PIERS TURNED FROM the telephone and took up his crutches. Awkwardly he ascended the stairs and went toward Maurice’s room, one leg of his pyjamas dangling empty. Pheasant intercepted him.
“Mooey says it was Renny on the phone.”
“It was,” answered Piers, moving on.
“Why couldn’t he have waited till morning, when he knows it’s hard for you going up and down the stairs without your leg?”
“Because he was in a rage, and no wonder.”
“Whatever has happened? He’s not angry at Mooey, is he?”
“He certainly is!” Piers went into his son’s room and shut the door after him.
Maurice was sitting by a table on which there was a reading lamp, making a pretence of reading. He raised his eyes guardedly to Piers’ face.
“Reading Othello, I see,” remarked Piers, pleasantly.
“Yes. I am.”
“Didn’t get enough of it at the theatre, eh?”
Maurice was silent. A tremor of fear ran through him. He had been so afraid of Piers when he was a child. Now, standing there on his crutches, his healthy face flushed with anger, he was almost as intimidating as ever. He said:
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I should think you would have had more sense than to take a child like Adeline to see such a play as Othello.”
“I didn’t think it would hurt her.”
“And you didn’t think it would hurt her to be made love to by Swift?”
“How was I to know he would make love to her?”
“You should have taken her home yourself. You must have a pretty good idea of what sort of man he is. It was a damned stupid thing to do and I am ashamed of you.”
“I’m sorry.” Maurice made the apology perfunctorily. Piers was more irritated than appeased by it.
He said, “Being sorry won’t help poor little Adeline. Her father took a stick to her back.”
“No!” Maurice was aghast. “Surely not!”
“He did. And I won’t say she didn’t deserve it. But I will say you deserved it more.”
“It was cruel. I don’t see how Uncle Renny could do it.”
“Well, you know, he is very like our grandmother and she was always ready to give us a rap with her stick. There was the gold-headed stick standing ready and Renny laid it on Adeline in the good old family tradition.” Piers chuckled.
A rush of anger brought Maurice to his feet. He walked excitedly about the room with clenched hands.
“I hate such scenes!” he said hotly.
“The trouble with you is that you’re spoilt. That old man in Ireland completely spoilt you.”
“I shall not be sorry to go back there.”
“It’s just the place for you,” returned Piers pleasantly. “An old ivy-covered mansion, on the point of tumbling down — a few tottering retainers to touch their forelocks to you — a friend or two like Swift, to sponge on you. Upon my word, Mooey, I don’t know how I ever got you.”
They stared at one another in their hostility. Then Piers added, “I won’t have Swift about the place any longer. In the morning I’ll tell him to go.”
“All right. I don’t care.”
“Another thing. You are to go to Jalna right after breakfast, and apologize to Renny.”
Maurice bowed coldly.
“Renny says you are not to see Adeline again before she goes back to school. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Now, go to bed. Make up your mind to turn over a new leaf. See if you can be a little more manly — a little less self-centred. Goodnight.”
He turned, leaning on his crutches, opened the door and stumped back to Pheasant.
Maurice did not undress. In his anger and his humiliation he threw himself on the bed, grinding his head into the pillow, clutching the bedclothes in his hands. In the blackness behind his closed eyes his father’s fresh-coloured face, with that ironic smile, stood out. Maurice had felt secure in his homecoming. He had, as his support, the cherished years of his life at Glengorman. He was almost a man. He had patronized Pheasant and the little boys. A father, returning after years in a German prison camp, surely was no longer one to intimidate. He was proud of his father. They might even become friends.
Yet soon their relations were much as they had always been, excepting that a new resentment was added on either side — on Piers’ side because Maurice now had the aloofness of a young man — on Maurice’s, because that aloofness was so vulnerable. He lay, with nerves tense, seething in his resentment. Adeline’s image rose before him, as her enchanted gaze was fixed upon the stage.
At last he slept and woke late to hear his young brothers scuffling in the next bedroom. For an instant he was bewildered to find himself lying fully dressed on the bed. Then the happenings of the night returned to him, and with them the consciousness that his head ached and that he was very hot. And there was his father to face! And the apology to Renny. He got to his feet and pressed his fingers against his temples. The noise from the next room increased. He undressed and dressed again in loose flannel trousers and jersey. He went to the bathroom and laved his head and face with cold water. On the way back he looked in at the small boys while he dried his hair with a rough towel. Their room was in disorder. As Nooky put the sheets on the bed, Philip pulled them off. They whacked each other with the pillows. Philip’s cheeks were bright pink, his fair hair waved upright. Nooky’s face was a delicate pink all over and his fine straight hair fell over his forehead. Maurice regarded them pessimistically.
“Where’s Father?” he asked.
At that instant Piers’ voice came from below.
“Boys! Come to the head of the stairs!”
Close to each other, as though for support, they went as they were bid. Philip’s face assumed a look of sweet obedience.
Piers looked up at them. “I want you,” he said, “to get on with your work. If I call you down here, you’ll be sorry.”
“Yes, Daddy,” said Philip, sweetly and cheerfully. Nooky hung his head, speechless.
Piers stood staring up at them. They turned humbly and re-entered the bedroom. Once there, Philip leaped on Nooky’s back and they crashed as one body to the floor. There was a roar from below. They rose and, grasping the bedclothes, began to hurl them with passionate eagerness onto the bed.
Maurice turned from the scene with distaste. He went to his own room, brushed his hair and, hearing Piers go out through the front door, went down to the dining room. The teapot had been left for him, and toast and marmalade. He wanted nothing but tea. He poured himself a cup and lighted a cigarette. Through the window he could see Pheasant working in the garden. There must be quite a wind, for her hair was blowing back from her face.
His cigarette was just half-smoked when Piers came into the room through another door. Maurice felt himself start and his start was obvious to Piers. He came and sat down at the table facing Maurice.
Maurice thought, “Good Lord, is he going to begin again?”
Piers looked at him thoughtfully. He said:
“Remember what I have told you. When you’ve finished your breakfast you are to go and apologize to your Uncle Renny.”
“Can’t I do it by phone?”
“No. And you are not to speak to Adeline.”
Maurice pushed his chair from the table. “I’ve been told all this before.”
Piers still looked thoughtfully at him. “There is something else I must tell you,” he said. “There is to be no unpleasantness in the house over this affair. You are to be cheerful with me and I’m to be cheerful with you.”
Maurice stared at him suspiciously. What was he driving at?
“Your mother is not to be worried,” Piers went on. “She’s had more than her share of anxiety in the past. Now she’s to be made as happy as possible. She’s going to have a child.”
Maurice stared at Piers, dumbfounded.
Piers laughed. “Well — what’s so remarkable about that? Other women have babies. Why not she?”
The colour deepened in Maurice’s cheeks. “Of course — of course,” he stammered, but could think of nothing else to say. He had a sense of shock, of outrage, of calculated injury to himself.
Piers laughed again but this time it was more of a chuckle. “Upon my word,” he said, “one would think you were hearing of the facts of life for the first time.”
“It’s just that —”
“Wouldn’t you like a little sister?” Piers’ voice now had a cajoling tone. “Come now, tell Daddy you’d like a baby sister.”
At that moment Maurice hated Piers. He rose stiffly. “I guess I’d better be off.”
The smile left Piers’ face. He said, “I rang up Swift this morning and told him — that is, I told Clapperton to tell him — that his services as tutor will not be needed any longer. Swift is indisposed, Clapperton says.”
“Oh! All right. Well, I guess I’ll go.” He left the room, hurried out of the house by a door where he would not be seen by Pheasant, and turned in the direction of Jalna. Bitterness welled up in him. His mother ... his mother ... Oh, he could not bear to think of it! It was horrible. It was indecent. That brute — that cocksure, smiling brute — to do this to her — and laugh about it. If he had been asked to guess a thousand things that might have happened, surely this would be the last to enter his mind.
As he neared Jalna the humiliation of what he had to do, the dread of what Renny’s reception of him might be, drove all other thoughts from his mind. The sweet, dry, playful breeze of late summer refreshed him. As he turned from the dusty road into a path leading across the fields, he noticed how extraordinarily dry everything was. The triumphant sun, after having given life to the season’s growth, now was sucking it away, leaving dry, rustling leaves, parched grass, and only those wild flowers whose harsh fibrous stalks made them insensible to drought. So the goldenrod, the Michaelmas daisy, and the pale blue chicory flourished. Like the essence of the dry light air made palpable, thistledown and the fluff of milkweed floated high and low. Bees sought in haste for the ever-decreasing honey. A myriad crickets chirped and the insistent orchestra of the locusts made the most of this last act before the falling of the final curtain. An old crabapple tree, standing alone in the field, bore a luxuriant crop of little apples with a silver bloom on their red cheeks. Maurice began to feel less unhappy. He saw Wright in the meadow adjoining and, climbing the fence, intercepted him.
“Can you tell me where my uncle is?” he asked.
“Colonel Whiteoak?”
“Yes.”
Wright pointed with his thumb toward the stables. “In his office. He’s searching for that there letter he lost, if you know what I mean.” Wright’s broad face was heavy with gloom.
“Oh, yes. Thank you. I’ll go there.” Maurice spoke in his light, impersonal voice. Wright looked after him glumly.
Maurice thought, “He’s never had any respect for me just because I don’t like riding.” He hastened to the stable, eager to get the misery of the apology over with.
He found Renny in his little office, where the desk was heaped with papers, every drawer emptied out, even the wall cupboard disgorged of its contents. That morning he had found one of the twenty-dollar notes in his ledger.
Maurice pulled himself together.
“Good morning, Uncle Renny.”
Renny turned toward him absently. He scarcely seemed to see him.
Maurice went on, “I’ve come to tell you how sorry I am about last night. I’m terribly sorry about the whole thing. I should have known better.”
“Yes, yes, you should have known better. It was a damned stupid thing to do. Don’t ever do anything like that again. You don’t know what it might lead to.” He stood staring at the littered desk.
“How tired he looks,” thought Maurice, and suddenly instead of feeling afraid of Renny he felt sorry for him. He felt a warmth, a kindness, springing from him. If only his father had been like Renny, he felt he might have got on with him.
Renny said, “I suppose you’ve heard something of how Clapperton’s money disappeared.”
“Yes,” answered Maurice, colouring.
“By God, everyone has heard of that!”
“Are you looking for it here, Uncle Renny?”
“Yes. I — well, I had a sudden idea that it might be here. I’ve emptied out everything, as you see, but —” he pressed his hand to his head — “my brain is so tired I think I may have overlooked it. Now I want you to go through the papers on this desk, very carefully, and make sure it isn’t here. I’ll search the cupboard again.”
Maurice, relieved at the turn the interview had taken, yet deeply embarrassed, began the search. Neither spoke. From the stable came the sound of a steady clatter of hoofs as a horse was led out and, from a stall, a low whinny.
Maurice gave an exclamation. Renny turned sharply.
“Look, Uncle Renny!” He had opened a little brass stamp box. In it, folded very small, was a bank note. It was folded so that the king’s face looked out at them, the head nobly held, as in a frame.
Renny took the box and extracted the note. “That’s two this morning,” he muttered. He sat down at the desk and drew his wallet and a notebook from his pocket. He placed the twenty-dollar bill in the wallet and made a neat entry in the notebook. He returned both to his pocket, then looked up at Maurice with a smile that was more like a grimace of pain.
“You have a crackpot for an uncle,” he said. “I hope you’re proud of him.”
Maurice could think of nothing to say but stammered, “I’m terribly sorry, Uncle Renny.”
“Yes. So are we all.”
It was indeed terrible to Maurice to have this disgraceful and frightening thing, about which he and his mother had spoken in whispers, about which he and Swift had speculated in careful undertones, brought into the open and himself alone in this box of a room with the perpetrator — the victim — whatever you might call him. And he wasn’t asking for a special sympathy — just including himself in the family group who were sorry that this calamity had overtaken them. And that look in his eyes, that were so like Adeline’s. Maurice had not noticed the resemblance before.
Renny rose abruptly. He went to the cupboard and took out a bottle with a little Scotch in it and poured himself a drink. “You’d be surprised,” he said, “if you knew how these things unnerve me.”
Maurice felt a rush of gratitude and love toward him. He had been so decent about last night. He was suffering.
Maurice asked, “Shall I tidy the papers, Uncle Renny?”
“No. I’ll put them away.” He set down the empty glass and looking at the litter on the desk, as though the sight of it were hateful to him, gathered it in handfuls and thrust it back into the drawers. “Now let’s go out into the sun.”
Outside he threw back his head and took a deep breath. The three dogs ran to greet him and he bent down, fondling them. “Good old boys! No — bad old boys! You have noses. Why don’t you smell it out? What does all this fuss over me mean? Nothing! Get busy with your nose, Roger! Smell it out, Bill!” He caught up the little Cairn and kissed it. “Why don’t you help me, little rascal? No — you think of nothing but bunnies and mice.”
Suddenly Maurice saw Adeline standing quite near them on the path. He was startled by her pallor and by the bluish shadows beneath her eyes but her lips were red, with a feverish look. She looked unusually tidy and her cotton dress was obviously fresh that morning. Renny did not see her but went on fondling the dogs, pulling Roger’s topknot, scratching Bill behind the ears, while the Cairn was vainly striving to lick his face.
Maurice and Adeline stood looking at each other. With a gesture of his hand toward Renny and a shake of the head Maurice tried to tell her that they were not to speak. She seemed to understand. She nodded gravely but drew a little nearer. Renny straightened himself and saw her.
“Well,” he said, as though to himself, “I must be off.” He turned toward the paddock where Wright could be seen schooling the colt.
Adeline moved quickly to him. She ran beside him looking up into his face. Then she slipped her hand into his and Maurice saw his fingers close on it. He saw them fall into step with an air of complete harmony.