The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (208 page)

The muscles rippled beneath the glittering flanks of the horses. The scarlet tassel on Wakefield’s cap bobbed. Nicholas and Ernest waved a goodbye to those on the steps. Down the drive and out of sight they went, the horses’ hooves sending clots of clean snow over the rug that wrapped the knees of Hodge and Wakefield.

The motor-car, in its blackness, was a melancholy sight after the sleigh. Its grunting, as it started, was an offence to the ear after the music of the bells. Behind the wheel was Renny. Meg quickly secured the seat beside him. Dilly, Eden, and Piers sat together in the back. Lady Buckley, suffering from a migraine, had remained in her room. Last of the family to appear was Finch. He ran out of the house, dressed for church, but with a distraught expression, one hand held to his cheek.

Meg said — “No room in the car, dear. You’ll just run across the fields, like a good boy.”

“I don’t wanna go,” he mumbled. “My tooth aches.”

His sister looked her compassion. “What a shame! But, if you will look on the top shelf of my bedroom cupboard, you’ll find a bottle with toothache drops. They’ll soon make it better.”

“It
aches
,” he muttered. “I can’t go.”

Renny said — “I know all about these headaches and toothaches that appear just at church time.”

“But this is
real
. It aches like the dickens.”

“You didn’t speak of it yesterday.”

“It only began ten minutes ago.”

“Don’t let me hear any more about it.”

Piers said — “We shall be late.”

Off they went, leaving Finch on the snowy steps, the cold wind causing the tooth to jump fairly out of his head. He staggered into the hall, kicking the door shut after him. He said loudly — “I won’t go. I won’t! I’m damned if I will.”

“Wot’s the trouble?” enquired Wragge.

“Nobody cares how I suffer!” shouted Finch.

“Toothache, is it?”

“Raging. I wish they had it.”

“You can’t tell me nothing about a toothache. Every tooth in me ’ead ’ad a bout of it — one time or another. There’s no peace till you ’ave them all out.”

“Oh, gosh, I don’t want to do that.”

“It’s the only cure. But for relief a big mouthful of whisky, ’eld in the mouth, is pretty good.”

“Oh, oh,” moaned Finch. “It’s jumping.”

Wragge brought him, from the dining room, whisky in a glass. “Try this,” he said.

Finch took a large mouthful; tilted his head to allow the aching tooth the full benefit of it; swallowed it; took another, while Wragge watched him solicitously. He fixed his eyes, in which hope lightened the misery, on Wragge. After a little he solemnly nodded.

Wragge said — “Swallow. Then tike another mouthful. ’Old it. Swallow. I never knew it to fail. On the tooth or in the stomach whisky ’as a beneficial effect.” As Finch followed his directions he added — “Of course, you’ll never ’ave any real comfort till you ’as them all out. That’s what I’ve found.”

Finch violently shook his head at this suggestion — choked — swallowed — took more whisky. A look of benign relief came into his eyes. As he swallowed the last mouthful he executed a few steps of a jig with great agility.

“Did the trick, eh?” grinned Wragge.

“You bet. Why, it’s practically stopped. I believe if I took the least little drop more it would stop.”

“Right you are,” said Wragge, and brought him more.

A glowing warmth ran through all Finch’s being — a warm, grateful relief. Yet he felt at the same time a rebellious anger toward his eldest brother. Tyrant. Unfeeling tyrant who had a mouthful of teeth that never gave any trouble, yet would goad a sufferer like himself to go to church.

“Feel pretty good now?” Wragge asked. “Able for the windy walk across the fields?”

“Not on your life,” said Finch.

“Well, I can’t say I blime you.”

“I’ll show him,” Finch added, in a loud, aggressive voice, “whether he can order me about as though I was a dog. I’ve no intention of going to church. I never did intend to. I don’t think much of churchgoing anyhow. What good does it do you?”

“None that I’ve discovered.” Wragge was still grinning. “That is, for me. With your family it’s different. Your grandfather built the church.

His descendants’as got to keep it going.”

“Not me,” snarled Finch. “I’ll be damned if I go ... bloody damned if I go!”

In a mysterious way Wragge seemed to be floating round and round him, and always with that mischievous grin on his face, his eyes laughing.

“I don’t blime you,” Wragge.

“I’ve stood about enough,” yelled Finch. “From this time forward I’m going to go my own way and I’m sorry for anyone who interferes with me.”

Out of a face large as a pumpkin that floated somewhere near the ceiling Wragge reiterated — “Don’t blime ... don’t blime you.”

Finch watched this pumpkin face as it floated, at first with curiosity, then with a certain distaste. He found he was holding a glass in his hand. He tossed it up and caught it. He found this amusing, tossed it higher and higher. The last time it almost hit the ceiling and would have fallen to the floor had not Wragge caught it.

As he caught the glass he said, with an abrupt change from his friendly manner to an air of fault-finding — “’Ere — that’s enough from you. Better lie down for a bit till you get over it.”

“I am over it. D’you mean the pain?”

“I mean the cure. You need to lie down.”

“I know what I need and I don’t like to be told. I’m not going to stand any more telling — see?”

“No offence meant,” said Wragge, friendly again.

Finch put an arm about Wragge’s shoulders. “None taken. And I chertainly am grateful for the way you stopped that pain. By the way — where just was that pain?”

“In your fice. Toothache.”

“Ah, yesh. Terrible toothache. Believe I’ll go to the library and lie down. Feel funny.”

But he turned in the wrong direction and found himself in the drawing-room. He was surprised to discover the piano there and stood dazedly regarding it for some minutes.... Then a clearness descended on his brain like a mystic hand. His brain was so clear that he felt himself capable of anything — even capable of playing the piano. He always had wanted to play the piano and now he discovered that he could.

He had some difficulty in making his way to the piano. A footstool was directly in his path and the detour he made in order to pass it brought him directly in front of the fireplace. The piano was not to be seen. But he saw his own reflection in the mirror above the mantelpiece. His face appeared flushed to him and rather splendid. He took a long pleasurable look at it before he again set out in search of the piano.

When he found it he discovered that the stool was too high. He twirled it till it became too low. However, it was fun twirling it, he laid his hands on the keyboard. He drooped there for a space blinking at the keys, which were strangely blurred. He waited, watching himself, as an outsider might have watched him, with a cool impersonal interest.

Then he heard himself beginning to play. Softly at first, with an exquisite singing tone, as of the first rippling of the frozen streams in springtime. Then the music grew stronger, as other streams added the power of their waters. Gradually the volume increased till all the rivers, set free, were shouting in their exaltation. His body swayed, his hands were raised high and brought down with a crash, as the flood waters, heaving with broken ice, crashed in ferocious surrender into the sea.... He realized now that he was not alone but that a great crowd in a magnificent concert hall were applauding him. Lights reflected in a thousand prisms in the chandeliers dazzled him. He knew that he should rise and bow, but he had not the strength in his legs. All his power was in hands and arms. With the loud pedal down he played with greater volume, more splendid ferocity than ever.

The door of the drawing-room was thrown open. Lady Buckley, her hands pressed to her ears, staggered toward him. She called his name, but he was so rapt in his music that he did not hear her. He did not hear the four dogs in the hall. This canine quartette were, in the torture of their sensitive ears, rending the air with their howls.

Lady Buckley staggered forward, a bandage about her aching head adding to the classic cast of her features, her long dressing gown threatening to trip her at every step, and laid her hands heavily on Finch’s shoulders.

“Stop!” she commanded in a stentorian voice.

His hands fell from the keys.

Silence that was almost palpable flooded the room. For a moment it lasted; then the quartette in the hall raised their voices in one last howl — high, shrill, and soprano from the Yorkshire terrier, quavering mournful baritones with all the misery of radio singers from the spaniels, heart-rending bass from the bob-tailed sheepdog.

“How
dare
you cause such a riot?” demanded Augusta.

Speechless, Finch raised a dazed face to hers.

“Have you lost your
reason
?” she demanded.

He could not speak.

What he thought was the blaze of chandeliers was the glare of sunlight from a cloudless sky. His aunt’s face hung above him. He smelled the camphor with which she had wet the cloth about her head. Behind his own head he felt the fullness of her breast and burrowed against it.

“Aunty,” he breathed, and his breath went through her with a terrible shock.

“Finch,” she mourned, “you have been
drinking
.”

“Just whisky,” he mumbled, “for my tooth.”

“You’re
drunk
,” she said.

“Thash’s what made me able to play,” he giggled.

“I was never more shocked,” she said, and looked it. Indeed her shock was so great that, for the moment, she forgot her migraine. She took him firmly by the arm and drew him to his feet.

An odd picture they made as they moved, clasped in a dizzy embrace, through the hall, and into the library. There she laid him on the old leather couch and went to the trouble of covering him with a woollen afghan which she herself had knitted many years ago. But she said, before she left him:

“I shall be obliged to speak to your brother about this.”

That did not worry him. Nothing worried him. He fell into a heavy sleep.

Meantime the two parties arrived at the church.

The merry jangle of the sleigh bells mingled with the sonorous ringing of the church bell. Close behind the sleigh came the motor-car, chugging, bumping over the ruts, honking its urgency to the sleigh. Grandmother was half-lifted out and, with Renny and Piers on either side, slowly, slowly she mounted the steep steps that led to the church. The frosty air made her wheeze. Nicholas, Dilly, Ernest, Meg, Eden, and Wakefield followed. Always she felt that she was being hurried, though everyone was suiting his pace to hers. She wanted the other churchgoers to have plenty of time on this morning to admire the beauty of her new fur coat. She espied the Misses Lacey, daughters of a retired English admiral, whom she had known all their lives. They were now aged sixty-three and sixty-four but had retained their fresh complexions and happy zest for life in this quiet spot.

“Dear Mrs. Whiteoak,” they cried simultaneously, “what a beautiful new fur coat!”

At this moment it seemed a burden to her, but when she heard it admired she preened herself and stepped out more strongly. “It’s a good coat,” she said. “’Twill do me the rest of my life.”

“But,” said Miss Lydia, “your other fur coat is so handsome still.”

“Aye, ’twill do for a ‘knockabout’.”

Nicholas winked at Miss Lacey, who had once wanted very badly to marry him and even now had a warm spot in her heart for him.

It seemed that the little procession would never reach the door of the church, so slow was its progress behind the shuffling leadership of old Mrs. Whiteoak. It was a relief to their ears when the clanging of the bell ceased. In the vestibule she said to Todd, the bell-ringer — “It’s high time you stopped that clamour. Didn’t you see me coming?”

“Yes, indeed, Mrs. Whiteoak, ma’am,” he said respectfully, his hands still clinging to the big rope, “but I thought you’d like a little music on the way.”

That tickled her fancy and she gave him a gracious grin, inclining her head, massive in its window’s weeds. Along the aisle she progressed and those already in the pews turned their heads to see her. The oldest of them could not remember the time when she was not there or picture the time when she would be no more seen.

Now the new cushions for the pews which she had donated, in the first glow of her successful investing, caught and held her attention. In those pews that still were empty they were stretched invitingly, soft yet firm, and in a lovely shade of red. Those seated on them had a relaxed, armchair sort of look. Even those of the congregation whom nature had comfortably padded look gratified, while relief was strongly mingled with gratitude on the faces of the thin ones.

Adeline Whiteoak saw that it was now too late to take back the cushions. Willy-nilly the expense of them must be borne by the remnant of her fortune. Never very good at figures, she now varied between looking on herself as impoverished or completely forgetting her loss.

Wakefield was in such haste to test the new cushions that he almost ran up the aisle to be first to reach the family pews. There were two of these. Into the foremost one went Piers, Eden, Dilly, and Ernest. Into the pew behind, Grandmother and Meg, with Wakefield between them, and Nicholas next the aisle. With an audible grunt the old lady sank on to her cushion. Its comfort was nothing to her, because a cushion was always brought by Meg to put under her and another for her back. Now all the family, with that luxury beneath them, bent their heads in prayer, or the semblance of it. Miss Pink was softly playing the organ, her new winter hat an object of interest to the congregation. As the Whiteoaks straightened their backs Wakefield was bouncing on his seat. He was exhilarated by the resilience of the cushion till Nicholas, observing his unseemly conduct, reached behind Meg and gave him a fillip on the head. The little boy subsided against his grandmother and stroked the silky fur of her new coat.

“Do you think,” Meg whispered to Nicholas, “that she should have the coat off?”