Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“She must have these little naps. They refresh her. Keep her going.”
Wakefield, who stood gazing into his grandmother’s face, remarked: “Yes. She winds herself up, rather like a clock, you know. You can hear her doing it, can’t you? B-z-z-z-z—”
Meg smiled at Alayne. “He thinks of everything,” she said. “His mind is never still.”
“He ought to be more respectful in speaking of his grandmamma,” rebuked Ernest. “Don’t you think so, Alayne?”
Nicholas put his arm about the child. “She’d probably be highly amused by the comparison, and talk of nothing else for an hour.” He turned with his sardonic smile to Alayne. “She’s very bright, you know. She can drown us all out when she—”
“Begins to strike,” put in Wake, carrying on the clock simile. Nicholas rumpled the boy’s hair.
“We had better sit, down,” said Meg, “till she wakens and has a little talk with Alayne. Then I’ll take you up to your room, my dear. You must be tired after the journey. And hungry, too. Well, we’re going to have an early dinner.”
“Chicken and plum tart! Chicken and plum tart!” exploded Wakefield, and old Mrs. Whiteoak stirred in her sleep.
Uncle Nicholas covered the child’s face with his hand, and the family’s gaze was fixed expectantly on the old lady. After a moment’s contortion, however, her face resumed the calm of peaceful slumber; everyone sat down, and conversation was carried on in hushed tones.
Alayne felt as though she were in a dream. The room, the furniture, the people were so different from those to which she was accustomed that their strangeness made even Eden seem suddenly remote. She wondered wistfully whether it would take her long to get used to them. Yet in looking at the faces about her she found that each had a distinctive attraction for her. Or perhaps it was fascination. Certainly there was nothing attractive about the grandmother unless it were the bizarre strength of her personality.
“I lived in London a good many years,” mumbled Uncle Nicholas, “but I don’t know much about New York. I visited it once in the nineties, but I suppose it has changed a lot since then.”
“Yes, I think you would find it very changed. It is changing constantly.”
Uncle Ernest whispered: “I sailed from there once for England. I just missed seeing a murder.”
“Oh, Uncle Ernest, I wish you’d seen it!” exclaimed Wakefield, bouncing up and down on the padded arm of his sister’s chair.
“Hush, Wake,” said Meg, giving his thigh a little slap. “I’m very glad he didn’t see it. It would have upset him terribly. Isn’t it a pity you have so many murders there? And lynchings, and all?”
“They don’t have lynchings in New York, Meggie,” corrected Uncle Ernest.
“Oh, I forgot. It’s Chicago, isn’t it?”
Eden spoke for almost the first time. “Never met so many orderly people in my life as I met in New York.”
“How nice,” said Meg. “I do like order, but I find it so hard to keep, with servants’ wages high, and so many boys about, and Granny requiring a good deal of waiting on.”
The sound of her own name must have penetrated Mrs. Whiteoak’s consciousness. She wobbled a moment as though she were about to fall, then righted herself and raised her still handsome, chiselled nose from its horizontal position and looked about. Her eyes, blurred by sleep, did not at once perceive Alayne.
“Dinner,” she observed. “I want my dinner.”
“Here are Eden and Alayne,” said Ernest, bending over her.
“Better come over to her,” suggested Nicholas.
“She will be so glad,” said Meg.
Eden took Alayne’s hand and led her to his grandmother. The old lady peered at them unseeingly for a moment; then
her gaze brightened. She clutched Eden to her and gave him a loud, hearty kiss.
“Eden,” she said. “Well, well, so you’re back. Where’s your bride?”
Eden put Alayne forward, and she was enfolded in an embrace of surprising strength. Sharp bristles scratched her cheek, and a kiss was planted on her mouth.
“Pretty thing,” said Grandmother, holding her off to look at her. “You’re a very pretty thing. I’m glad you’ve come. Where’s Boney, now?” She released Alayne and looked around sharply for the parrot. At the sound of his name he flapped heavily from his ring perch to her shoulder. She stroked his bright plumage with her jewelled hand.
“Say ‘Alayne,’” she adjured him. “Say ‘Pretty Alayne.’ Come, now, there’s a darling boy!”
Boney, casting a malevolent look on Alayne with one topaz eye, for the other was tight shut, burst into a string of curses.
“Kutni! Kutni! Kutni!” he screamed. “Shaitan ke khatla! Kambakht!”
Grandmother thumped her stick loudly on the floor. “Silence!” she thundered. “I won’t have it. Stop him, Nick. Stop him!”
“He’ll bite me,” objected Nicholas.
“I don’t care if he does. Stop him!”
“Stop him yourself, Mamma.”
“Boney, Boney, don’t be so naughty. Say ‘Pretty Alayne.’ Come, now.”
Boney rocked himself on her shoulder in a paroxysm of rage. “Paji! Paji! Kuzabusth! Iflatoon! Iflatoon!” He glared into his mistress’s face, their two hooked beaks almost touching, his scarlet and green plumage, her purple and pink finery, blazing in the slanting sun-rays.
“Please don’t trouble,” said Alayne, soothingly. “I think he is very beautiful, and he probably does not dislike me as much as he pretends.”
“What’s she say?” demanded the old lady, looking up at her sons. It was always difficult for her to understand a stranger, though her hearing was excellent, and Alayne’s slow and somewhat precise enunciation was less clear to her than Nicholas’s rumbling tones or Ernest’s soft mumble.
“She says Boney is beautiful,” said Nicholas, too indolent to repeat the entire sentence.
Grandmother grinned, very well pleased. “Aye, he’s beautiful. A handsome bird, but a bit of a devil. I brought him all the way from India seventy-three years ago. A game old bird, eh? Sailing vessels then, my dear. I nearly died. And the ayah did die. They put her overboard. But I was too sick to care. My baby Augusta nearly died, poor brat, and my dear husband, Captain Philip Whiteoak, had his hands full. You’ll see his portrait in the dining room. The handsomest officer in India. I could hold my own for looks, too. Would you think I’d ever been a beauty, eh?”
“I think you are very handsome now,” replied Alayne, speaking with great distinctness. “Your nose is really—”
“What’s she say?” cried Grandmother.
Ernest murmured: “She says your nose—”
“Ha, ha, my nose is still a beauty, eh? Yes, my dear, it’s a good nose. A Court nose. None of your retroussé, surprisedlooking noses. Nothing on God’s earth could surprise my nose. None of your pinched, sniffing, cold-in-the-head noses, either. A good reliable nose. A Court nose.” She rubbed it triumphantly.
“You’ve a nice-looking nose, yourself,” she continued. “You and Eden make a pretty pair. But he’s no Court. Nor a
Whiteoak. He looks like his poor pretty flibbertigibbet mother.”
Alayne, shocked, looked indignantly toward Eden, but he wore only an expression of tolerant boredom, and was putting a cigarette between his faintly smiling lips.
Meg saw Alayne’s look and expostulated: “Grandmamma!”
“Renny’s the only Court among ‘em,” pursued Mrs. Whiteoak. “Wait till you see Renny. Where is he? I want Renny.” She thumped the floor impatiently with her stick.
“He’ll be here very soon, Granny,” said Meg. “He rode over to Mr. Probyn’s to get a litter of pigs.”
“Well, I call that very boorish of him. Boorish. Boorish. Did I say boorish? I mean Boarish. There’s a pun, Ernest. You enjoy a pun. Boarish. Ha, ha!”
Ernest stroked his chin and smiled deprecatingly. Nicholas laughed jovially.
The old lady proceeded with a rakish air of enjoyment. “Renny prefers the grunting of a sow to sweet converse with a young bride—”
“Mamma,” said Ernest, “shouldn’t you like a peppermint?”
Her attention was instantly distracted. “Yes. I want a peppermint. Fetch me my bag.”
Ernest brought a little old bead-embroidered bag. His mother began to fumble in it, and Boney, leaning from her shoulder, pecked at it and uttered cries of greed.
“A sweet!” he babbled. “A sweet—Boney wants a sweet—Pretty Alayne—Pretty Alayne—Boney wants a sweet!”
Grandmother cried in triumph: “He’s said it! He’s said it! I told you he could. Good Boney.” She fumbled distractedly in the bag.
“May I help you?” Alayne asked, not without timidity
The old lady pushed the bag into her hand. “Yes, quickly. I want a peppermint. A Scotch mint. Not a humbug.”
“Boney wants a humbug!” screamed the parrot, rocking from side to side. “A humbug—Pretty Alayne—Kutni! Kutni! Shaitan ke khatla.”
Grandmother and the parrot leaned forward simultaneously for the sweet when it was found, she with protruding wrinkled lips, he with gaping beak. Alayne hesitated, fearing to offend either by favouring the other. While she hesitated Boney snatched it, and with a whir of wings flew to a far corner of the room. Grandmother, rigid as a statue, remained with protruding mouth till Alayne unearthed another sweet and popped it between her lips, then she sank back with a sigh of satisfaction, closed her eyes, and began to suck noisily.
Alayne longed to wipe her fingers, but she refrained. She looked at the faces about her. They were regarding the scene with the utmost imperturbability, except Eden, who still wore his look of faintly smiling boredom. A cloud of smoke about his head seemed to emphasize his aloofness.
Meg moved closer to him and whispered: “I think I shall take Alayne upstairs. I’ve had new chintzes put in your room, and fresh curtains, and I’ve taken the small rug from Renny’s room and covered the bare spot on the carpet with it. I think you’ll be pleased when you see it, Eden. She’s a perfect dear.”
Brother and sister looked at Alayne, who was standing with the two uncles at a window. They had opened the shutters and were showing her the view of the oak woods that sloped gradually down to the ravine. A flock of sheep were quietly grazing, tended by an old sheep dog. Two late lambs were vying with each other in plaintive cries.
Meg came to Alayne and put an arm through hers. “I know you would like to go to your room,” she said.
The two women ascended the stairway together. When they reached Eden’s door Meg impetuously seized Alayne’s head between her plump hands and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m sure we can love each other,” she explained, with childish enthusiasm, and Alayne returned the embrace, feeling that it would be easy to love this warm-blooded woman with a mouth like a Cupid’s bow.
When Eden came up, he found Alayne arranging her toilet articles on the dressing table and humming a happy little song. He closed the door after him and came to her.
“I’m glad you can sing,” he said. “I had told you that my family were an unusual set of people, but when I saw you among them I began to fear they’d be too much for you—that you’d get panicky, perhaps, and want to run back to New York.”
“Is that why you were so quiet downstairs? You had an odd expression. I could not quite make it out. I thought you looked bored.”
“I was. I wanted to have you to myself.” He took her in his arms.
Eden was at this moment inexplicably two men. He was the lover, strongly possessive and protective. As opposed to this, he was the captive, restless, nervous, hating the thought of the responsibility of introducing his wife to his family, of translating one to the other in terms of restraint and affection.
She said, stroking his hair, which was like a shining metallic casque over his head: “Your sister—Meg—was delightful to me. She seems quite near already. And she tells me she had this room done over for me—new chintz and
curtains. I am so glad it looks out over the park and the sheep. I can scarcely believe I shall have sheep to watch from my window.”
“Let me show you my things,” cried Eden, gaily, and he led her about the room, pointing out his various belongings from schooldays on, with boyish naïveté. He showed her the ink-stained desk at which he had written many of his poems.
“And to think,” she exclaimed, “that I was far away in New York, and you were here, at that desk, writing the poems that were to bring us together!” She stroked the desk as though it were a living thing, and said, “I shall always want to keep it. When we have our own house, may we take it there, Eden?”
“Of course.” But he wished she would not talk about having their own house yet. To change the subject he asked, “Did you find Gran rather overpowering? I’m afraid I scarcely prepared you for her. But she can’t be explained. She’s got to be seen to be credible. The uncles are nice old boys.”
“Do you think”—she spoke hesitatingly, yet with determination—“that it is good for her to spoil her so? She absolutely dominated the room.”
He smiled down at her quizzically. “My dear, she will be a hundred on her next birthday. She was spoiled before we ever saw her. My grandfather attended to that. Quite possibly she was spoiled before ever he saw her. She probably came into the world spoiled by generations of tyrannical hot-tempered Courts. You will just have to make the best of her.”
“But the way she spoke about your mother. I cannot remember the word—flibberty-something. It hurt me, dearest.”
Eden ran his hand through his hair in sudden exasperation. “You must not be so sensitive, Alayne. Words like that are a mere caress compared to what Gran can bring out on occasion.”
“But about your dear mother,” she persisted.
“Aren’t women always like that about their daughters-in-law? Wait till you have one of your own and see. Wait till you are ninety-nine. You may be no more sweet-tempered than Gran by then.”
Eden laughed gaily, but with an air of dismissing the subject, and drew her to the chintz-covered window seat. “Let’s sit down here a bit and enjoy Meggie’s new decoration. I think she’s done us thundering well, don’t you?”
Alayne leaned against him, breathing deeply of the tranquil air of Indian summer that came like a palpable essence through the open window. The earth, after all its passion of bearing, was relaxed in passive and slumbrous contentment. Its desires were fulfilled, its gushing fertility over. In profound languor it seemed to brood; neither on the future nor on the past, but on its own infinite relation to the sun and to the stars. The sun had become personal. Red and rayless, he hung above the land as though listening to the slow beating of a great heart.