Centenary at Jalna. Mazo de la Roche
She sat, holding the two chocolates in her two hands, while Sylvia and Renny sipped sherry and ate biscuits. At last, in desperation, she asked, “May I go to the bathroom, please?”
“I’ll show you where it is,” said Sylvia.
“I know.” Mary thought of how she had watched this house being built, before ever Sylvia had married Uncle Finch and come there to live. In the bathroom she put the two chocolates into the lavatory and turned the handle. A great rush of water swept them away. Not a decent little rush such as came at home, when you turned the handle, but a cataract like Niagara that swept the chocolates out of sight forever. But Mary’s palms were still sticky from them. She wiped her hands on a white damask towel and was troubled to see the brown stains left on it. These she folded out of sight and trotted back to the music room.
When Sylvia and Renny were left alone she said, “What a shy little thing Mary is! It’s a wonder, with three older brothers. One would expect her to be forward.”
“She’s very like her paternal grandmother. She’s named for her. She came as governess to my sister Meg and me. Then she married my father.”
“I want so much to be friends with the children of the family,” said Sylvia.
“There are only two. This one and Finch’s boy, but before long Patience will make her addition to the tribe.”
“Finch’s boy.… Tell me about Dennis. I did not see much of him in the Easter holidays. Finch and I were busy settling in, and Dennis seemed always to be off about his own affairs. He’s not a very friendly child. Is he shy too?”
“Quite the reverse. A self-possessed little fellow — small for his age. He’ll be fourteen next December and looks eleven.”
“He has no resemblance to Finch.” Sylvia spoke wistfully. If the boy had been like Finch she was sure she would have understood him — sure that he would have been easy to make friends with. Finch was such a friendly soul. Finch reached out toward people.
“Unfortunately Dennis takes after his mother,” Renny said cheerfully. “She was a bit of a devil. You’ll make Finch happy. She only made him miserable.”
Mary had returned to the room. She overheard these last words, from the strange talk of grown-ups, from which she shrank. Sylvia now took her hand and said:
“You do like me, don’t you?”
Mary despairingly searched her mind for an answer.
“I like you so much,” went on Sylvia.
She was at it again, talking about things that Mary preferred to keep private. She looked into Sylvia’s lovely pale face and murmured, “I think I must be going. Thanks for the nice chocolates.”
“Have another.”
Mary drew back from the proffered box.
“Better not,” said Renny. “It’s her lunchtime. But first we must go to my sister’s. We’re making the rounds, Mary and I.”
“Is she walking all the way?”
“A walk like this is nothing to her, is it, Mary?”
“Oh, no,” said Mary. “Are we going now?”
Sylvia kissed her and soon they were outdoors again.
Striding along the path Renny remarked, “That’s one of these newfangled houses. All very well, if you’ve never lived in anything better.”
“I’d not like to live there,” Mary said stoutly. “I’d rather live at home.”
“Or at Jalna,” he suggested.
She agreed with an emphatic nod. She was suddenly happy. The wind had ceased, the sun come out warm and almost spring-like. Suddenly on a mound a cluster of trilliums rose out of the wet earth, their white blooms held up like chalices, as though they had that instant sprung up from pure joy.
Renny and Mary stood looking down at them.
“You know better than to pick, don’t you?” he said.
“I’ve known that all my life.” She was proud of her knowledge of growing things. “It kills the bulb.… Is Sylvia Dennis’s stepmother?”
“Yes.”
“I thought stepmothers were cruel.”
“Nonsense. I myself had a stepmother, and a very sweet woman she was.”
“Does Dennis like her?”
“He will when he gets used to her.”
Mary was thankful when one of the farm wagons from Jalna overtook them and they rumbled in it, behind the two stout percherons, and were deposited at the gate of the Rectory — which, behind its tall greening hedge, looked the proper cozy setting for Auntie Meg. She met them and enfolded them in a warm embrace. She was having a cup of tea from a tray in the living room and at once brought two extra cups and poured some for each of them.
“And I have some thin slices of fruit loaf — really nice and fresh, with good raisins in it that you might like. You know how it is with me. I eat scarcely anything at table but must have a little snack now and again to keep me going. This is really the first food I’ve had today.”
“I know what you are about meals,” Renny said sympathetically. “It’s a wonder you don’t starve. Mary and I are due for lunch in a short while, so we don’t need anything to eat now but we’ll gladly drink a cup of tea with you.”
Mary was hungrily eyeing the slices of fruit loaf but she politely began to sip her tea. Renny was explaining to his sister the reason for the tour, while she, without seeming to do so, was sweeping clean the tray. Every now and then she would smile at Mary, a smile of such peculiar sweetness that the little girl forgot how hungry she was and how wet were her feet.
Renny, drinking a second cup of tea, was saying, “With the centenary of Jalna coming next year, I thought it a good thing to give the youngest of the family an idea of what it means to us.”
“You couldn’t do a better thing,” said Meg. “Modern times are so strange. One can’t be sure what children are thinking. One must guide them as best one can.”
Renny spoke firmly to the child. “Tell Auntie Meg what you know about the centenary at Jalna.”
With a slight quaver in her voice Mary answered, “Everybody’s got to come.”
Meg gave a pleased smile. “And who is everybody?” she asked, helping herself to another slice of fruit loaf.
“Everybody in the family.”
Meg now said, in the dictatorial tone of someone hearing the Catechism, “Name them.”
“All the ones that live — that live — ”
“Convenient.” Renny supplied the word.
“Convenient,” Mary said with a pleased smile at her aunt, who, taking another large bite of fruit loaf, mumbled through it:
“And who comes from a distance?”
“My brother and Uncle Wakefield and Roma.”
“Isn’t she clever?” exclaimed Renny. “She knows everything.”
“It would be nice,” said Meg, “if we could celebrate the centenary by a wedding. Adeline’s, for example.”
“It would indeed, but whom is she to marry?”
“There’s that dear boy, Maurice, who loves her to distraction and always has. How would you like to see your favourite brother married to Adeline, Mary?”
“I have no favourites,” said Mary. “My brothers are all just men.”
“I know, dear,” Meg spoke patiently,