Part 37 (1/2)
Mary sat with pencil and paper and wrinkled her brows. She was composing a list, and every now and then, after an inward calculation, she lowered the pencil to note such items as: three tipsy-cakes, four trifles, eight jam-sandwiches. John Turnham had run up from Melbourne to fetch home wife and child; and his relatives were giving a musical card-party in his honour. By the window Jinny sat on a low ottoman suckling her babe, and paying but scant heed to her sister-in-law's deliberations: to her it seemed a much more important matter that the milk should flow smoothly down the precious little throat, than that Mary's supper should be a complete success. With her free hand she imprisoned the two little feet, working one against the other in slow enjoyment; or followed the warm little limbs up inside the swaddling, after the fas.h.i.+on of nursing mothers.
The two women were in the spare bedroom, which was dusk and cool and dimity-white; and they exchanged remarks in a whisper; for the lids had come down more than once on the big black eyes, and now only lifted automatically from time to time, to send a last look of utter satiation at the mother-face. Mary always said: ”She'll drop off sooner indoors, dear.” But this was not the whole truth. Richard had hinted that he considered the seclusion of the house better suited to the business of nursing than the comparative publicity of the verandah; for Jinny was too absorbed in her task to take thought for the proprieties. Here now she sat--she had grown very big and full since her marriage in the generous, wide-lapped pose of some old Madonna.
Mary, thrown entirely on her own judgment, was just saying with decision: ”Well, better to err on the right side and have too much than too little,” and altering a four into a five, when steps came down the pa.s.sage and John entered the room. Jinny made him a sign, and John, now Commissioner of Trade and Customs, advanced as lightly as could be expected of a heavy, well-grown man.
”Does she sleep?” he asked.
His eyes had flown to the child; only in the second place did they rest on his wife. At the sight of her free and easy bearing his face changed, and he said stiffly: ”I think, Jane, a little less exposure of your person, my dear....”
Flus.h.i.+ng to her hair-roots, Jinny began as hastily as she dared to re-arrange her dress.
Mary broke a lance on her behalf. ”We were quite alone, John,” she reminded her brother. ”Not expecting a visit from you.” And added: ”Richard says it is high time Baby was weaned. Jinny is feeling the strain.”
”As long as this rash continues I shall not permit it,” answered John, riding rough-shod over even Richard's opinion. (”I shouldn't agree to it either, John dear,” murmured Jinny.) ”And now, Mary, a word with you about the elder children. I understand that you are prepared to take Emma back--is that so?”
Yes, Mary was pleased to say Richard had consented to Trotty's return; but he would not hear of her undertaking Johnny. At eleven years of age the proper place for a boy, he said, was a Grammar School. With Trotty, of course, it was different. ”I always found her easy to manage, and should be more than glad to have her”; and Mary meant what she said.
Her heart ached for John's motherless children. Jinny's interest in them had lasted only so long as she had none of her own; and Mary, who being childless had kept a large heart for all little ones, marvelled at the firm determination to get rid of her stepchildren which her sister-in-law, otherwise so pliable, displayed.
Brother and sister talked things over, intuitively meeting half-way, understanding each other with a word, as only blood relations can.
Jinny, the chief person concerned, sat meekly by, or chimed in merely to echo her husband's views.
”By the way, I ran into Richard on Specimen Hill,” said John as he turned to leave the room. ”And he asked me to let you know that he would not be home to lunch.”
”There... if that isn't always the way!” exclaimed Mary. ”As sure as I cook something he specially likes, he doesn't come in. Tilly sent me over the loveliest little sucking-pig this morning. Richard would have enjoyed it.”
”You should be proud, my dear Mary, that his services are in such demand.”
”I am, John--no one could be prouder. But all the same I wish he could manage to be a little more regular with his meals. It makes cooking so difficult. To-morrow, because I shan't have a minute to spare, he'll be home punctually, demanding something nice. But I warn you, to-morrow you'll all have to picnic!”
However, when the day came, she was better than her word, and looked to it that neither guests nor husband went short. Since a couple of tables on trestles took up the dining-room, John and Mahony lunched together in the surgery; while Jinny's meal was spread on a tray and sent to her in the bedroom. Mary herself had time only to s.n.a.t.c.h a bite standing.
From early morning on, tied up in a voluminous ap.r.o.n, she was cooking in the kitchen, very hot and floury and preoccupied, drawing grating shelves out of the oven, greasing tins and patty-pans, dredging flour.
The click-clack of egg-beating resounded continuously; and mountains of sponge-cakes of all shapes and sizes rose under her hands. This would be the largest, most ambitious party she had ever given--the guests expected numbered between twenty and thirty, and had, besides, carte blanche to bring with them anyone who happened to be staying with them--and it would be a disgrace under which Mary, reared in Mrs.
Beamish's school, could never again have held up her head, had a single article on her supper-table run short.
In all this she had only such help as her one maidservant could give her--John had expressly forbidden Jinny the kitchen. True, during the morning Miss Amelia Oc.o.c.k, a gentle little elderly body with a harmless smile and a prominent jaw, who was now an inmate of her father's house, together with Zara, returned from England and a visitor at the Oc.o.c.k's--these two walked over to offer their aid in setting the tables. But Miss Amelia, fluttery and undecided as a bird, was far too timid to do herself justice; and Zara spent so long arranging the flowers in the central epergnes that before she had finished with one of them it was lunch time.
”I could have done it myself while she was cutting the stalks,” Mary told her husband. ”But Zara hasn't really been any good at flowers since her 'mixed bouquet' took first prize at the Flower Show. Of course, though, it looks lovely now it's done.”
Purdy dropped in during the afternoon and was more useful; he sliced the crusts off loaf-high mounds of sandwiches, and tested the strength and flavour of the claret-cup. Mary could not make up her mind, when it came to the point, to follow Richard's advice and treat him coldly. She did, however, tell him that his help would be worth a great deal more to her if he talked less and did not always look for an answer to what he said. But Purdy was not to be quashed. He had taken it into his head that she was badly treated, in being left ”to slave” alone, within the oven's radius; and he was very hard on Jinny, whom he had espied comfortably dandling her child on the front verandah. ”I'd like to wring the bloomin' kid's neck!”
”Purdy, for shame!” cried Mary outraged. ”It's easy to see you're still a bachelor. Just wait, sir, till you have children of your own!”
Under her guidance he bore stacks of plates across the yard to the dining-room--where the blinds were lowered to keep the room cool--and strewed these, and corresponding knives and forks, up and down the tables. He also carried over the heavy soup-tureen in which was the claret-cup. But he had a man's slippery fingers, and, between these and his limp, Mary trembled for the fate of her crockery. He made her laugh, too, and distracted her attention; and she was glad when it was time for him to return to barracks.
”Now come early to-night,” she admonished him. ”And mind you bring your music. Miss Amelia's been practising up that duet all the week. She'll be most disappointed if you don't ask her to sing with you.”
On the threshold of the kitchen Purdy set his fingers to his nose in the probable direction of Miss Amelia; then performed some skittish female twists and turns about the yard. ”So hoa.r.s.e, love ... a bad cold ... not in voice!” Mary laughed afresh, and ordered him off.
But when he had gone she looked grave, and out of an oddly disquieting feeling said to herself: ”I do hope he'll be on his best behaviour to-night, and not tread on Richard's toes.”
As it was, she had to inform her husband of something that she knew would displease him. John had come back in the course of the afternoon and announced, without ceremony, that he had extended an invitation to the Devines for the evening.