

“This bed is lumpy. He said so,” put in Ernest.

“I scarcely think,” said Gussie, “that Mr. Madigan would have wanted you to sleep here.”

“I am his wife,” the governess declared firmly.

“Are you sure?” asked Ernest.

The little boy lacked the knowledge that might have made him question the legality of the union. He simply thought that it was queer. But Mrs. Madigan was incensed. “Leave this room at once, all of you, and don’t come near it again till I invite you.”

Lessons began the following morning and Mrs. Madigan declared that never in her life had she met with such ignorance. “Mr. Madigan really taught us nothing but Latin and poetry,” said Augusta.

“It’s what you call a classical education,” added Nicholas.

“And what good will such an education be to you in this country, I’d like to know?” asked Mrs. Madigan, her eyes piercing him like gimlets. “What you need to know is how many cords there are in a woodpile, how much a month you must pay a hired man if he earns three shillings a day. Also many important dates.”

“I know the date when Columbus discovered America,” said Ernest. “Ten sixty-six.”

“Wrong!”

“Mr. Madigan said so.”

“Ernest is wrong,” said Nicholas, eagerly. “Ten sixty-six is the date of the first Grand National.”

“Miss Busby,” began Augusta.

“Mrs. Madigan,” the governess corrected proudly.

Augusta gave a polite little bow. “Mrs. Madigan,” she said, “do you consider that Shakespeare was the author of his plays?”

“If he wasn’t I’d like to know who was.”

“I can tell you,” said Ernest. “It was Charles Lever.”

Mrs. Madigan was so irritated by this that she slapped him. It was a shock to all three children. They had not expected such an indignity from this woman. Though she had been a neighbour they had seen very little of her. She had appeared to them as a good-natured, rather stupid woman. Now she was in the house with them, in a position of authority.

“That will teach you,” she said, “to treat me with respect.”

The slapped cheek turned from pink to red. Ernest, after the first drawing back, sat very straight and regarded her with dignity. Mrs. Madigan treated the other two with almost too much geniality, as though to show them what it was to be in her good graces. But they did not respond. They were conceited, stand-offish children, she reported at home.

Clean sheets and blankets had been put on the bed she was to occupy. The carpet sweeper had been run over the floor. As Bessie was about to remove the few clothes that Lucius Madigan had left behind him, the governess said peremptorily, “You may leave my husband’s clothes here. I will take charge of them.”

When Bessie repeated this remark to Mrs. Coveyduck, she scarcely concealed and indeed did not try to conceal her mirth. “It hardly seems respectable,” she said. “And her not married a week.”

The children stood about the doorway of this bedroom when they had seen Amelia Madigan trudge off in the direction of her home. She scarcely could bear to wait to report on the day’s doings and how she had put young Ernest in his place.

“Do you suppose,” Augusta asked her brothers, “that she wishes he were back?”

“Of course she does,” said Nicholas. “She’s dying to have him back.”

“I wish,” said Ernest, “he would suddenly come back — right into that bed — and slap her face for her.”

“Shall you tell Mamma and Papa,” asked Nicholas, “what she did to you?”

“No,” said Ernest. “I’ll get even with her in my own way.”

His two elders looked on him with wonder, as he dragged the bulky bolster from the bed, turned back the bedclothes and laid the bolster under them. He made the bolster comfortable.

“Oh, Ernest,” exclaimed Gussie. “It looks almost too natural. I’m afraid it will frighten the wits out of the poor creature.”