A ball shot straight at her cap.
She caught it on her racket and returned it over the net with no mean blow, but she could not risk another. She grinned triumphantly.
“Well, now, do you say I can play tennis?”
“You’re a marvel, Gran!”
He laughed across the net and came to her. She took his arm and squeezed it.
“The girls are coming. See what they’ve done?”
Meg and Vera descended the steps to the lawn with Eden between them.
“Look, Daddy!” cried Meg. “A rehearsal!” She put the hem of her dress in Eden’s hands and moved sedately across the lawn, followed by Vera.
“Splendid!” exclaimed Nicholas.
“By Jove, the child looks beautiful!” said Ernest.
Philip met his daughter and she laid her hand on his arm. “Now then, Mamma, you’ll have to be the parson. Renny, can’t you produce the groom?”
“I don’t like rehearsals of solemn things,” said his mother. “They bring bad luck. Come to Granny, darling, and show her your fine new suit.”
But Eden kept fast hold of Meg’s skirt, bearing himself with dignity.
Renny gave a shout. “Hello, there’s Maurice! Come along, Maurice! What price the laggard groom!”
Maurice Vaughan advanced through a small wicket gate set in a hedge of cedar. He had crossed the ravine which divided his father’s property from Jalna and had picked on the way a bunch of white trilliums.
“Good man!” exclaimed Philip, delighted. “He’s here — nosegay and all!”
Nicholas began to boom the “Wedding March.”
“What’s it all about?” asked Maurice.
“A rehearsal,” said Mrs. Whiteoak, “and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I’ve a superstition about it.”
Maurice came to his fiancée and put the lilies into her hands. He made a little old-fashioned bow, but there was a gravity in his face, a heaviness in his eyes, that took the light from Meggie’s. She held the flowers to her, and asked: —
“Is anything wrong?”
He shook his head. “No. Well, my father is not very well. Mother and I are worried about him.”
“I’ve known your dad all my life,” said Philip, “and I’ve never known him well. Don’t you worry about him. He’ll outlive us all.” He tossed up Eden. “Now what do you think of this for a page?”
Maurice smiled and Meg’s face cleared.
Mary now came out of the house carrying her younger child, a boy of twenty months whom they called Peep. He sat very straight on her arm, determined not to be sleepy, though he knew he was being brought out to say goodnight. He had a skin of exquisite pink and whiteness, thin fair hair, and intensely blue, rather prominent eyes.
“Oh, I call it a shame to have put that suit on Eden!” she said angrily. “He will be getting a spot on it.” But she smiled in delight at his beauty when he darted to her side.
“See me! See me!” he cried.
Renny followed him. “Give Peep to me,” he said. “Then you can look after Eden.”
Half reluctantly she surrendered the baby. He leaped, crowing, into Renny’s arms. Renny carried him to where Maurice had moved apart.
He thrust the child’s downy head against Maurice’s face. “Take him,” he laughed. “You’ll be dandling a kid of your own one day. Let me see how it becomes you.”
Maurice drew back as though struck.
“For Christ’s sake, keep it away from me!” he said, thickly. “Renny, I must see you alone! You must get rid of those girls and come with me into the ravine. I’ve something terrible to tell you.”
II
In the Ravine
The two boys passed through the wicket gate and descended the path into the ravine, just as the sun was sending its last rays there. The young grass and unfolding bracken fronds had taken on an unearthly green, while the trees, still caught in the sunlight, glistened and quivered in the light breeze. The trunks of the pines showed a distinct purple tone, while those of the silver birches diffused through their whiteness a pale inner glow.
The contrast between the movements of Maurice and Renny was indicative not only of the moods that possessed them, but of their very natures. Maurice plunged down the path, sending small stones rolling before him, scarcely seeming to see where he was going. Renny moved freely as a wild creature and nothing escaped his brilliant gaze. He stopped once or twice and appeared to be on the point of turning aside into the wood, when Maurice called back to him: “Are you coming?” and he returned to the path.
The river which flowed through the ravine, and which, in later years, became only a small stream through the building of a dam in an enterprise by which the family endeavoured to counteract the extravagances and bad investments of Nicholas and Ernest, was now in the fullness of its strength. It made a distinct murmuring sound as it moved through its thickly wooded curves, breaking into clear gurglings when it encountered the dark opposition of a boulder or urge of smooth ledges of rock.
Renny made toward a bridge which spanned the river at its narrowest point, but Maurice drew him to the shelter of some wild cherry trees.
“Come in here,” he said, “where we can’t be seen. You never know when someone may cross the bridge. Why, look now! There comes my father! When I think what I may be bringing on to his head, I could drown myself in that river.”
Renny fixed his eyes on the figure of the man crossing the bridge. He wished he could escape from Maurice. He said: —
“Your father won’t be hard on you for anything you’ve done.”
The thin, upright figure crossed the bridge and began to make the ascent with an alert step. Maurice followed his movements with misery in his eyes. Mr. Vaughan passed so near them that they could hear his heavy breathing.
Maurice groaned — “I’m in the devil of a mess! I don’t know how to tell you.”
“Perhaps you had better not tell me,” said Renny, with a gleam of hope in his eyes. “I always find it better to keep my troubles to myself.”
“But I must tell you! You’ve got to help me! You’re the only one who can.”
“Out with it, then!”
Maurice threw himself on the grass.
“Sit down! Sit down beside me!”
Renny dropped to his side and offered him a cigarette, but Maurice shook his head.
“No, no, I can’t smoke! Renny, I’m in the most terrible mess. I don’t know what I’m to do.” He rolled on to his side and clutched a handful of grass. Then, as though the words too were pulled up by the roots, he said: —
“It’s a girl I’ve got into trouble. She’s going to have a baby! If your family find out — if my mother and father find out — I’m done for! And it isn’t as though I care about the girl. I hate her now that I know what she’s going to do. I’ve never loved anyone but Meggie.”
“Who is she?” Renny asked in a cold voice.
The name came so muffled he could scarcely hear the name: “Elvira Gray.”
“Elvira!” Renny repeated it on a note of wonder, and he looked at his friend, seeing him in a new, strange, sensual light.