“Splendid!” he exclaimed. “It will be a great improvement. I know of an excellent dental surgeon. Edwin and Augusta shall take you to him.”
Augusta drew back her chin.
“Impossible!” she declared. “It would be too harrowing to me to see my mother suffer.”
“But I shan’t suffer! Malahide says I’ll not suffer.”
“Mamma, I beg you not to ask this of me!” said Augusta. “Philip is the one to take you. It is his suggestion.”
Philip looked suddenly sulky. “Let Nicholas do it. He is her eldest son.”
Nicholas leaned back in his chair. “I feel as Gussie does,” he said. “I could not do it under any circumstances. Ernest is the one to accompany Mamma. He has tact. He has a woman’s gentleness and a man’s fortitude.”
Ernest’s expression was bitter as he listened to this eulogy of himself.
“I suppose,” he said, “that you quite forget that I was sick when I saw the vet extract only six teeth from a mare.”
“I have sixteen,” said his mother. “You will never do.” She looked almost pathetically into the faces about her. “Am I to go to the dentist alone?” she asked.
“If you will have me,” said Malahide, “I’ll be charmed to accompany you.”
The family turned to him with their first and last expressions of gratitude. Grandmother stretched out her hand and took his. She said: —
“Well, that’s handsome of you, Malahide. It’s a good thing I have you to lean on. It is indeed.”
“Mamma, you know how it is,” said Ernest. “We cannot bear to see you suffer.”
“Suffer!” she retorted. “I will not suffer! And, if I must, it won’t be the first time. I suffered enough when I brought your miserable little carcass into the world.”
Ernest gave a chagrined smile, while his brothers burst into laughter and Augusta frowned in sympathy with him. Sir Edwin remained, as he always did, unruffled in their midst.
“Shall you have them all out at once?” he asked.
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” she returned easily. “Malahide and I will use our own discretion.”
Malahide smiled under his long nose, and Renny pinched Meg’s thigh beneath the table.
In the two days that followed, Adeline showed no depression in the ordeal awaiting her. Rather she seemed exhilarated, and her preference for the company of her kinsman tended to exclude all others.
On the third day she ordered Hodge to bring round the carriage at ten o’clock. At a quarter past nine, she was dressed in her velvet dolman and heavy widow’s veil, thrown back from her strong old face. She sat waiting in the drawing room by a window that overlooked the drive, her parrot on his perch at her side. She stroked him with a hand that trembled a little.
“Poor old Boney,” she murmured. “Soon I’ll be like you. Not a tooth in me head!”
He undulated his neck to rub his beak against her palm. “Dilkhoosa … Mera lal,” he muttered softly.
Five minutes before the hour of departure Cousin Malahide appeared.
“Ready and waiting, eh?” he said.
“I’m always prompt,” she returned tartly. “I’ve been sitting alone for nearly an hour.… Look at that son of mine! Does he care how I sit alone?” She nodded toward the window past which Philip was strolling, rod in hand, an old coat sagging on him, his hair dishevelled.
“Where are your other sons?” asked Malahide, in a tone that emphasized their neglect.
“Nicholas is still in bed. Ernest is buried in a book. I should go to my trial alone but for you, Malahide. Ha — here come the horses!”
Hodge brought them up before the door with a flourish. Adeline entered the carriage rather heavily, her veil falling forward about her face. Hodge tucked the rug solicitously about her knees. Malahide patted her hand.
“It will be over soon,” he said, soothingly.
The first brilliance of summer was undimmed. Noonday had not yet violated the freshness of the morning. The young leaves unfolded to their utmost and the fields generously spread themselves on either hand. Where there had been one blade a week ago, there were now a hundred. Adeline thought: —
“The land is at the time of increase, but I am at the time of decrease. H’m — well, I’m not done yet. I’ll get new teeth and I’ll hold my own at the board. I wish I had one of my own children with me instead of Cousin Malahide.”
She straightened her shoulders and looked past Hodge’s back at the fine flanks of the chestnuts. Malahide took her hand in his.
He was still holding it when they returned to Jalna. Ernest hastened to the carriage door to open it for his mother. He looked anxiously into her face. Its colour was heightened, but, when she smiled at him, he saw, with a mixture of relief and dismay, that she still had her teeth.
“Why — why,” he stammered, “Mamma, you have not had them out!”
She returned haughtily: “Did I say that I was going to have them all out at once? I did nothing of the sort. I said I was going them out. And I am. One a day, till they are gone! I had my first one out this morning. Look!” She opened her mouth wide and displayed the gory cavity left by a large double tooth.
Ernest peered at it squeamishly. “It looks very sore. Did you have the injections, Mamma?”
Still with her finger at the corner of her mouth, she answered: —
“Not I! The surgeon showed me the instrument, but I didn’t like the looks of it at all. ‘I’ll not have it.’ I said. ‘Pull my teeth in the old-fashioned way,’ I said. ‘One a day till they’re all out,’ I said.”
“She was positively Boadicean,” said Malahide.
She was in great good humour. She talked throughout the one o’clock dinner of the skill, the kindness, the efficiency of the dentist. She had a word of praise for Malahide and his timely support.
“How many teeth has she?” Philip said gloomily of his elder brother.
“Sixteen,” growled Nicholas. “She’ll go on like this for sixteen days.”
Philip hunched a broad shoulder. “Well, we must just put up with it.”
“We should be thankful,” observed Augusta, “that she can extract pleasure from the extractions.”
But it was pleasure mixed with apprehension. Adeline was in a state of exhilaration from the time of her return home till she went to bed, but the next morning there was a different tale to tell. She woke with a cloud hanging over her. By the time she had taken her porridge and mumbled her toast, she was in a state bordering on panic. By the time she was dressed she was in a villainous temper. Fully an hour before the moment when Hodge was due to appear with the bays, she was established in her chair in the drawing room, staring gloomily between the folds of her widow’s weeds. Alternately she compressed her mouth in iron determination or with caressing tongue dolefully sought the familiar surfaces of those well-worn grinders.
Her parrot, always sensitive to her mood, would ruffle himself on his perch, peck at the grey scales on his legs, and now and again, in a metallic whisper, give vent to Hindoo curses.
At this hour Philip was never to be seen. Nicholas had developed a timely attack of lumbago and spent his mornings in bed. So it was Augusta and Ernest who did what they could to help their mother through this trying period. They got small thanks for their sympathy.