Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“Oh, but that would have been cruel! It would have broken Maurice’s heart.”
“And serve him right! But that’s neither here nor there. What I’m going to say is — why not let my cousin here ride your horse? He’d do it gladly. And rides like a centenarian — or whatever they call those beasts. Don’t you, Malahide?”
Malahide had been sitting limply, with legs outstretched, in a low wicker chair. A kitten had appeared and walked the length of his wand-like body from ankle to neck. It stood now on his chest, rubbing first one cheek, then the other, against his chin. Malahide seemed hypnotized by its attentions.
“Do you hear what I’m saying, Mally?” demanded Adeline.
He opened a slit of one languid eye. “I’d be delighted, I’m sure,” he said. “I can ride any sort of nag.”
Robert Vaughan looked ruffled, and Adeline hastened to explain: —
“Malahide thinks that all horses that are not Irish are nags.”
“This horse had an Irish sire. She’s from your own stables, Mrs. Whiteoak.”
“Of course, I know her well. I will take Malahide to see her before we go, if you’d like him to ride for you.”
Robert Vaughan could not believe in Malahide’s horsemanship, but the thought of having someone to talk to about his mare, of watching its schooling for the Show, revived his spirits. His interest in horses had been cultivated chiefly by his proximity to the horse-loving tribe at Jalna. Perhaps because of that his chief pleasure in showing his beasts lay in outstripping the Whiteoaks. He had heard rumours of Renny’s colt.
After further conversation, in which Malahide only faintly joined, Adeline said to Mrs. Vaughan: —
“Let us leave the men to talk things over. I’d like a word alone with you, my dear.”
As she passed Robert Vaughan’s chair she gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder. “It will put new life in you to see Malahide mounted. He’s bound to win for you.”
Robert Vaughan looked up at her admiringly.
“It shows how much you have my recovery at heart,” he said, “when you are willing to help me win from Jalna.”
“Your mare,” she returned, brusquely, “was bred in our stables and will be ridden by my kinsman. It would be all to our credit.”
Inside the sitting room she said to Mrs. Vaughan: —
“Now, then, let me have a look at the child.”
Mrs. Vaughan had been expecting this and she shrank from it, but she could not refuse.
“I will bring her down here,” she said, “so you need not climb the stairs.”
“I’m better able to climb them than you are,” said Adeline, “I’ll go up.”
They found the infant asleep in a bassinet in Mrs. Vaughan’s dressing room. In one hand it grasped the rubber tube of a feeding bottle, the nipple of which was still wet. Downy dark hair clung in moist rungs on its head, which, like the bud of a flower, pushed, tender and relentless, from its sheath. As they looked down on it, its lips widened in a secret smile that flickered a moment across its face and was gone.
“It hears the angels,” whispered Mrs. Vaughan.
“More likely it’s just wet itself,” said Adeline.
As though in reproach the baby opened its eyes. They looked up, in deep, dark brightness. Mrs. Vaughan took it up and laid it against her broad breast. She crooned to it.
“You love it, eh?” said her visitor.
“Ah, I can’t help loving it!”
“H’m, well, you’ve a stronger stomach than I have! Now I think I’ll take Malahide to see the horse.”
Mrs. Vaughan was deeply hurt. She did not offer to accompany them to the stable. Her excuse was that she must not leave her husband.
Adeline clung fast to Malahide’s arm as she trudged toward the stable. With the other hand she clutched the voluminous folds of her dress, showing her broad-toed shoes that were planted arrogantly, as though the path questioned her right to tread on it.
“A poor, paltry little stable,” she said. “Yet it and that house were the finest about here, till we came and built Jalna. That was a bitter pill for Robert Vaughan‘s father, I can tell ye. I and my husband and my two children — little toddlers, then, — stopped with the Vaughans while our house was being built. It was all we could to do keep the peace. And every time he had the chance, young Robert was for making love to me. I don’t suppose he has ever told his own boy that…. Not that I took any interest in him. He was too callow for my taste.”
“If only I had been there when you were young!” exclaimed Malahide. “I would have made you love me.”
She gave him a roguish look. “Well, well, it would have kept you busy — with my Philip about!”
“I’d have done it!” he declared, a smile lighting his swarthy face.
In the stable they found the tall three-year-old being groomed by a stableboy. Adeline compressed her lips and looked her over appraisingly. She said: —
“She can jump. I’ve seen her. And she has a good disposition — with just a spark of the devil in her — a promising combination for man or beast. I’m just the reverse — a devilish disposition with just a spark of good!”
“And I am here to fan that spark!” he said.
“Get along with you! Now, how do you like the looks of her? Her sire cost my son four hundred guineas. This mare takes after him. Renny’s grey colt is the mare’s half-brother and is the image of his dam, who is a disappointment.”
Malahide stroked the mare’s flank.
“I’ll win with her,” he said languidly, “if I have to jump her out of her hide to do it.”
“And I’ll go to see you, I will! I enjoy a good contest. But, mind you, that grandson of mine can ride. ‘The ridin’est critter that ever lived,’ Scotchmere says. But we’ll beat him, Malahide! We’ll punish him for putting that flittermouse into your room and the doggerel he taught Eden, and all his other bad behaviour. And I’ll show my son Philip that my kinsman can beat his son and that all this humouring of him leads to nothing.”
“I am of a forgiving disposition,” said Malahide, “but I don’t mind telling you that — to borrow one of the young man’s elegant expressions — I’d like to lick the daylights out of him.”
R
IVALS
I
T WAS NOT LONG BEFORE
it was known that Malahide Court was to ride Robert Vaughan’s bay mare Harpie at the Show. It was recognized that the event was in the nature of a duel between Malahide and Renny. There was also a subtle feeling (first insinuated by Meg) that, if Gallant were the victor, the slight to her by Maurice’s delinquency would receive a blow in her honour.
The fact that Malahide was to ride a horse belonging to an outsider did not increase his prestige in the house. Nicholas regarded him with more suspicion than ever. Philip turned a broad shoulder toward him when possible, while Molly and Meg were never alone for five minutes that their conversation did not turn to his hateful presence in their midst, his affectations, his clothes, the chances of getting rid of him. In Renny the feeling of animosity had so risen that he could no longer trust himself to speak with civility to him, but kept an aloof, yet vindictive silence when they were in the same room.
Malahide and Adeline were now ranged on one side with the rest of the family on the other, with the exception of the two little boys, who were unconscious of the situation, though Eden knew that Meg and Renny were not pleased with him when he was friendly to Malahide. Yet Malahide fascinated him and he would sit on his knee absorbing the strange Irish folklore which Malahide had had from his nurse. Many a night the little boy lay in his crib, his head under the clothes, shivering with fear, but unwilling to tell the cause of his agitation lest he might be allowed to listen no more.
The heat of the summer had given way to the bracing brightness of early autumn. Adeline was feeling extraordinarily well. The new teeth had made it possible for her to masticate her food thoroughly, and the benefit she so derived showed in her good spirits and general alertness. She frequently laid aside her stick, on which she had began to lean rather heavily, and walked with a firm tread, even as far as Vaughanlands.
She was enjoying the situation to the full. She magnified it to the status of fine intrigue and bold cast for power. As she and Malahide ascended the deeply shaded path beyond the ravine, on their way to Vaughanlands, she entertained feelings such as an empress might have had, with her favourite at her side and the rest of the court scheming against her.
Nothing could have been better for Robert Vaughan’s recovery than this gay, caressing autumn weather and the exhilaration of watching Malahide school Harpie for the contest. He was able to walk as far as the paddock where this took place, and there he and Adeline sat, just outside the palings, while Malahide, with skill and grace and iron determination, put Harpie through her jumps. When Robert Vaughan thought the horse was being treated a little harshly he would put up one thin hand and call out — “Careful, careful, Mr. Court. Kindness is everything.”
Adeline would grin and wish that she and Malahide might have the mare to themselves. It was soon perceived, by those who looked on, that the bay had never jumped so well as she was now doing, that she was likely to be one of the best horses in the Show.
At the same time Renny was schooling Gallant, advised, derided, criticized, and cheered by his father, uncle, stepmother, and sister. Vera Lacey, too, was often there, adding her high-pitched adjurations to him flying past. Every groom, stableboy, and farm labourer who dared leave his work was on hand to watch, jealous for Jalna; and they dared much when Philip was absorbed in the activity of his boy.
It could not be said of Gallant that he had a good disposition. Irritable, sensitive, spiteful to a degree, he capered over the course, sidling from the hurdles as though in terror, backing against them instead of going over them, kicking and biting at all who approached him save Renny, yet soaring like an eagle when he did consent to jump, skimming the highest bar with the assurance of a seasoned jumper.
Those leaning against the palings of the paddock were moved to great excitement. Sometimes they feared that the boy’s neck would be broken. Sometimes Philip would utter a proud sire’s shout of approbation or Nicholas would clap his hands and send the colt spinning down the course in a frenzy of fright.
“Look out — look out!” Philip once warned him. “Don’t frighten the colt!”
Nicholas retorted — “If he can’t endure the sound of a single hand clap what will he do in a thunder of applause — and a band thrown in?”
“True, true,” sighed Philip. “He must get used to it.”
After that the onlookers let themselves go, making all the din they could. Time and again the wiry rider was thrown to the ground. When he laid himself down at night he groaned with the pain of his bruises.
Of all those who watched the schooling of the colt not one was more absorbed by it than Eden. He stood close by Philip’s side, watching the feats and failures of his hero. This year, for the first time, he was to be taken to the Show. Even the baby, Peep, was sometimes a spectator, and learned to add his lusty shout to Philip’s.
The presence of Adeline at the schooling was a source of irritation to the family. For come she did, day after day, and stood, a majestic figure, at the palings, her hands firmly grasping them, her widow’s weeds in classic folds about her shoulders. They felt that, as she had cast in her lot with Malahide, she was taking a mean advantage in so closely observing all that was going on at home.
All knew that, on an occasion when Scotchmere had been sent to Vaughanlands to see how Harpie was coming on, he had been arbitrarily ordered off by Adeline, who expressed herself as scornful of such prying. Never had it been the custom, she said, in Captain Whiteoak’s time to send spies into a neighbour’s stables.
Yet when Philip, more than a little chagrined by her watchful presence and sardonic comments, said to her — “I suppose you are keeping Cousin Malahide and Robert Vaughan well posted about what goes on here,” she returned amiably — “I like to see what my grandson is doing. And if I seem to be on Robert Vaughan’s side, it is because I’m sorry for him. He was a sick man and this interest in the Show is lifting him out of himself. To be sure, he brought on his own little trouble, for he spoiled his son, and the ingratitude of a spoilt child is sharper than the stallion’s tooth.” And she marched to her room and shut the door.
Philip stared after her, scratching his chin, on which there was a two days’ growth of yellow beard, and said: —
“Very well, very well, old lady! But you can’t make me believe that you are not for Malahide and all against us.”
Adeline was, for the only time in her life, heart and soul against a Jalna horse. Many a time she had been against her family. But, even while she felt the qualms of a traitor, she experienced no weakening in her desire to see her kinsman victorious, her championship of him justified. Then, too, Harpie’s winning would be the most potent tonic possible for Robert Vaughan, a salutary dose for her own family, and an exquisite triumph for herself.
The renewed intimacy with the doings of the stable exhilarated her. For so long she had been an onlooker. The very putting on of heavy shoes, so that she might make an excursion into the barnyard, after the schooling of the Show horses was over; the very smell of the harness room and the acrid scents of the barnyard, filled her with an urgent vitality.
While Philip and Nicholas were able to regard their mother’s behaviour with a certain degree of tolerance, Molly and Meg could find no excuse for it. To Molly it was a direct reflection on Philip; to Meg, on herself. Neither dared openly to reproach mother-in-law and grandmother, but in private they poured out their anger against her and their contempt for Malahide.
Renny was of a nature too ardent for self-control in such a situation. He and Adeline were at daggers drawn. He would stalk past her without so much as a nod in her direction, and when she, affronted, exclaimed — “Can’t you speak to your grandmother, unmannerly cub?” his fiery eyes met hers with a hostile stare and he retorted — “What have you to say to me but to find fault and jeer?”
One afternoon he came in tired and aching. He had not only been helping Scotchmere with the schooling of several horses, but he had been crowded against the side of the stall by Gallant, and was consequently in a bad temper. He saw that his grandmother was the only other occupant of the sitting room. She too looked flushed and tired, and she was searching through a velvet bag which she always carried for her spectacles, which she was always losing. She rose stiffly from her chair and went to the writing desk and fumbled among the papers there.