Nook sat upright at once but it was not till Pheasant fixed Philip with a stern eye that he obeyed.
“After breakfast,” she went on, “I’m going to take you to see Auntie Meg and then we’ll go to Jalna. Oh, Mooey, it’s so wonderful having you home! And just think what it will be when Daddy’s home! I can scarcely imagine the joy.”
Philip put in, “Daddy’s got only one —”
“Now, now, Philip. Eat your toast. Pass him the marmalade, Nook.”
She was not hungry. She talked eagerly, her eyes drinking in the sight of Maurice sitting there. She could not relax.
“What a time we’ve had,” she said, “running Jalna without any help to speak of! In the house, just Mrs. Wragge and she quite unequal to those basement stairs; she’s fatter than ever! And the two old uncles need a good deal of waiting on. Then there are the three children to get off to school. You should see Adeline, Mooey. She’s lovely ... Poor Alayne! The house would be enough to cope with, but there are the stables — twelve horses still — the stock, cows, pigs, sheep, and poultry! If it weren’t for Wright we’d have gone quite crazy. That’s to say nothing of the farmlands and the fruit. I’ve worked like a farmhand and I guess I show it.” She looked wistfully at him across the table.
“You still look lovely,” Maurice replied, with a little bow and in Dermot Court’s own manner.
“Oh, how darling of you to say that, Mooey!” She jumped up and ran round to him and hugged him. Oh, the feel of that brown head of her first-born on her breast once more!
He put both arms about her.
When they had cleared away the breakfast things Maurice, carrying a toppling load of dishes, remembered the formality of meals at Glengorman, the white-haired butler and his air of making even breakfast a ceremony. Pheasant led him into the living room and closed the door.
“There is something I think I ought to tell you,” she said, in a low voice. “About Daddy.”
“Yes?” He stared at her, startled.
She took his hand and held it. “Oh, Mooey, he has lost a leg! I never told you in my letters. I couldn’t bear to. I couldn’t bear to tell you, when you were so far from home.” Her eyes filled with tears.
Maurice did not know what he was expected to do. Cry? Turn pale? His father had lost a leg. It was a calamity. But so far away. He remembered Piers on two strong legs. He had stood strongly on them, as though it would take a great deal to knock him over. And now only one! Maurice said, in a low voice:
“I suppose it happened years ago — when he was taken prisoner.”
“Yes ... Oh, I’ve been terribly broken up about it … Of course now I’m getting used to the thought of it ... But it’s new to you, darling.” She put both arms about him. He breathed, against her shoulder:
“I’m sorry.”
She drew a deep breath. “Well, we will do all we can to make him forget it, when he comes home.”
“Yes. Is he pretty well?”
“I think so.”
They separated and Maurice’s eyes moved toward the open window.
“We’re going now,” said Pheasant, then hesitated and added, “It will seem strange to you not to see Uncle Maurice at Vaughanlands. Poor Auntie Meg and Patience are alone there now. You must be sympathetic but cheerful when you meet Auntie Meg.”
“Yes,” said Maurice dutifully. He had not been much moved when he had been told, more than a year ago, of the death of Maurice Vaughan, his mother’s father. Pheasant’s children had always called him Uncle Maurice because he had been married to Auntie Meg. He had never seemed in the least like a grandfather.
“It was very sad,” went on Pheasant. “He was ill such a short time. His heart, you remember.”
“Yes. I remember.” But he had forgotten.
“Auntie Meg has been very brave.”
“Yes. She would be brave.”
“Now we shall go!” Pheasant spoke cheerfully.
Maurice thought, “I’m glad that’s over.” He asked, “Couldn’t we go to Jalna first? I’d like to see Adeline.”
“No. Auntie Meg would feel hurt. Nook and Philip will want to come. Oh, Mooey, I do hope you will have some influence over Philip! He’s completely out of hand. There is no one here who can do anything with him.”
The two small boys now came running in. Philip at ten did indeed look a handful to manage. He looked courageous and self-willed; while Nook, with his gentle amber eyes and sensitive mouth, had an air of reserve and shyness. Pheasant looked the three over.
“You’re not a bit alike,” she declared. “Mooey, you are like me, I think. Philip is the image of Daddy. And Nooky,” putting an arm about him, “you are just yourself.”
Now they were in the car passing between fields of sunburnt stubble and orchards bright with apples. “This is home,” thought Maurice. “How strange it seems! This is my mother and these are my two brothers. My father has lost a leg and Uncle Maurice is dead. It’s as though we were a coloured glass window that had been broken and then put together in a new pattern.”
Philip would put his hand on the steering wheel. “Philip, will you stop! You’ll have us in the ditch,” Pheasant said, but she could not stop him. It ended by his keeping his hand there. “You see I can steer as well as anyone,” he said.
What a dusty car! thought Maurice. The windows grimy, mud dried on the wheels. Cousin Dermot would have refused to set his foot inside such a car. But it could go! In a few minutes they were at Vaughanlands, the low, verandahed house standing in its hollow almost hidden in greenery, in which the yellow note of fall was already struck. A bed of scarlet salvia and many-coloured dahlias made the background for a matronly figure in a mauve cotton dress.
She looked more familiar to Maurice than even his mother and his brothers had done. Among the curving masses of foliage, Meg Vaughan looked nobly in her place. Her hair had become almost white and this set off her fine complexion and the clear blue of her eyes. She clasped Maurice to her breast and exclaimed:
“Home at last! How you have grown, Mooey! Oh, what sad changes since you left! Your father a prisoner with a leg lost, your uncles gone from Jalna and our sad loss here.” Yet in spite of this sad recital there was a comfortable look about Meg. She did not make Maurice feel unhappy, as his mother had done.
Now his cousin Patience appeared on the scene, a slim edition of her mother but with grey eyes. Maurice held out his hand but Meg exclaimed, “What formality! You must kiss each other. To think, Pheasant, that they both are seventeen — and practically fatherless!”
“Mooey isn’t practically fatherless,” said Pheasant, almost fiercely. “Piers is likely to return quite soon. There is talk of an exchange of prisoners.”
Maurice saw the flash of antagonism between the two, but turned to Patience. He said, “How you’ve changed, Patty! You’re a woman grown.”
“You speak differently,” she returned. “I suppose you got it from Cousin Dermot. Is it Irish?”
“Heavens, no!” cried Meg. “An Irish gentleman doesn’t speak with a brogue.”
“I suppose you’ll despise our ways now,” Patience said, with a teasing look.
Maurice was embarrassed. He could only say, “Oh, no, I’ll not.”
“And you’re rich too,” she persisted, “and we are all so terribly poor.”
Maurice was scarlet. “Indeed, and I’m not.”