Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
Pheasant sat down facing Maurice and Adeline. “where do you suppose we were?” she asked. “We were at the Clappertons’! Really it is the strangest household! I almost feel sorry for the old fellow. I don’t think he realized, when he married that odd girl and took her odd sisters into the house, what he was letting himself in for. The house is like a menagerie. Pets of all sorts — all over the place. And it’s so untidy! And poor Mr. Clapperton has a cowed look.”
“He looked bad-tempered to me,” said Piers.
“I wish I might be hidden there,” she continued, “and hear what goes on.”
“For one thing,” said Adeline, “they can’t get any proper help. Maids won’t stay there. It was the youngest sister who did most of the work and since she’s married Mr. Clapperton’s nephew and gone to the States, things get worse and worse. Neither Mrs. Clapperton nor Althea is able to do much.”
“They have a D.P. now,” said Pheasant, “who can speak only a dozen words of English. You’ll never guess what Mr. Clapperton whispered to me, Piers.”
“what? I saw a good deal of whispering between you.”
“He told me he’s planning to get on with his model village in the spring!”
“why — he promised to give up the idea of that, to please his wife!”
“I guess he’s tired of trying to please her. Anyhow that’s what he said.”
“Renny’ll never allow it.”
“I hope he can stop it but, for my part, I don’t see much harm in a pretty little model village.”
Piers gave her a look of disgust. “A pretty little model village — right on our doorstep! Teeming with undesirable people — screaming children all over the place — I can tell you it would lower the value of our property in no time.”
“There is a terrible need for houses.” Maurice thoroughly disliked the thought of the village but some antagonism he could not resist impelled him to be in opposition to Piers.
“Let them build somewhere else,” Piers said hotly. “There’s plenty of room.”
“If Mr. Clapperton builds a lot of houses next door to us,” said Adeline, “Daddy will pull them down with his own hands. And I’ll help him.”
“Mrs. Clapperton will never let him do it,” declared Pheasant. “She has the upper hand, it’s easy to see.”
Adeline stood up very straight. “I’m going home,” she said, “to tell Daddy and the uncles.”
The baby girl clung to her. “No, no, Adeline stay with Mary!”
“I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Stay to supper,” urged Piers.
“I’ll stay tomorrow, if I may.”
Driving to Jalna Maurice said petulantly, — “why did they have to come home, just when we were enjoying ourselves alone!” He had a feeling that if he had been left alone with Adeline the barrier that separated them might have disappeared. He had many opportunities of being alone with her yet always experienced the same feeling of frustration, of inability to draw spiritually close to her. Sometimes he told himself that this would be forever impossible, that they never could be more to each other than they now were — cousins — friends — but lovers, never. Sometimes he told himself that the trouble lay in her youth. She was, in many ways, young for her years, while he felt himself more mature than his parents. Yet he knew that in their eyes he had not touched even the fringe of experience. He knew that to Piers he was no more than a callow, rather irritating youth, to Pheasant her little son, growing up, of course, but still her little son. One thing Maurice was sure of — Adeline would never grow up in the way he wanted her to while she lived at Jalna. He was the outsider and he wanted to draw her outside with him. If he could take her to Ireland with him everything would be different. She wanted, with all her might, to go to Ireland — but not for the sake of making anything different.
In the drawing-room, with the curtains drawn against the evening. Renny and the two old uncles sat close together in front of the fire whose light made a fragile cameo of Ernest’s face, mysterious caverns of Nicholas’ eyes, glinted on his massive seal ring and intensified the high-coloured hardiness of Renny’s face, Adeline stood regarding the three with the sombre look of one who bore tidings which would take the smiles from their faces.
“Mr. Clapperton,” she said, “is at it again.”
“At what?” demanded all three.
“His village. Uncle Piers and Auntie Pheasant just came from his house and he told her he’s getting on with it in the spring.”
Ernest struck the arm of his chair with a slender clenched fist.
“He can’t do it,” he said, his voice breaking with anger. “I will not allow it!”
Nicholas cupped an ear with his hand. “what’s this?” he demanded. “what’s that horrid old fellow up to? Ill-treating his poor young wife, I’ll be bound.”
Adeline came and perched on the arm of his chair. “No, Uncle Nick — something far worse. He’s talking of building more bungalows. His model village, you know.”
“But we stopped that years ago.”
Renny gave a short laugh. “He perennially brings up the subject, but his wife will never let him go on with it. He’s completely under her thumb.”
“And the right place for him, too,” said Nicholas.
“I shouldn’t be too sure of that,” Ernest said judicially. “I should look into the matter. Tell him I will not allow it.
“A lot he cares for you,” chuckled his brother.
“He has the greatest respect for my opinion, as he has told me on more than one occasion.”
“It was a bad day for everyone when he came into the neighbourhood,” said Renny. “I hate the sight of him. I think I’ll go straight over and see him.”
A TRIO AT HOME
After Piers and his wife had left Vaughanlands the three people who made up the family sat silent for a short while, each occupied with thoughts which their calm exteriors belied. Eugene Clapperton, grey-haired, rigid, thought — “why did I tell Mrs. Whiteoak I was going to start building again? Gem would never agree to it. But I had to tell her. It made me feel better. It made me feel my own rd again. And certainly if I want to realize my life’s dream I’ll not let her prevent it. God, when I think what I’ve done for her — and her ingratitude! It makes me sick. To think she wouldn’t have been able to take a step today, if it hadn’t been for me! Look at the luxury I keep her in, and she was poor as a church mouse. If only I knew what is in that head of hers! Ingratitude and conceit. You’d think she owned the house. She likes to put me in the wrong — make me look small.… If only I didn’t love her it wouldn’t be so bad! But she’ll try me too far.… There’s a limit even to my endurance.” He sat smiling a little, his eyes blank, his thin ankles interlocked against the front of his chair.
His wife thought, — “what was he whispering to Pheasant? Some foolish boasting I’m very sure. But she seemed worried by it. What could it have been that would make her look anxious? I wish he would go and leave the fire to Althea and me. His presence in the room irritates me. The way he holds his legs. The way he keeps rubbing the back of one hand with the dry palm of the other.… Yet, if his hands were moist — how horrible I dislike Eugene’s hands. The fingers are too short for his height. The thumb is coarse…. When I have him alone I will worm out of him what he was saying to Pheasant Whiteoak.
Althea, fair and ethereally slender, sat watching a dark corner of the room. She was thinking, — “I believe I heard the tortoise move. How thrilling if he’s awake! I’m glad I brought him into this warm room. He has slept long enough. This is just the place for him. As far as I’m concerned it’s my favourite room in the house and I could make it beautiful, if I could get rid of those hideous pictures of Eugene’s and put up some good ones. That fat man knitting. That shipwreck off an incredible coast. Those cows in that repulsive meadow. I should burn them all! And Eugene with them!” She gave a little laugh.
“And what do you find amusing, may I enquire?” asked her brother-in-law.
“The tortoise. He’s waking. Don’t you hear him?” A steady thumping and bumping came from a small wooden box at the end of the room.
“You have brought that creature into the best room!” Eugene Clapperton exclaimed angrily.
“It’s the best room for him. It faces south. It’s always warm. He’s been cold long enough.”
“I don’t like it at all.”
Althea turned to her sister. “The tortoise does no harm, does he?”
“Not a bit of harm. I adore him.”
The two young women sprang up and hurried to the box where the bumping continued, Althea with long, silent steps, Gemmel making sharp sounds with her high heels. They bent over the box where convulsive movements were taking place inside a piece of flannel. Althea tenderly unwrapped the creature. From between his shells his greenish legs stretched forth, feeling for security. His little snakelike head protruded, his mouth stretched in a pink yawn. He was the size of a tea plate.
“Oh, the darling!” cried Gemmel.
Althea held him rapturously in her long white hands.
“You have slept so long,” she whispered to him, “and now you are hungry. You shall have a dandelion. I have them growing in a box upstairs. Watch him, Gem, while I fly up and get him one.”
Noiselessly she left the room and they did not hear her run up the stairs. She had set the tortoise on the floor and now he began, with prehistoric deliberation, to cross the room.
“I don’t like animals crawling over my rugs,” said Mr. Clapperton.
“Oh, Eugene, I think he’s sweet.”
“He’s disgusting to me. All those animals your sister and you bring into the house are nasty. There was that enormous worm that wove its cocoon in a window curtain and in the spring a moth came out and laid eggs and the eggs turned into grubs. There was the nest of young skunks! There are the dancing mice and the toad!”
“No one,” declared Gemmel hotly, “could reasonably complain of any of those excepting the skunks and we got rid of them.”
“But not of their odour.” With disgust he watched the tortoise creeping toward him. He drew up his feet. “Take it away,” he ordered.
“Oh, how funny,” she laughed. “what a picture!”
He kicked at the tortoise, rolling it over on its back. Althea came into the room carrying a dandelion in her fingers. She gave a cry of dismay and dropped to her knees beside the tortoise whose legs weakly sought a foothold in the air.
“Poor darling!” she cried and righted it. “Oh, Eugene, how could you be so cruel?” She stared with hate at her brother-in-law who returned the look with no lessening of that quality.
“I didn’t hurt it.”
“You did! He’s lame.”
“Nonsense.”
Althea offered the dandelion and the tortoise, ending his long fast, opened his mouth wide and, with a hissing sound, drew in the blossom. The three watched him, fascinated. Then, quite uninjured by the kick, he resumed his purposeful walk.
“I want you,” said Eugene Clapperton steadily, “to take him upstairs and keep him there. I want you to keep all your pets in your own room.”
She answered, in a shaking voice, “I will. And myself, too.” She snatched the tortoise, his flannel wrapping, his box, and fled.
There was a silence after she left, embarrassed and angry on the husband’s part, amused and angry on the wife’s. After a little he said:
“That girl irritates me so I say more than I should. She’s enough to drive a man crazy.”
“You knew what she was when I married you.”
He returned bitterly, — “It’s no fun marrying your wife’s relations. In your case, two queer sisters.”
“One of them is gone. Some day Althea will marry.”
He gave a derisive laugh. “I’d like to know who would marry her.”
“Oh, she’s had her chances! She’s not like me — jumping at her first offer.”
He answered angrily, — “I have been indulgence itself to you, haven’t I?”
She looked at him in cold silence.
“Haven’t I?” he repeated. “I did a lot for you before we were married and I’ve done a good deal since. I gave up building my dream village for you and I’ve regretted it.”
“Is that what you were muttering about to Mrs. Piers?”
“Muttering, eh?
Muttering!
”
“Well, you weren’t talking in an ordinary tone.”
“I daren’t choose my way of talking,” he said harshly, “in my own house!”
“I’m sorry, Eugene,” she returned coaxingly. “I should have said you spoke in a low tone. I caught a few words that made me guess you’d brought up the question of the village again.”
“I was only telling Mrs. Piers how I regret the project. You should not have made me give it up.”
“But, my dear, you asked me what I should most like for a wedding present and I said at once I’d like to know that never, never would any more small houses disfigure the property. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And you gave me your word to stop building, didn’t you?”
“I was a fool, if ever there was one. That village had been my dream. Besides there was money in it. A good deal of money. It would have been a benefit to the community.”
She laughed derisively. “A benefit! All the neighbourhood would hate you for it.”
“The neighbours don’t care much for me, as it is. I’ve never fitted in. Nowadays I don’t fit into my own house. That tortoise is more at home here than I am. That great brute of a dog growls at me every time he sees me. Why Althea should want to keep a Great Dane I can’t imagine.”
“She has always liked animals better than people.”
“She certainly likes him better than she likes me.”
His wife came and sat on the arm of his chair. She stroked the back of his neck. “Poor old Tiddledy-winks,” she said, using her ridiculous pet name for him.
His hand was against the fullness of her breast, her heartbeats thudded in his ear, beating coherence out of his thought, filling his mind with sensual longings. “Oh, Gem,” he breathed, “I wish you’d have a baby. Things would be different somehow, if you had a baby.”
“You’re baby enough for me.” She held his head closer. He was soothed and mollified.
They sat quietly for some time.
Upstairs the dog began to bark. Eugene Clapperton said peevishly:
“I’ve never before had a dog in the house. I’ve never liked them. Every time I meet Renny Whiteoak I’m annoyed by the dogs that surround him.”
“Yes,” said Gem, “a bulldog, a bob-tailed sheep-dog, and a Cairn terrier. They’re sweet.”
“Not to me. They’re a nuisance from the day they’re born till they die. Why is that brute upstairs making so much noise?”
“Althea is getting ready to take him for a walk. He’s excited.”
“He has a brutally coarse bark, that’s all I can say.”
The barking grew louder and louder as the two descended the stairs. It was deafening as they passed through the hall. Althea looked shyly in at the Clappertons and said something but it could not be heard. Now the barking was outdoors. Now there was silence.
“This is how we should be all the time,” said Eugene Clapperton. “Alone together.”
She got up and moved restlessly about the room.
“I was a very foolish man,” he could not help saying, “to make you such a promise.”
“Well, it’s made and must be kept.” Now she had put on what he called her “sulky face,” but whatever expression she wore it was fascinating to him.
“I might remark,” he said, “that you promised to obey me when we were married. Have you kept your promise?”
“Oh, that!” she exclaimed contemptuously.
One of their long, wrangling discussions began. An unseen listener might have thought they did it to pass the time, so persistent, so purposeless, was the pattern their argument took. Althea and her dog returned from their walk and went quietly upstairs. Then the winter twilight fell and Gem turned on the lights. There was a special light under the painting of the shipwreck. The lurid sky, the white-crested waves now dominated the room. Eugene Clapperton absorbed the scene with satisfaction. It gave him who had spent all his working life in offices, a sense of peace and manly power. Nothing would induce him to part with the painting. The artist, a Victorian painter whose name did not live after him, meant little to Eugene Clapperton. It was the picture that mattered. He had bought it in an auction sale of household furnishings and, from the moment of its purchase, it had become an important thing in his life.
The lights had been on only a short while when a ring at the doorbell brought the Polish displaced person who acted as maid hurrying from the kitchen. In a moment she announced Renny Whiteoak. Eugene Clapperton, pleased by this interruption to a tiresome talk, yet a little suspicious of the reasons for such a visit, rose stiffly from his chair. He watched his wife as she gave her hand to the master of Jalna, jealous that she should so casually touch the flesh of another man.
They talked of the weather and of how spring would soon be coming to relieve the harshness of winter. It was then that Renny remarked,
“There’s going to be a lot of building this year and certainly it’s needed. People — lots of them — can’t find a roof to cover their heads.”
“True, true,” said Eugene Clapperton, sententiously. “I think that the way people are crowded together is very bad indeed. Bad for health. Bad for morals.”
“Let’s hope these development schemes will keep away from here.” There was something almost threatening in Renny’s tone. Clapperton replied:
“I quite agree that building in our neighbourhood might be a misfortune.”
“Might be!”
Renny repeated vehemently. “God knows it has been and is. Much of what was lovely country is ruined — what with putting up and cutting down. Do you remember the magnificent oaks and pines that were butchered — just to give some contractor a job to widen the road? But no, that was before you came here.”
“
Sad
, very sad,” said Eugene Clapperton sympathetically. “I’ve always liked a nice tree.”
His wife sat in silence, staring at him.
He went on, — “The model village I had in mind was a village of trees and flowers. Nice little houses, with nice people in them.”
“You built three little houses and you haven’t had particularly good luck with your tenants.”
“They pay their rent.”
“Yes. But one of them drinks and makes himself a nuisance. One has screaming children and a slovenly wife. One keeps his radio running all day and a part of the night.”
“You seem to know a great deal about my tenants.” Eugene Clapperton’s voice had a jealous note in it.
“I do. They’re within a stone’s throw of my stables. In fact, I’ve become very friendly with them. But there must not be any more. You agreed to that.”
A smile crept over Eugene Clapperton’s face. He clasped one bony knee in his hands, which were rather surprisingly coarse and strong. “Every man,” he said, “sets himself some sort of ideal and clings to it, more or less, through his life. My ideal was to be a benefactor, if you know what I mean. I wanted to make lots of money and I wanted to help others with my money. I’ve tried to live up to that, Colonel Whiteoak.”
“You old humbug,” Renny thought. But he grinned with apparent geniality at Clapperton who went on to say:
“I’m not going to relate the benefits I’ve conferred on others. One of them you know of,” and he smiled with tenderness at his young wife.
She entered the conversation for the first time.
“No one is likely to forget,” she said, her voice coming gaspingly, as though she had been running, “how it was through you I had the operation on my spine and so was able to walk. You paid for everything, didn’t you?”
“Please don’t mention expense in connection with that, Gemmel,” returned her husband hastily. “You have repaid me a thousand times in becoming my wife.”
“But money did enter into it,” she protested.