The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (115 page)

“The whole affair,” Philip added, “makes me sick.”

“It makes me sick too,” Nicholas growled. “And what I don’t understand is how things could have reached such a point and neither Robert nor Mrs. Vaughan suspected anything.”

“Were you never able to conceal your doings from your parents?” retorted Robert Vaughan.

“Not to that extent.”

“No,” agreed Ernest, “and we never took up with village girls … excepting Philip once — and he was stopped in time.”

Philip looked resentfully at Ernest. He went to the sideboard and poured a drink for Robert Vaughan. He saw the table laid for three.

“I apologize,” he said, “for keeping you and Mrs. Vaughan so long from your breakfast.”

Robert Vaughan gulped down the brandy. “Help yourselves,” he said, “I’m sure you need something.”

The three brothers moved in unison to the sideboard. A more temperate atmosphere prevailed. Talking the affair over more quietly, they agreed that such things had happened before; that marriages with inauspicious beginnings had been known to turn out very well. It seemed to Robert Vaughan’s ears too good to be true when Philip Whiteoak said, with an almost friendly ring in his voice: —

“Well, the marriage is too important to our two families to be shelved. We must try to put this unfortunate happening behind us and go on with the preparations.”

“Thank you,” said Robert Vaughan, “I can promise that Maurice will never again — why, he did not care two straws for the girl — she tricked him into it.”

“H’m — what is she like? Pretty?”

“Why — I’m sure — I don’t know. I dare say.”

“I’ve seen her,” said Nicholas, “Rather an elfin creature.”

“The aunt is attractive too,” said Ernest, “in a sharp gypsy way.
Yellow hair.”

Philip laughed — “Old Ernie knows all about them!”

He took his brother by the shoulder. “Are you sure you are not the guilty father of the infant?”

Nicholas chuckled. Mr. Vaughan gave a wry smile. Upstairs the child cried.

“What is it?” asked Philip. “Not a boy, I hope.”

“No. A girl.”

“Good. Call her Pheasant.”

Robert Vaughan thought — “Shall I ever understand these people — know how they will take things?” He repeated, rather petulantly: “Pheasant! Why Pheasant? It’s a very strange name for a little girl.”

“I’ll tell you why I chose it. As I was riding here a pheasant rose out of a clump of bushes and showed herself in the sun. She was lovely and bright and it occurred to me what a pretty name for a girl.”

Nicholas poured himself another drink. “You’re a most extraordinary fellow, Philip. Fancy choosing a name for your prospective son-in-law’s bastard at a time like this!”

“But I do choose it,” returned Philip stubbornly.

“It shall be as you say,” said Vaughan, who cared little what the child should be called.

Philip drank his second whiskey and water at a gulp. “Let’s see her,” he said, almost genially. “I like babies.”

“My God!” exclaimed Ernest. “Not newborn babies! Above all, not this one!”

“I like them all. Can’t you fetch her down, Robert?”

“Won’t it look very suspicious to the servants?” said Ernest. “We’re going to face the thing out, aren’t we?”

Robert Vaughan answered — “I will simply say that a poor woman left the child on my doorstep with a note asking me to succour it. We have been charitable people, I think, so the plea will not seem unnatural. I will say that we have agreed to provide for the child. Our housekeeper is leaving to live with her invalid mother. She would be glad, I am sure, to take it into her care. She will be going quite a long way off.”

“That sounds possible,” said Ernest. “The principal thing is to deny any intimacy between Maurice and Elvira.”

“The same story will do for Meggie. She must never hear the truth,” said Nicholas.

“Poor girl,” groaned Robert Vaughan.

“I’d like to see the child,” said Philip again.

Nicholas gave Robert Vaughan a look that said: —

“We may as well humour this strange brother of mine.”

Robert Vaughan objected — “I agree with Ernest that it will look very suspicious to the servants — my bringing the child to you.”

“Rot!” said Philip. “It will put them off the scent.”

Robert Vaughan acquiesced. He went slowly out of the room, a thin drooping figure, his sparse hair brushed smoothly across his increasing baldness.

“Looks old, doesn’t he?” observed Nicholas.

“He is old,” said Philip laconically. His eye was on his spaniel, who now raised himself against the breakfast table and drew a slice of meat from the platter.

“Keno — you brute — drop it!” ordered Nicholas.

“Too late to stop him,” said Philip. “He’s hungry. So am I.”

Ernest moved nearer the table and looked down at the neglected viands spread there. “Cold ham — looks very nice too. Egg cups — they’ll be having boiled eggs as well. No porridge spoons — sometimes I think I’d be as well without it. It’s really too filling.”

Nicholas was pouring himself another drink.

“Well,” he said, “this has been a ghastly business. But, thank God, we’ve been able to patch it up! It’s a lesson for young Maurice. He’ll likely run straight for the rest of his days. There’s the comport Mamma and Papa gave Robert’s parents on their silver anniversary.”

Ernest came to examine it. Philip had seated himself on the broad window sill. He was watching his spaniel meticulously cleaning with his tongue the spot on the floor where the ham had lain. His face looked downcast, yet not unhappy. He accepted life as it came, with only an occasional outburst of protest.

Mr. Vaughan returned to the room with the child on his arm. He had felt confused coming down the stairs, had even thought for a moment that this was the infant Maurice he held. Mrs. Vaughan had taken off the plaid shawl and the baby appeared in a clean white dress. Its tiny head was misted with dark hair. Nicholas, with a sardonic smile, Ernest, with a deprecating grimace, came at once to inspect it. Philip made no haste to move from where he sat. He had lighted his pipe and was enjoying the first fragrant puff. He held one of Keno’s ears between his fingers, handling it gently as he smoked.

“How old would you say it is?” asked Nicholas.

“Between two and three weeks — my wife thinks.”

“It’s much better looking than they usually are at that age,” observed Ernest. “Tell me, did Maurice know of its birth before this morning?”

“No. He had had word from the girl that she and her aunt were leaving. He had been certain that the child would be born in the place where they are going.”

“Disconcerting for him — this!” said Nicholas grimly.

Robert Vaughan turned toward Philip.

“You asked,” he said sternly, “to see the child.”

Philip rose and came almost nonchalantly and bent over it. “Nice little thing! A pretty little girl. I hope that housekeeper will be kind to her. How does it feel to be a grandfather, Vaughan?”

Robert Vaughan shrank from the words as from a menacing hand. “I can scarcely be called a grandfather — in the ordinary way,” he said in a shaking voice.

“Damned ordinary, I should say,” observed Philip. Through pouted lips he gently blew a cloud of smoke into the infant’s face. It drew its features together in a comical way and sneezed.

Philip smiled amiably.

“I always do it to my own,” he said. “It’s amusing to watch them.”

His elder brothers were anxious to return to Jalna. They wanted their breakfast, and there was the business of breaking the news to their mother. It had been agreed that it would not be safe to keep it from her, for she would have been suspicious at once and never ceased with questioning and probing till the truth would out. She and Mary and Augusta, combined with their men, must shield Meggie.

They rode away, as they had come, in the warm sunshine, their horses’ flanks sometimes touching, Keno trotting close to the mare’s heels. Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan watched them from their bedroom window. “Thank God,” he said, “that’s over! Now you must come and try to take a little breakfast, my dear.”

But she was not interested in her own breakfast. A feeding bottle that had once been used for her son had been filled with warm milk, and she held the rubber nipple encouragingly to the child’s mouth. But it turned away its face, whimpering, and sought, with nuzzling head, for the young breast to which it was accustomed.

M
EG

N
OW SHE MINDED
the sharpness of the stone sill against her breast. She minded it very much. It seemed to cut into the tender flesh, to cut into it cruelly, right to her very heart. She was sure that the sharpness and chill of the stone had penetrated to the core of her heart. She pressed her hands there and crept back into the bed. She crept into it and drew the covers, first up to her chin, then quite over her head. All she thought at first was — “How cold I am! How cold and sharp the sill was!” Then she saw, before her tightly shut eyes, Keno’s face turned up toward her window with his fixed spaniel’s grin. As she pictured it, the grin became more and more terrible to her, till she shook like a leaf with fear of it.

She opened her eyes wide. She saw nothing but the dim paleness beneath the bedclothes. She smelt the delicate fragrance of her own body. She remembered the warm bath she had had the night before, how she had sat in the old bath from which the enamel was peeling, and scrubbed the firm whiteness of her flesh with a flannel well lathered with Windsor soap. She had been so happy she had scarcely known what to do with herself, but had lathered and splashed and only half dried herself, and left the huge bath sheet in a heap in the middle of the floor.

Now a voice came to her penetrating the bedclothes drawn over her head. It was the voice of Noah Binns and it said: —

“I’ve turrible news fur you. I guess there won’t be no wedding now.”

The words came first in a kind of sickly whisper that seemed to enter into her consciousness through her very pores. Then they were repeated louder and louder till at last they were shouted at her so that the very sheet vibrated with the thunder of them. She had a strange sensation of being under water and discovered that she was dripping with sweat. She sat up and pushed the bedclothes from her. One of her plaits had wound itself tightly about her neck. She felt as though it were deliberately trying to choke her. With a gasp she unwound it and held it in her hands, looking blankly down at the glossy curl on the end. Then she twisted the plait in her hands, wringing it and dragging at it as though she would pull it off. She threw herself back on her pillow and suddenly began to make whimpering noises. The next moment she thought she would break into loud screams and disturb the house from its sleep. But she caught the plait in her teeth and, biting on it with all her force, was able to restrain herself. At last she lay quite still.

She had a fresh and happy adolescence free from dark thoughts and morbid speculations concerning sex. Maurice had been the man she was going to marry; after the wedding he would take her to Vaughanlands to live. She had put all troubling thoughts away from her. Her mind had been filled by the preparations for the wedding. But now all the hints of lust that she had ever heard, all the phrases that puzzled her when she had read her Bible, were made clear, clarified beyond all other earthly things, made into the very sinister soul of the world. She lay motionless for a long while, deliberately recalling all she could of these things. One or two obscene words she had heard came into her mind. The gong sounded for rising and, after a little, she heard Eden’s voice laughing and chattering and the baby Peep crowing with joy. The pigeons above her eaves, which had flown away in search of breakfast, now returned and again took up the tale of
their billing and cooing. Little they know, she thought to herself, little they know!

Now the household was astir, and the familiar sounds calmed her. She began to consider how she should face her family. She knew that what had happed was a terrible and humiliating thing for a girl about to become a bride. She wondered how her father, her uncles, and her grandmother would take it. She wondered if Renny would ever speak to Maurice again.

She thought of one or two similar episodes in old-fashioned novels she had read. In one instance the heroine had shrieked and repeatedly fainted. The other had met the disaster with tragic aloofness. She felt that she must prepare herself. It was better, she thought, to have heard the news as she had so that she might prepare herself in secret.

It was odd that the sounds in the house should be so normal. She heard Aunt Augusta talking to Molly in the passage about Peep’s new tooth. She heard Renny whistling gayly in his room. Perhaps her father had told no one, but had hurried to see Mr. Vaughan and tell him what he thought of Maurice’s perfidy.

It was awful to think of Maurice as perfidious. She had always looked on him as little short of perfect. She had been so glad that he was tall and fine-looking like her father. She had thought that naturally she and Maurice would have a lot of children.

Meg tried to remember what Elvira looked like, but could only recall a pair of dark slanting eyes and hair that looked as though it seldom felt the brush. Yet this strange girl had come into her life and ruined it. Meg remembered her wedding dress, shimmering and white, inside its snowy wrappings in her cupboard. For the first time tears ran from her eyes. She buried her face in the pillow and cried convulsively.

She lay crying a long while. The house was still. Once she heard the hoofs of horses cantering in the direction of the stables. Once she heard the sharp tap of a woodpecker on the maple tree beneath her window. Both sounds seemed full of melancholy to her, like sounds heard in the depth of the night.

After a long while a tap came low down on her door.

“Who is there?” she asked.

“Eden. Mamma says would you like your breakfast in bed for a treat? She’ll bring it to you herself.”

“No. I don’t want breakfast. Go away!”

“Oh.” His tone was disappointed. He still hesitated at the door. She remembered how he had looked in his page’s suit and had to smother her sobs.