As he helped her with the intricate fastenings of her dress, he said seriously, "I cannot help thinking that this tight lacing is all wrong. In fact the doctor on shipboard told me that it is responsible for many of the difficult births".
"Very well", she declared, "when we are in Canada I shall leave off my stays and go about like a sack tied in the middle. Picture me in the wilds! I am on a hunting expedition. I have just trapped or shot a deer, a beaver or something of that sort. I am on my way home with my quarry slung over my shoulder. Suddenly I am conscious of some slight discomfort. I recall the fact that I am enceinte. Possibly my hour has come. I find a convenient spot beneath an olive tree-"
"They don’t have ’em there".
"Very well. Any tree will do. I make myself comfortable. I give birth to the child, with scarcely a moan. I place it in my petticoat. I resume the burden of the deer or beaver on my back. I return home. I cast my quarry at your feet and my infant on your knee. ’By the way,’ I remark, ’here’s a son and heir for you!’"
"Egad! That’s the way to do it". He struggled with the hooks and eyes. "There-my angel. Out you step!"
The blue taffeta fell in bright cascades to the floor but the crinoline still stood out about her lower half, above which her tiny waist appeared as a fragile support for bust and shoulders. Somehow he got her out of the crinoline, the petticoat and the many-gored corset-cover, but he had a time of it with the corset lace which had tied itself in a tight knot. His fair face was flushed and he had given vent to an oath or two before she stood released and graceful in her shift. He gave her an abrupt little push instead of the kiss she expected, and said:
"Now, put on your peignoir and let’s have something to eat".
He stood watching her with an air half possessive, half coaxing, while she drew on a violet velvet dressing-gown and divested her wrists of her bracelets. As she seated herself at the table she gave a little laugh of complete satisfaction. Her eyes swept across the viands.
"How hungry I am!" she declared. "And how good everything looks! I must have some of that cheese-I adore it!"
"There you go again!" he said, cutting a wedge from the cheese for her. "You adore food! You adore me! What’s the difference?"
"I said nothing whatever about adoring you", she returned, putting her teeth into the cheese. She laughed like a greedy young girl. It was a part of her charm, he thought, that she could sit there eating greedily and still look alluring. She appeared unself-conscious but her passionate love for him, her desire to express it, to put her nature beneath him, even while, in her femininity, she triumphed over him, made her slightest gesture, her half-glance, symbolic. He sat watching her, feeling that in some strange way the fact that she was eating greedily, that her arms were too thin, that her stays had been too tight, only increased her desirability.
At last she rose and came to him. "My God", he thought, "did ever a woman move as she moves! She can never grow old!"
She came to him and sank into his arms. She lay along his body as though her will was to obliterate herself in him, wilfully to become no more than a creature he had created by his passion. She tried to time her breathing with his, so that their two hearts should do even this in unison. He bent his face to hers and their lips met. She turned her face swiftly away. Then turning it again, with closed eyes, toward him she kissed him in rapture.
But the next morning she felt a sadness in her. They were leaving London. When might she see it again? Perhaps never, with all the dangers of travel between. What would happen to them in the New World? What strange distant place lay awaiting them?
It was a journey of many hours from London to the cathedral town of Penchester. When Adeline alighted from the train she was very tired. Dark shadows made her eyes sombre. She looked ill. But the Dean’s carriage was waiting to meet them with its comfortable cushioned seats and its lamps shining bright in the dusk. The streets were quiet, so they bowled along easily. Soon the towering shape of the cathedral rose against the luminous west. Its windows still held a glimmer from the sunken sun. It looked ethereal, yet as though it would last for ever. Adeline leant forward to gaze at it through the carriage window. She wanted to imprint its image on her mind, to take with her to Quebec. She felt that not even the Dean understood and loved the cathedral as she did. And the sweet little streets that clustered about it-so dim, so orderly, so melting into the tradition of the past!
And the Dean’s house itself! Adeline wished she owned it as she descended from the carriage. It looked so sedate, so warm-coloured, so welcoming. She might indeed have been the mistress, to judge by her luggage that cumbered the hall, her husband’s voice that rapped out orders to the servants, her infant that made the echoes ring with its crying, her parrot which rent the air with erotic endearments when it heard her voice. Augusta and the Dean seemed mere nobodies in their own house. Adeline flew to the parrot, chained to its perch in the drawing-room.
"Boney, my sweet, I’m back!" she cried, advancing her lovely aquiline face to the bird’s beak.
"Ah, Pearl of the Harem!" he screamed in Hindu. "Dilkhoosa! Nur Mahal! Mera lal!" He nibbled her nostril. His dark tongue quivered against her lips.
"Where did he learn all that?" asked the Dean.
Adeline turned her bold gaze on him. "From the Rajah", she returned. "The Rajah who gave him to me".
"It hardly seems nice", said Augusta.
"It isn’t", answered Adeline. "It’s beautiful, and wicked and fascinating".
"I mean, the way the bird goes on".
"Yes. That’s what I mean too".
Philip broke in. "I say, Augusta, has our infant been howling ever since we left?"
His sister’s face clouded. The Dean answered for her.
"She has indeed. As a matter of fact I could not find a single spot where I could write my sermons in peace-between baby and parrot". Then he added genially, "But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter".
But it did matter. Philip knew very well that a Dean requires more quiet than does a Hussar, and he was annoyed with his daughter. She was now almost a year old and ought surely to have a little sense. The first time he had her to himself he took her to task. Holding her in his strong hands, so that her sallow little face was on a level with his fresh-coloured one, he said:
"You young minx, don’t you know which side your bread is buttered on? Here are your uncle and auntie, childless. Here are you-a baby girl-just what they want! You could stay here with them, at any rate till your mother and I are settled in Canada. If you behaved yourself they’d make you their heir. Now what I mean is, I want you to stop this howling every time your aunt looks at you. You are not to cry. Do you understand?"
What Gussie understood most clearly was her discomfort. She suffered from constant colic induced by injudicious feeding and still more injudicious dosing with medicine when the food was not digested. Yet the ayah thought that no one but herself was capable of caring for the child. Certainly she poured out love and selfless devotion on her.
Gussie was precocious, partly because of remarkable intelligence, partly because of the constant changes of scene which had been her lot. She understood that the powerful being who held her high up between his two hands and spoke in such a resonant voice was ordering her not to cry, to keep her miseries of pain and shyness to herself. The next time her aunt on a sudden impulse of affection snatched her up and dandled her, the little creature made what was to her a stupendous effort and controlled her desire to burst into tears. She fixed her mournful gaze on Augusta’s face, her mouth turned down at the corners; her eyes grew enormous but she kept back the tears that welled up in them.