04 Young Renny Read online

  It was surprisingly warm this morning. Summer was really here. A puff of scented air that was almost hot pressed between the curtains and caressed her face and arms. With a strong movement she kicked the bedclothes from her and lay smiling in her long white nightdress. She spread her pink toes to the warm air. She felt deliciously conscious of her body this morning, as though it were a strong young plant rejoicing in its coming fruition.

  A thick light brown plait lay over each shoulder and ended in a close glossy curl. She took these curling ends in her hands and dangled them.

  She heard a quick snuffling sound beneath her window, then an excited bark. It was her father's spaniel, Keno, who was never let out in the morning except by Philip. Her father must be up then, off to catch a fish or two before breakfast!

  Meg jumped out of bed and ran to the window. She put her head between the curtains and looked down. Her eyes were dancing. Her lips parted in a mischievous smile.

  She saw her father in his corduroy Norfolk jacket, wading boots, and a disreputable Panama hat. He had laid his rod on the grass and was taking something from his pocket. It was a pocket comb, and he began at once to comb the wavy black hair of Keno's ears. The spaniel looked up and saw Meg leaning across the sill. He whimpered with pleasure and tried to prance about, but Philip held him firmly by the ear.

  "Quiet, now, Keno! Behave yourself! We must have this loose hair combed out, you know." He gave the dog a gentle cuff.

  Meg's cheeks dimpled. The stone sill felt cold and hard against her breast, but she did not mind. She pressed closer to it as she leaned out and made encouraging signs to Keno. His eyes were starting with excitement. He licked Philip's hands and drew away from the comb.

  Meg was just going to clap her hands to startle her father when she saw the figure of a man hurrying up the steep path from the ravine. As she turned her face in that direction a rich opulent smell came to her nostrils from the depths of moist earth and sun-warmed foliage there. Always afterward, when she thought of that morning, she was conscious of that smell.

  Noah Binns came through the wicket gate and crossed the lawn in a jog trot. Meg drew behind the shelter of a curtain. Philip straightened himself at the sight of Noah's face, and the released spaniel reared himself toward Meg and rolled his eyes joyously. For the space of a moment the crystal of the summer morning was suspended.

  "Hullo, Noah," said Philip. "What's up? It's the first time in my life I've seen you move out of a snail's gallop."

  Noah gasped - "I've a turrible piece of news fur you!"

  Philip stared at him, his eyes prominent.

  "Mr. Vaughan found a baby on his doorstep a bit ago and he fell in a swoon, and I came along and there was a piece of paper lying on the ground, and I looked at it and it said the baby was fathered by young Mr. Vaughan, and it wasn't no great shock to me, fur I've saw the two of'em whisperin'together in the woods more than once."

  "Which two?"

  "The young feller and Elvira - the dressmaker's niece. They were a pair up to no good, that was plain."

  Philip spoke slowly. "A young baby, you said. Did you see it?"

  "Ay, I seen it. Wrapped in a shawl and its face not as big as my fist. The girl couldn't have wasted much time fetchin' it, fur it looked young if ever a critter did."

  "What was done with the child?"

  Noah's eyes twinkled. "Mrs. Vaughan, she come down when she heard it cryin' and took it up. She was in a turrible state, too. I guess there won't be no weddin' now, sir, eh?"

  "To hell with you and your impudence!" said Philip. He looked regretfully at his fishing rod and basket lying innocently on the green grass, at Keno grinning up at him. Then he picked up his things, chirped to his dog, and went back into the house.

  Noah Binns looked after him resentfully.

  "Dang him!" he said. "Dang em all!"

  THE WHITEOAKS RIDE OUT

  PHILIP SLOWLY MOUNTED the stairs, a troubled frown on his forehead. None of his family was yet up and his feet made no sound on the thick carpet. Outside Meg's door he hesitated. Poor little girl, let her sleep happily while she could! The spaniel knew her room and well remembered having seen her at the window. He made as if to scratch at the door, but Philip caught him by the collar and gently dragged him along the passage. He opened the door of his own bedroom and closed it behind them.

  His wife was fast asleep, the frill on the high collar of her nightdress giving her a quaint medieval appearance. She had thrown herself diagonally across the bed now that his big body was out of the way. Keno planted his paws on the side of the bed and licked her full on the mouth.

  She started and pushed him away. "Oh, Philip, how could you let him do that?" She rubbed her lips on a corner of the sheet.

  "I call that a gentle awakening," said Philip, sitting down beside her. "Very different from the rude one I have in store for you."

  He was always teasing her. Now she was on her guard against him.

  "I call that rude enough," she answered, playing with Keno's ears, for the dog had also established himself on the bed.

  "I'm in earnest, Molly," Philip said. "Something awful has happened. An infant was left on the Vaughan's doorstep this morning, and it's said young Maurice is the sire of it. I'm afraid poor little Meggie's marriage is off. I thought I'd let you know first. Then I must tell Nick and Ernest. We'll go over to Vaughanlands and raise hell. We'll see what Robert Vaughan and that young whelp have to say for themselves."

  Mary stared up at him, dazed by the suddenness of the blow. Meg's marriage off! It couldn't be! It would be too dreadful! That marriage toward which she had strained for a year! That freedom from Meg's presence which seemed like paradise! Why, in the last few months they had become quite friendly over the preparations for the wedding!

  "But - Philip - it may not be true! Who told you?"

  "Noah Binns. He saw the baby. He saw Robert Vaughan in a faint and read the note accusing Maurice. Unless he's quite cracked it must be true."

  "What Noah saw - yes. But probably just a pack of lies as far as Maurice is concerned."

  "Let's hope you're right, Molly! We'll soon find out! I'm going now to rouse Nick and Ernest."

  "I'll behave as though nothing had happened, at breakfast. Where shall I say you three are?"

  "In the stable. Spitfire dropped a foal last night."

  He went softly to Ernest's room and entered without rapping.

  Mary rolled over and hid her face in the crook of her arm. Black depression swept over her. It was true! The engagement would be broken off and Meg would remain at home for years to come, possibly as long as she lived. There were few eligible young men about. Meg was the only cause of discord between Philip and her self. He had always shamelessly spoilt the girl. Mary remembered her as she had first seen her when she had come to Jalna to act as governess to the two motherless children. They had been running wild for a year. Philip had gone upstairs to fetch them and she had sat waiting in the drawing room, impressed by the stately proportions of the room, still more impressed by the fine proportions of Philip himself, his handsome blue eyes, his indolent smile. She had sat, holding herself together, determined, if possible, to get the post, to make friends with these children.

  From the moment when Philip had brought them, one by either hand, into the room, she had found them a formidable pair. Meg, with her round, inscrutable face, her critical stare. Renny, with his look of a small wild thing captured. Meg had been ten then, with a mop of unkempt golden brown hair, the frill of a drawer leg showing beneath her frock; he eight, positively unwashed, his red hair growing to his collar, his brilliant brown eyes and extreme thinness giving him a fierce, half-starved air. "What they need," Mary had thought, "is a woman's tenderness." But they had not responded to hers. They had been intractable, mischievous, difficult, from the first. She could not make them into the semblance of the well-behaved children she had last taught in a Warwickshire rectory.

  She had read poetry to them, she had played the piano an
d sung to them, hoping to soften them, but they would escape to the orchards, the ravine, the woods, and peer out at her suspiciously, as though she were a being from another world.

  But before long she had been too much in love with Philip to worry over the delinquencies of his children. For six months she had had him to herself before his mother and older brothers, made suspicious by a remark in a letter from him, had hastened from England to put a spoke in her wheel. But they had not been able to do it. Philip had been as stubborn in his love for her as he was in all else. They had married within the year.

  Now he and his brothers were on their way to Vaughanlands. It was not yet half-past eight. It was characteristic of them that, though they were accustomed to a solid breakfast, they gave no thought to food when business such as this was on hand.They rode abreast, Nicholas and Ernest on dark bay geldings, Philip on a bright chestnut mare with a white blaze on her face. The two elder were dressed with care in London-made riding clothes. Ernest had placed a flower in his buttonhole, but had later taken it out as unsuitable to the occasion. Philip rode bareheaded, in his disreputable fishing suit. Keno trotted close to the heels of the mare.

  Robert Vaughan saw the three horsemen approach along his drive. They rode abreast and the sleek flanks of their horses now and again touched, giving the animals that sense of companionship they loved. Robert Vaughan looked out on them as one of his ancestors may have looked from his bleak house on the Welsh borders at a band of galloping marauders. But he came to meet them with a firm step.

  In the dining room, where an untouched breakfast was laid, Philip broke out: -

  "Well, this is a hell of a mess your son has got into! By God, I'd like to have brought a horsewhip with me!"

  "I don't wonder you are upset," said Robert Vaughan. "It has been a terrible blow to me."

  "Upset!" exclaimed Nicholas. "Upset! That's putting it mildly."

  "How did you find it out?"

  "That worm Binns told me," answered Philip. "You didn't expect him to hold his tongue, did you?"

  "Where escapades materialize into squalling infants, they can't be concealed," said Ernest. "The whole affair is a dreadful insult to my niece."

  Philip added loudly - "Yes - an insult to Meggie! Where is he? I must see him!"

  "He has gone off to the wood," said Robert Vaughan. "He is completely crushed, poor boy!"

  "Poor boy!" shouted Philip. "What about my poor girl?"

  "Yes," growled Nicholas. "what about her? She's shamed before the countryside. An innocent young girl - and a Whiteoak."

  He had added fuel to the flame.

  Ernest's voice was thick with rage when he said: -

  "Not a woman of our family was ever treated like this before. Maurice has behaved like a scoundrel."

  "I know it. I know it," Robert Vaughan agreed distractedly. "But you know what a loose girl can do with a young man."

  "If he is weak enough," said Nicholas.

  "Where were your eyes?" demanded Philip. "The trouble is that you have utterly spoiled Maurice."

  "Do you know everything your son does?" asked Robert Vaughan, goaded to anger.

  "I'd like to see him make a mother of a village girl and get away with it! If he did what Maurice has done I'd break every bone in his body!"

  "Oh, no, you wouldn't! You'd -"

  "You say I lie?"

  "No, no, but -"

  "If my son, I repeat -"

  "But listen, Philip -"

  Ernest put in - "Mr. Vaughan expects us to be calm."

  "Picture yourself in our place," said Nicholas.

  "How can he?" exclaimed Philip. "He has no daughter!"

  "No niece," added Ernest.

  "He has a son," said Nicholas, "who has ruined Meggie's life. Humiliated us all."

  Robert Vaughan looked about to faint again.

  "Is there no possibility," he asked, "of hiding this from Meg? A home can be found for the child at a safe distance from here. Maurice tells me Elvira and her aunt have given up their cottage and are going to relations somewhere."

  "I'll wager," said Nicholas, "that the woman is the girl's mother and no aunt. I've heard things about her."

  Philip moved to Robert Vaughan's side. "Do you imagine," he said, "that I will let my young daughter marry a man who has made a mother of a village slut?"

  "If my father were living," declared Ernest, "nothing short of a horsewhipping for Maurice would have satisfied him."

  Philip turned a dark red. "Fetch the boy in here! I have something to say to him!"

  They raged about Robert Vaughan, they in their prime, he beginning to feel the weight of his years, till he staggered and took hold of the back of a chair to steady himself He managed to say: -

  "I'm afraid I can't talk any longer about it. It's been a terrible morning. If it's all over - if nothing can be done - but - I can't stand any more." He looked ghastly.

  "If only Noah Binns did not know of it!" said Ernest.

  "We could never hush it up," said Nicholas, "Not with the servants here in the secret."

  "The whole affair," Philip added, "makes me sick."

  "It makes me sick too," Nicholas growled. "And what I don't understand is how things could have reached such a point and neither Robert nor Mrs. Vaughan suspected anything."

  "Were you never able to conceal your doings from your parents?" retorted Robert Vaughan.

  "Not to that extent."

  "No," agreed Ernest, "and we never took up with village girls ... excepting Philip once - and he was stopped in time."

  Philip looked resentfully at Ernest. He went to the sideboard and poured a drink for Robert Vaughan. He saw the table laid for three.

  "I apologize," he said, "for keeping you and Mrs. Vaughan so long from your breakfast."

  Robert Vaughan gulped down the brandy. "Help yourselves," he said, "I'm sure you need something."

  The three brothers moved in unison to the sideboard. A more temperate atmosphere prevailed. Talking the affair over more quietly, they agreed that such things had happened before; that marriages with inauspicious beginnings had been known to turn out very well. It seemed to Robert Vaughan's ears too good to be true when Philip Whiteoak said, with an almost friendly ring in his voice: -

  "Well, the marriage is too important to our two families to be shelved. We must try to put this unfortunate happening behind us and go on with the preparations."

  "Thank you," said Robert Vaughan, "I can promise that Maurice will never again - why, he did not care two straws for the girl - she tricked him into it."

  "H'm - what is she like? Pretty?"

  "Why - I'm sure - I don't know. I dare say."

  "I've seen her," said Nicholas, "Rather an elfin creature."

  "'Ihe aunt is attractive too," said Ernest, "in a sharp gypsy way. Yellow hair."

  Philip laughed - "Old Ernie knows all about them!"

  He took his brother by the shoulder. "Are you sure you are not the guilty father of the infant?"

  Nicholas chuckled. Mr. Vaughan gave a wry smile. Upstairs the child cried.

  "What is it?" asked Philip. "Not a boy, I hope."

  "No. A girl."

  "Good. Call her Pheasant."

  Robert Vaughan thought - "Shall I ever understand these people - know how they will take things?" He repeated, rather petulantly: "Pheasant! Why Pheasant? It's a very strange name for a little girl."

  "I'll tell you why I chose it. As I was riding here a pheasant rose out of a clump of bushes and showed herself in the sun. She was lovely and bright and it occurred to me what a pretty name for a girl."

  Nicholas poured himself another drink. "You're a most extraordinary fellow, Philip. Fancy choosing a name for your prospective son-in-law's bastard at a time like this!"

  "But I do choose it," returned Philip stubbornly.

  "It shall be as you say," said Vaughan, who cared little what the child should be called.

  Philip drank his second whiskey and water at a gulp. "Let's see her,
" he said, almost genially. "I like babies."

  "My God!" exclaimed Ernest. "Not newborn babies! Above all, not this one!"

  "I like them all. Can't you fetch her down, Robert?"

  "Won't it look very suspicious to the servants?" said Ernest. "We're going to face the thing out, aren't we?"

  Robert Vaughan answered - "I will simply say that a poor woman left the child on my doorstep with a note asking me to succour it. We have been charitable people, I think, so the plea will not seem unnatural. I will say that we have agreed to provide for the child. Our housekeeper is leaving to live with her invalid mother. She would be glad, I am sure, to take it into her care. She will be going quite a long way off."

  "That sounds possible," said Ernest. "The principal thing is to deny any intimacy between Maurice and Elvira."

  "The same story will do for Meggie. She must never hear the truth," said Nicholas.

  "Poor girl," groaned Robert Vaughan.

  "I'd like to see the child," said Philip again.

  Nicholas gave Robert Vaughan a look that said: -

  "We may as well humour this strange brother of mine."

  Robert Vaughan objected - "I agree with Ernest that it will look very suspicious to the servants - my bringing the child to you."

  "Rot!" said Philip. "It will put them off the scent."

  Robert Vaughan acquiesced. He went slowly out of the room, a thin drooping figure, his sparse hair brushed smoothly across his increasing baldness.

  "Looks old, doesn't he?" observed Nicholas.