Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
Piers rose and went to Maurice’s side. He said in an undertone, “Don’t act like a damned fool.”
Maurice ignored this. He said, “Tell them the good news, Adeline. Don’t be shy, my darling.” He caught the hand that was on his cheek and covered it with kisses.
“Really,” exclaimed Meg, “I think Mooey is behaving very badly. Why don’t you take him home, Piers?”
Piers took his son by the arm.
“Come, come,” he said, almost soothingly, “that is no way to act.”
Maurice looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. “what’s that you say?” he asked in an indistinct voice.
Piers tightened his grip on his arm. “I say you are to come home.” And he continued in reproof to Adeline, “You could have prevented this.”
“I’d like to know how,” she said saucily.
“Adeline!” exclaimed Alayne, ashamed for her daughter.
Both turned their eyes toward Fitzturgis, Alayne in apology and sympathy, as if they two had an understanding between them — Adeline with a teasing smile.
Pheasant came to Maurice and took him by the lapels of his jacket. She said, raising her face to his, “Don’t be so naughty, darling. You’re making everyone angry.”
“Come along — come,” said Piers, urging him.
Maurice spoke in a suddenly clear voice, “I won’t go till Adeline admits that we’re engaged.”
Pheasant turned away. “The thing to do,” she said, “is to pay no attention to him. He is just being silly.”
“This is beyond silliness,” said Piers. “He’s making a nuisance of himself.”
Suddenly Maurice shook himself free and faced them like a young animal at bay. “Let me be, will you!” he shouted. “I’ll say what I choose and be damned to you.”
Patience pushed past Philip and went into the hall. She wondered if she were going to be sick.
“All this comes,” said Meg, “of sending the poor boy away to Ireland where he never had any proper training and where they are addicted to strong drink.”
“And try to take it like gentlemen,” said Fitzturgis.
Maurice, with calculated steadiness, moved across the room and faced him. “Please repeat that,” he said, with the politeness of a man about to draw his sword.
Fitzturgis turned away and went through the french window on to the lawn.
“Sneak!” Maurice threw after him.
Renny, who during all this had remained at the card table letting the cards drip through his fingers, as though oblivious to what happened, now sprang up. He went to Maurice and put an arm about him. “Goodnight, old man,” he said. “It’s been so nice having you. You must come again. Hullo, Nooky. Bring round the car.”
Christian darted out while Renny steered Maurice into the hall. Patience was there and gave him her kind smile. “Goodnight,” she said.
“Goodnight, Patience.” Then, remembering his manners, he added, “And thanks for a lovely party.”
The car was at the door. Piers and Pheasant were saying goodbye to Alayne, being distant toward Meg. Piers gave Adeline a pinch and said, “You minx.” Pheasant kissed Alayne, whispering, “We’re so apologetic. I do hope you are not angry with Mooey. You know, he has always loved Adeline.”
Alayne said, “Adeline was as much to blame.”
Now Renny had steered Maurice into the car. He sat between his parents, who both looked ready to disown him. The two younger sons were in the front seat. The drive was short and passed in complete silence. Maurice’s chin was sunk on his breast. His head moved with the movement of the car. His hands lay palms up on his thighs. When the car stopped in front of the door he looked dazed and made no attempt to alight with the others. In an almost jocular tone Piers asked:
“Going to spend the night there?”
“Eh, what?”
“Pull yourself together and get out,” Piers said peremptorily.
“Shall I help him?” asked Philip.
“I don’t require any help,” said Maurice and scrambled out. He stalked ahead of his mother into the house.
“what’s become of your manners?” demanded Piers, his angry face close to Maurice’s beneath the hall light that deepened the shadows about eye and nostril.
“Sorry,” muttered Maurice. “I didn’t see.”
“No, you didn’t see,” shouted Piers, suddenly furious, “because you are too damned drunk to see. I was thoroughly ashamed of you. So was your mother. You made an ass of yourself. If you hadn’t the guts to win Adeline why do you try to push in now, when everything is settled between her and Fitzturgis? He, at least, behaved like a gentleman.”
“You never could see anything good in me,” Maurice shouted in his turn. “You’re always ready to take any side against me. You’ve always treated me badly and now you insult me.”
“Get to your bed, you young fool!”
“Get out of my way!”
Piers caught him by the shoulders and violently shook him. Maurice grappled with him. Piers’s artificial leg gave way. He crashed to the floor. Pheasant gave a cry of terror. “Are you hurt?” she cried, trying to think which would be worse — to break his own good leg or that other.
Christian and Philip helped him to his feet. Neither leg was broken, but he was paler than they had ever seen him.
“Maurice didn’t mean to, did you, Maurice?” wailed Pheasant.
“
Maurice
didn’t mean to!” growled Piers. “what are you saying? I knocked
myself
off my feet shaking
him
and I’ve a mind to give him a thrashing that he’ll never forget.”
Christian said in a low voice to Piers, “Maurice doesn’t know what he’s doing, Dad. I’ll help him upstairs.” In a moment the three brothers were mounting the stairs. Piers and Pheasant were alone in the hall.
“Are you hurt?” she repeated.
“No.” But he looked a little shaken.
“I guess it’s a good thing,” she said, “that Mooey’s visit is nearly over.”
Piers answered curtly, “I shall certainly be glad to see him go.”
A Variety of Scenes
P
ATIENCE HAD LEFT
her lonely seat on the door-sill of the side entrance and wandered along a sandy path that skirted the orchards and led to where the vegetables flourished. It was a season of rich growth. Among their dark leaves could be glimpsed the white of cauliflowers, the long pale shapes of vegetable marrows, the golden spheres of squash. In orderly rows the beets, the parsnips, the carrots. No one troubled to admire them, thought Patience, yet in their own fashion they were beautiful. A plum tree stood among them, though it had no right to be there. No other, not even the damson, made such good jam. It was delicious to eat, also. Patience picked one, and before she bit into it admired it as it lay on her palm. The moonlight seemed to admire it too, increasing its bloom, its lustre, till it was almost as lovely as a flower.
Beyond the vegetable garden a field had been given over to tomato plants. They had not been properly staked but had been allowed to run wild over the ground. Yet it was amazing to see how productive they were. Hundreds upon hundreds of tomatoes gleamed, red and smooth as silk, along the pungent vines.
Patience saw the form of a man bending among the vines, filling a basket with the fruit. At first she thought it might be one of the farm hands, but coming closer she saw that it was Humphrey Bell, a young man who lived alone in a house beyond the ravine. This house belonged to Renny Whiteoak. Humphrey Bell was a writer of short stories, who earned just enough to keep soul and body together. Soul was pure-minded, to judge by the look in his eyes. Body also was attractive, except for the extreme paleness of his hair and eyelashes. In the moonlight these looked almost white, but his eyes were of a charming harebell blue.
“Hullo,” called out Patience. “Getting some tomatoes?”
He straightened himself. “Yes, and I’m not the thief I look. Your uncle told me to help myself.” He displayed the basket half full of tomatoes. “I really have taken more than I need. That’s the way when one gets something for nothing.”
“I’ll help you,” said Patience. “Let’s get plums from that tree.” Without waiting for his reply she began to gather the plums. He stood admiring the grace of her arms as she reached upward, where was the finest fruit.
Then — “You’re looking unusually elegant,” he said, “for loitering in a vegetable garden.”
“We are having a family dinner party for Adeline’s fiancé and his sister.”
Humphrey said in his rather diffident way, the way of a sensitive man who is too much alone, “And you — I’d expect you to be in the middle of things — the life of the party.”
Patience laughed almost scornfully. “Me? Goodness, no. They’ll not miss me. As a matter of fact, the party is rather scattered. The young people have paired off and are strolling about in the moonlight.”
Bell considered this. Then, with a kind of diffident boldness, he said, “Then I consider myself lucky that you’ve paired off with me — in the vegetable garden.”
“It doesn’t sound very romantic,” she said.
“You make it so.” He was so shy that after he had said this he quite furiously gathered plums till the basket was almost full.
After a somewhat embarrassed silence she asked, “How are you getting on with your writing?”
“Not very well, as to acceptances. As to my own feelings, better and better.”
She turned to look enquiringly into his face. It wore a faintly mocking smile, yet, she realized, a look also of cheerful tranquillity.
“You mean,” she said, “that you yourself like what you write?”
“Yes, I do.” He spoke with the same tranquil conviction. “And even though the editors don’t agree with me I can’t help feeling that the day will come when they will.” Recklessly he bit into a plum. “Anyhow, between selling a few stories and pilfering fruit and vegetables from my rich neighbours I manage to get along very well.”
“And you don’t mind living alone?”
“If I had exactly the right person to live with me I should like that, but as I haven’t …” He gave a resigned shrug.
“I envy your not needing people. I’m terribly dependent.”
He looked surprised. “I shouldn’t have expected that. I think of you as very independent.”
“If you think of me at all,” she said, “which I very much doubt.”
“Now your cousin Roma —” he went on.
Patience interrupted, “Don’t tell me you think Roma is dependent on others — that she needs their love. She’s the most self-sufficient being I ever have known.”
“Perhaps Roma is like me — surrounded by people she imagines. They are very satisfactory companions.”
“Roma is all for hard facts.”
“Perhaps she has more imagination than you think.”
“I daresay you’re right.” They turned and walked together in the direction whence he had come. They walked between rows of beans, he carrying his basket, she giving him now and again a glance of curiosity. When they reached the grassy verge where he would turn homeward, she could not, though she tried to stop herself, resist saying, “I suppose you’ve never been in love.”
“what makes you suppose that?” He turned to look full in her face and she saw the blue brightness of his eyes beneath the pale lashes.
“Well … I guess you can invent just the right sort of person. Flesh and blood don’t matter.”
“You’re wrong. You’re quite wrong,” he said decidedly. “I was in love. Pretty desperately.” He looked so cheerful that she had no sense of having hurt him.
“Was?”
she echoed.
“I recovered from it some time ago.” He spoke as though to reassure her. “Luckily I had made no advances, so the young lady never had the faintest suspicions of my love.”
Patience thought, “who on earth could it have been? Roma perhaps? I wonder if it might have been me …” She searched his face for some confirmation of this, but there was something in his pale colouring that made it inscrutable.
“You are lucky,” she said.
“Yes, I think on the whole I am.”
Not able to stop herself, she said, “It might have been Adeline.”
“Yes,” he agreed, without embarrassment, “and it might have been Adeline’s mother or your aunt. But I am not going to tell you, so there’s no use in your looking at me in that charmingly enquiring way.” He began to talk of plans he had made for the future, and before long Patience returned to the house.
When she and Roma were undressing for bed Meg made cocoa and brought it to the girls.
“This will help you to sleep,” she said. “There’s nothing like a hot nourishing drink after a party. The night has turned cool.”
“Thanks,” said Roma, “but I never need anything to make me sleep. I sleep like a log.”
“Ah, I wish I did,” said Meg with a yawn. “when I think of the sleepless nights I have spent I wonder I am not as thin as a stick.”
Her daughter gave her a look of tender solicitude; her niece one of cool disbelief. All three sipped their cocoa. Pink with the comfort of it, Roma remarked:
“what a fool Maurice made of himself tonight!”
“Any psychologist would tell you,” said Meg, “that the poor boy is the victim of his upbringing.”
“I wish I’d been such a victim,” returned Roma.
“Sent away from home, when you were only a child, to live in a huge old house with a very old man!”
“Yes — and fall heir to his money. It would have just suited me.”
“I should have died of homesickness,” said Patience.
“I dare say.” Roma stepped out of her dress and stood like a child in her slip, her hair soft about her short white neck.
Later, in Meg’s bedroom, where a framed photograph of her dead husband stood on the dressing table, Patience said to her mother, “what do you suppose Humphrey Bell told me tonight?”
“Humphrey Bell — why, he wasn’t at the party.”
“I met him, in the tomato patch.”
“Patience! How could you go wandering in the tomato patch with your pretty dress on?”
“I forgot.” This had been her excuse all her life and was now accepted by Meg as inevitable.
“Well, what did he tell you?”
“He told me that he has let a part of his house. We’d been speaking of his living alone and he’d said he liked it. Then he told me that money is so tight with him that he has let the greater part of his house to the Chases. I know Mr. Chase. He’s a friend of Uncle Renny’s. He’s been married just lately to a widow, a Mrs. Lebraux. She and her first husband had once lived in that very house. They were friends of Uncle Renny’s too.”