Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
The family turned to him with their first and last expressions of gratitude. Grandmother stretched out her hand and took his. She said: —
“Well, that’s handsome of you, Malahide. It’s a good thing I have you to lean on. It is indeed.”
“Mamma, you know how it is,” said Ernest. “We cannot bear to see you suffer.”
“Suffer!” she retorted. “I will not suffer! And, if I must, it won’t be the first time. I suffered enough when I brought your miserable little carcass into the world.”
Ernest gave a chagrined smile, while his brothers burst into laughter and Augusta frowned in sympathy with him. Sir Edwin remained, as he always did, unruffled in their midst.
“Shall you have them all out at once?” he asked.
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” she returned easily. “Malahide and I will use our own discretion.”
Malahide smiled under his long nose, and Renny pinched Meg’s thigh beneath the table.
In the two days that followed, Adeline showed no depression in the ordeal awaiting her. Rather she seemed exhilarated, and her preference for the company of her kinsman tended to exclude all others.
On the third day she ordered Hodge to bring round the carriage at ten o’clock. At a quarter past nine, she was dressed in her velvet dolman and heavy widow’s veil, thrown back from her strong old face. She sat waiting in the drawing room by a window that overlooked the drive, her parrot on his perch at her side. She stroked him with a hand that trembled a little.
“Poor old Boney,” she murmured. “Soon I’ll be like you. Not a tooth in me head!”
He undulated his neck to rub his beak against her palm. “
Dilkhoosa
…
Mera lal,
” he muttered softly.
Five minutes before the hour of departure Cousin Malahide appeared.
“Ready and waiting, eh?” he said.
“I’m always prompt,” she returned tartly. “I’ve been sitting alone for nearly an hour.… Look at that son of mine! Does he care how I sit alone?” She nodded toward the window past which Philip was strolling, rod in hand, an old coat sagging on him, his hair dishevelled.
“Where are your other sons?” asked Malahide, in a tone that emphasized their neglect.
“Nicholas is still in bed. Ernest is buried in a book. I should go to my trial alone but for you, Malahide. Ha — here come the horses!”
Hodge brought them up before the door with a flourish. Adeline entered the carriage rather heavily, her veil falling forward about her face. Hodge tucked the rug solicitously about her knees. Malahide patted her hand.
“It will be over soon,” he said, soothingly.
The first brilliance of summer was undimmed. Noonday had not yet violated the freshness of the morning. The young leaves unfolded to their utmost and the fields generously spread themselves on either hand. Where there had been one blade a week ago, there were now a hundred. Adeline thought: —
“The land is at the time of increase, but I am at the time of decrease. H’m — well, I’m not done yet. I’ll get new teeth and I’ll hold my own at the board. I wish I had one of my own children with me instead of Cousin Malahide.”
She straightened her shoulders and looked past Hodge’s back at the fine flanks of the chestnuts. Malahide took her hand in his.
He was still holding it when they returned to Jalna. Ernest hastened to the carriage door to open it for his mother. He looked anxiously into her face. Its colour was heightened, but, when she smiled at him, he saw, with a mixture of relief and dismay, that she still had her teeth.
“Why — why,” he stammered, “Mamma, you have not had them out!”
She returned haughtily: “Did I say that I was going to have them all out at once? I did nothing of the sort. I said I was going them out. And I am. One a day, till they are gone! I had my first one out this morning. Look!” She opened her mouth wide and displayed the gory cavity left by a large double tooth.
Ernest peered at it squeamishly. “It looks very sore. Did you have the injections, Mamma?”
Still with her finger at the corner of her mouth, she answered: —
“Not I! The surgeon showed me the instrument, but I didn’t like the looks of it at all. ‘I’ll not have it.’ I said. ‘Pull my teeth in the old-fashioned way,’ I said. ‘One a day till they’re all out,’ I said.”
“She was positively Boadicean,” said Malahide.
She was in great good humour. She talked throughout the one o’clock dinner of the skill, the kindness, the efficiency of the dentist. She had a word of praise for Malahide and his timely support.
“How many teeth has she?” Philip said gloomily of his elder brother.
“Sixteen,” growled Nicholas. “She’ll go on like this for sixteen days.”
Philip hunched a broad shoulder. “Well, we must just put up with it.”
“We should be thankful,” observed Augusta, “that she can extract pleasure from the extractions.”
But it was pleasure mixed with apprehension. Adeline was in a state of exhilaration from the time of her return home till she went to bed, but the next morning there was a different tale to tell. She woke with a cloud hanging over her. By the time she had taken her porridge and mumbled her toast, she was in a state bordering on panic. By the time she was dressed she was in a villainous temper. Fully an hour before the moment when Hodge was due to appear with the bays, she was established in her chair in the drawing room, staring gloomily between the folds of her widow’s weeds. Alternately she compressed her mouth in iron determination or with caressing tongue dolefully sought the familiar surfaces of those well-worn grinders.
Her parrot, always sensitive to her mood, would ruffle himself on his perch, peck at the grey scales on his legs, and now and again, in a metallic whisper, give vent to Hindoo curses.
At this hour Philip was never to be seen. Nicholas had developed a timely attack of lumbago and spent his mornings in bed. So it was Augusta and Ernest who did what they could to help their mother through this trying period. They got small thanks for their sympathy. The hour never passed without some shrewd dig from her that made them wince. It was with deep relief that they saw Cousin Malahide enter and offer her his arm.
But the return! The fine hilarity of the return! The bays, eager for their noontime feed, would have broken into a gallop if it had not been Hodge’s tempering rein. Their hoofs scattered the clean gravel of the sweep on to the freshly shorn grass. Hodge beamed as he sprang down to open the door. All the family were gathered to see her then. She opened her arms wide to the one who was nearest, and clasped him to her breast. “I’ve done it again!” she would exclaim. “And a rare old monster it was, with roots like serpents! I tell you the surgeon had nigh to lift me out of the chair to draw it! Malahide will tell you. He had it wrapped up in a bit of paper to show.”
And Malahide, with a smirk of satisfaction, would produce the sanguine relic.
On and on for sixteen days, sparing the intervening Sundays, till she owned no tooth in her head! She and Boney sat together, he on her shoulder, rubbing his arched beak against hers.
“
Dilkhoosa
…
Dilkhoosa
…” he murmured caressingly; then, “
Nur mahal
…
Mera lal
.”
“Love names!” she would exclaim. “Beautiful Eastern love names! Ah, they know how to make love to a woman in the East!”
She was toothless and triumphant. She looked forward to having the dental plates installed in time for the wedding. They loomed before the family equally with Meggie’s trousseau. She revelled in the thought of the good food she would eat then. Now she was reduced to little more than pap. But she did not starve. She unearthed from the depths of a chest of old-fashioned silver a marrowbone holder. A marrowbone was ordered and simmered for hours. Three times she descended the stairs to the kitchen to test its progress. She could scarcely endure the waiting till it was served at table. Then, with it thrust firmly into the holder, she dug out spoonfuls of the smooth dark meat.
“It’s good,” she declared. “It’s very good. It will help to sustain me till I have my plates.”
She called Eden from his place and thrust a spoonful into his mouth. “This will be good for him,” she said. “It will give him bone and muscle.”
But the little boy made a grimace of distaste and spat out the morsel to the floor, whence it was snapped up by Philip’s spaniel, which sat up in front of Adeline and barked for more.
“No more, you disgraceful fellow!” she said, delving deep with her spoon, “but when I have finished, you may have the bone.”
The new teeth were a miracle of efficiency. It was a brilliant day when Malahide and she drove home with them. If ever they caused her discomfort, she denied it. The teeth were strong, well shaped, and of a colour neither too light nor too dark. She spent well-nigh an hour grinning before her glass. But this display of them came near being disastrous, for Boney, seeing the unaccustomed glitter in her mouth, flew suddenly to her shoulder to investigate, and gave one of the front incisors such a peck that he almost dislodged it. For a moment she was afraid to look, afraid to probe the spot with her tongue, but when she discovered the tooth safe and sound she was overjoyed and said: “Thank God for that!”
She felt that she should make a present to Malahide in recognition of his support through the long ordeal. She went over the contents of her jewel box and selected an earring from an ornate pair long unworn. She gave him this, and he had the diamond taken out and set into a cravat pin for himself.
He would have liked to keep the gift a secret, but Adeline was not one to hide her light under a bushel. At his first appearance wearing the pin she drew the attention of the family to it with: “Well, now, and what do you think of that? That is what I gave Mally for standing by me when I needed it. And, let me tell you, he has no cause to be ashamed of that diamond!”
The family swallowed the new abbreviation of his name, but they could not swallow the pin.
Sir Edwin nibbled at his lower lip and then said: —
“It is very handsome of you, dear Mrs. Whiteoak, but surely, — really, you know —”
“Did the pin belong to my papa?” boomed Augusta.
“No, no,” put in Ernest. “It is obviously a new one.”
“The stone,” said their mother, “came from one of my old earrings — the ones shaped like banners. The diamond hung from the tip of the banner.”
“Upon my word,” growled Nicholas, “I think it is a great shame to have broken them up. Surely you might have found something for Cousin Malahide without doing that.”
“Beautiful, beautiful earrings,” said Ernest. “I always admired them. Only the other day I wondered why you no longer wore them.”
“Such workmanship,” continued Augusta, “is not found nowadays.”
“The day will come,” said Sir Edwin pompously, “when it will again be appreciated. People will seek for just such ornaments.”
Philip murmured: “If I had known that it was a case for diamond tie pins, I’d have toed the scratch myself.”
Adeline turned to him. “Speak up! I can’t hear a word you say. Am I getting deaf, d’ye think?”
Philip raised his voice. “I said I would have taken you myself if —”
“Of course you would! So would you all! You’d have gone with me in a body — carried me there and back — if you’d thought there was anything in it for you! But I didn’t let you know. It was a test, if you like. Malahide had no notion I would make him a present, had you, Mally?”
“I hadn’t a thought in my head,” said Malahide, fingering the pin.
“Sixteen times he went with me to the dental surgeon’s, with no thought of gain in his head.” Adeline vigorously nodded her own in emphasis.
“But I really think, Granny,” put in Meg, “that, as I’m going to be married, I might have been given any jewels you didn’t want.”
“Didn’t want? Didn’t want? Who said I didn’t want? I wanted it very much indeed. That’s why I gave it to Malahide.”
“Just the same,” persisted Philip, “it wasn’t fair to the rest of us.” He began to pull burrs from the tail of his spaniel and conceal them beneath the chair he sat on.
“Look what you’re doing!” fumed Adeline. “It’s disgraceful! If your father were here, he’d give you a piece of his mind.”
“No, he wouldn’t!” returned Philip tranquilly. “Dear old Dad thought everything I did was perfect.”
Renny had come in, just in time to hear this much. He went behind his father’s chair and put a hand on his shoulder. Philip turned up his face to his son’s and they exchanged a look of affectionate intimacy.
T
HE
C
hild
R
OBERT VAUGHAN, THOUGH
he was seventy-three, woke with a sense of youthful pleasure in the summer morning. He was an early riser, but he lay still a little while in order to savour his contentment with life. Things were going as he had so long hoped they would, and feared they might not. Maurice, his only child, was an earnest youth, moderately studious, deeply interested in the affairs of the Province. It was certain that he would become a great man in his country, a leader in patriotic Liberalism. He was a trifle arrogant, but that was a natural attribute of his youth and his position. In a few weeks he was to marry Meg Whiteoak, the only young girl of the few neighbouring families which Robert Vaughan considered the social equals of his own.
From the time Maurice and Meg had been children, their parents had hoped for this; the Whiteoaks, on their side, with an acquisitive eye on the thousand acres, bought from the government by the first Vaughan, and the income of ten thousand dollars a year, mostly from good mining stocks, that went with it.
It was the first Vaughan, Robert’s father, a retired Anglo-Indian colonel, who had persuaded Captain Whiteoak to settle on this fertile southern shore of Ontario more than fifty years ago. “Here,” he wrote, “the winters are mild. We have little snow, and in the long fruitful summer the land yields grain and fruit in abundance. An agreeable little settlement of
respectable
families is being formed. You and your talented lady, my dear Whiteoak, would receive the welcome here that people of your consequence
merit
.”