03 Mary Wakefield (19 page)

“I’ll show you,” Adeline answered with gusto. “Step back and I’ll show you. Put your arm round my waist, Philip … You might play me a waltz, Nicholas.”

Before Philip could stop himself he put an arm about her waist. He held her rigidly a moment, then drew himself decisively away. He strode to the door and from there he said, with an angry tremor in his voice:

“I tell you all that you are wasting your time and had better be in your beds, for nothing you can say will make me dismiss Mary Wakefield and that’s flat.”

They heard him going up the stairs.

Adeline’s face fell. Then she brightened. “Ernest, you put your arm about me and we’ll show them.”

“I can’t, Mamma. It would be quite different.”

“The point is,” said Nicholas, through a yawn, “that Philip is in one of his mulish moods. Nothing we can say will change him.”

“He is adamant,” said Augusta. “But he cannot go on being adamant, if he feels disapproval of his behaviour from every side, combined with complete restraint and perfect politeness.”

“Augusta is quite right,” said Ernest. “Also I am positive that Philip has only a passing regard for this girl. He was lonely and she was thrown in his path.”

“By you,” added Adeline grimly.

Ernest grew pink but went on, “Tonight I noticed that by the end of the party he had had a little — a very little — too much to drink. That, combined with the moonlight, the music —”

“Good God,” interrupted his mother, “he’s thirty! He’s been
married once. If he can’t withstand a little feeble moonlight and a waltz played by Lily Pink …”

“Certainly,” said Nicholas, “she put her whole soul into her playing.”

“Then,” declared his sister, “there is something terribly wrong with Lily’s soul.”

Nicholas laughed, “I’m going to bed,” he said. “Let me take you to your room, Mamma.”

“No,” she said with sad dignity. “I’ll go alone. The time has come for me to learn that I’m a poor widow whose children will not stretch a helping hand to her.”

She kissed each in turn and, only slightly drooping, left the room. The parrot had lowered his breast to her shoulder, puffed himself and closed his eyes.

Nicholas winked at the other two. “A very fine exit,” he said.

When they reached the passage above there was silence throughout the house, except for a bubbling cosy snore from Sir Edwin.

T
HE MAJESTY
of the garnered harvest was at Jalna. Day after day heavy wagons had borne their rich loads to the barn. There never had been a better year for crops, except for the corn which Adeline would call maize. It had grown to a great height but had been battered down by a heavy storm. Nevertheless it had half raised itself again and was saved. The boughs of the apple trees were weighted by sound fruit, the Duchess, the Astrakan, the Baldwin, the Northern Spy, the pippen, the snow apple — best of all. Down where the stream passed near the stables grew a wild apple tree whose little sweet apples tasted like pears and were valued most by Meg and Renny. They hid in this tree, eating its fruit; it was always in their pockets; they stored it under their pillows for bedtime refreshment. It was responsible for lack of appetite, for hives, sometimes for pains in their insides. But nobody suspected the apple tree.

The sun, having ripened the grain and coloured the fruit, now turned his wayward strength to painting great splashes of gold and purple in the ditches and the edge of the woods where goldenrod and Michaelmas daisies drew what moisture they could find, through their tough stalks. Even the mushrooms did not escape
his colouring, for here and there appeared red ones and others that were mauve. To Adeline these were toadstools and poison and so she trained the children. They discovered the pale Indian pipes which alone never saw the sun, picked them, carried them a little way, then threw them down and trampled them.

Philip’s cows and sheep and pigs had done well, but they were of small account compared to his horses. He had made a name for himself as a breeder of the best Clydesdales in the country. Yet he was not happy, and no prosperity on the land could overcome the discomfort of his life in the house. One could not be at outs with Adeline and forget it. Her atmosphere advanced before her as an outrider — hung on her skirts like a train. If she were displeased, her displeasure was unforgettable, to herself and to its object. Now she was displeased with Philip and her displeasure was dark indeed. She was mystified because, though Philip had so bluntly refused to let Mary Wakefield be dismissed, he had so far as she could discover never seen her alone since the night of the dance. And how she had watched him and how she had watched Mary! “Upon my word,” she would say to herself, “I shall be worn out with all the watching, yet it is my duty and do it I must.” Mary was not difficult to watch, for of late she had spent most of her free time in her own room, but Philip was here, there and everywhere. She would send Ernest or Nicholas on some pretext to look for him. They well knew what was in her mind but humoured her, Nicholas cynically — feeling sure that Philip was carrying on his affair with Mary in his own indolent but persistent fashion — Ernest, anxious to prevent any alliance that would cause trouble in the family. In truth he gave only a small part of his mind to the matter, for he had anxieties of his own, of which he would speak to no one but bore them in secret.

He, Nicholas and the Buckleys were shortly returning to England. Adeline would be alone with Philip and the children. By that time, she was confident, she would have Mary on the way to departure also. She had almost entirely ignored Mary since the night of the dance but, when she did speak to her, it was with a
kind of fierce graciousness, as though in the twinkling of an eye she might bite her head off. As for Mary, the mere sight of Adeline walking towards her was enough to make her heart pound. She avoided all the family but the children. The days passed in a sort of dream. Something, she felt, was bound to happen. She could not go on like this. The pageantry of autumn began to unroll, as though in the last act of a play, in which she, the heroine, did not know her lines, did not even know whether the play were melodrama or farce. She was conscious that she was inadequate to hold her own among these other players whose roles so well suited them.

Passing the drawing-room she would have a glimpse of the two older brothers, Lady Buckley, and Adeline playing a game of whist. It would be after tea and the evening growing cool but not yet dark enough for lamplight. The sun, very low, would send its light flickering through moving branches. It was not always easy to distinguish an eight spot from a ten spot. Augusta would be holding her hand high, on a level with her eyes, to catch the light; Ernest trying not to see what cards she held, yet somehow glimpsing them. Nicholas would be wearing the eyeglasses which he had just lately taken to for reading and card playing, and from which depended a black ribbon. But Adeline, with a humorous twist to her mouth, would be scrutinizing the faces of the other players, as if from them, rather than from her own hand she would be guided in her next play.

Sometimes Mary would have a brief picture of Sir Edwin playing at backgammon with his mother-in-law. His even-featured face, between his neat side-whiskers, was as impassive as an egg. When he spoke it was in a clipped monotone, but Adeline’s voice came out, hard and clear.

“Deuce!” would come softly from Sir Edwin’s lips.

“Trey!” would be rapped out from Adeline’s strongly-molded ones.

“Doublets!”

“Quatre!” And Boney, on her shoulder, would repeat the word. If they heard Mary pass, they gave no sign.

All appeared to have forgotten the scene on the night of the party. All appeared to be hardly aware of Mary’s existence. Her dance with Philip began to seem like a dream. Yet in solitude she enacted it over again, lived it, as though it were all that were real in her life — the return down the stairs, with hair and face freshened — she scarcely knew why but — there was the hope! It had been an unacknowledged hope, without foundation, for he had not come to her once that night. Then — how the hope had been justified! It had blazed into bloom, almost stifling her with its power. Unbelievably she had found herself in Philip’s arms, his powerful body moving so lightly beside hers, his arms bounding her world. Nothing else had mattered but the sweep of their embraced bodies in the long room, lighted only by moonlight, the throb of the waltz, the scent of the nicotiana coming in at the window. There was her world, her life, she had thought. Nothing could ever be the same again! That must go on — encircling her.

But things were the same again — now painfully the same. The routine of her days, the long wakeful nights moved on, with no one to notice her changed looks, her heavy eyes. Even her hair seemed changed and did not want to curl but hung in limp locks.

She was sure that Philip avoided her, that is, when she was alone. If the children were with her he would appear as his former self, chaffing Renny, stroking Meg’s hair, asking questions to which he scarcely seemed to expect an answer, about their progress. Sometimes Mary, with an almost fierce determination, would persuade his eyes to meet hers. When they did, for an instant, it was as if they were alone together, with the beat of the waltz on the air, instead of the voices of the children, her heart would palpitate, she would look away from him speechless. If only, she thought, her position had not been so ambiguous — if only she had felt sure of her ground in any quarter. But, even with the children, even with Mrs. Nettleship and Eliza, she felt uncertain. Sometimes the children were friendly, even clinging, but again they would whisper together and eye her as an outsider. Then, she thought, Mrs. Nettleship had been at work.

Once Renny suddenly kissed her right on the mouth, then rubbed the back of his hand over his two lips and examined it.

Mary was startled, then angered. She exclaimed, “If that’s the way you feel about my kisses, don’t kiss me again.”

“I wasn’t rubbing away your kiss,” he said. “I was just finding out if the paint comes off.”

Mary flushed scarlet, but she said calmly, “You are a very silly little boy.”

“You do paint your lips though, don’t you?” Meg’s clear eyes had a tormenting gleam.

“But why?” demanded Renny. “If you’re going to paint them why don’t you paint them green or blue or something different?”

“It’s to make her prettier, stupid,” said Meg. “Nettle says so.”

One day she found Renny with an old clay pipe he had found, between his teeth, and took it away from him.

He looked at her haughtily. “Well, if you smoke I guess I can smoke too,” he said.

Mary was aghast. Was there anything the two didn’t know about her? And remarked, as though casually:

“Mrs. Nettleship again, I suppose.”

They looked at each other and laughed.

“Supposing we’d smelled it on you,” said Meg.

Renny drew his finely marked brows into a frown of disapproval.

“Miss Turnbull,” he said, “never painted or smoked.”

“Do you, Miss Wakefield?” asked Meg directly.

“That is not your affair. Now let us get on with our geography.”

“I considah it my affair,” said Renny, and intone unctuously, “I considah… I considah…” till Mary had to threaten to take him to his elders.

Nicholas, strangely enough, Mary began to look on as almost an ally. Out of his deep-set dark eyes he would occasionally give her a glance, half-mocking, half-sympathetic, as though he understood the difficulties of her position and was, at any rate, not against her. He would stand no nonsense from Renny and once when he was struggling and shouting against being taken upstairs
by Mary, Nicholas had appeared, promptly laid him across his knees and administered several salutary smacks on his behind.

Since the night of the party Mary had met Lily Pink only once. Both had been alone and they had met face to face on the public road near the church. Lily had given Mary the impression that, if she could have run away, she would.

“Upon my word,” Mary thought. “I might almost call it that ‘fateful night’.”

She went towards Lily smiling. It was late afternoon and their shadows lay long across the road.

“It’s two weeks and more since we met,” Mary said, after greeting her.

“Yes. Time flies,” observed Lily, like a grandmother. She carried a sheaf of gladioli.

“What lovely gladioli!” exclaimed Mary.

“They are for the church.”

“Are you going there now?”

“Yes. To practise on the organ.”

“You play so well. I shall never forget how you played for our dancing.”

Lily’s face quivered at the mention of that night which should, she thought, be buried in oblivion forever.

“You played,” Mary insisted, “as though you had composed the piece that very moment, for that very waltz. It was wonderful.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Lily spoke with puritanical rigidity, as though the very thought of enjoyment was base.

“And we danced rather well, didn’t we?”

“I never noticed.”

Mary was crestfallen. They drew apart.

A farmer’s wagon with a huge load of hay came down the road, the feet of the horses treading softly in the dust. The girls separated to let it pass between them. Mary drew a deep breath of the scented load. The gladioli caught a wisp and held it draped across their bloom.

“Well, good-bye,” said Lily, and then gave Mary a look, almost
of panic, “He’s coming!” she breathed and the gladioli trembled on her arm.

Philip looked singularly carefree to them, as he approached, as though their existence or the existence of any other woman meant nothing to him. He looked complete, bright and untarnished in his masculinity.

“I must hurry. I’m late,” said Lily but she lingered.

“Hullo!” he called out. “What are you two gossiping about?”

Lily looked at him in silent panic. Mary smiled and said, “We have only one subject for gossip.”

“I’ll wager I know what that is,” he said. “Me.”

Lily gazed at him in wonder. What
would
he say next!