The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (260 page)

He stood meditatively, enjoying the soft pink glow that was diffused over the room. It imparted a fragile liveliness to the Dresden china figures on the mantelpiece, a tremulousness as of sunrise on the watercolours on the grey walls. He was lucky to have such a room. Well, not altogether
lucky,
for his own good taste had made it what it was, though, of course, the view over the meadows and winding stream was much to be preferred to Nick’s view, which was blocked by a huge cedar, and beyond it only the ravine.

The little china clock between the shepherd and shepherdess chimed twelve. What an hour for him to be getting to bed! But what a jolly evening! He hoped and prayed that the rum and water would do him no harm. Yes, and he had had a glass or two of wine before the rum… He hoped and prayed that Mama would be all right after that second supper of hers. How roguish she had been! He smiled when he thought of her. Really, one could scarcely believe that he was seventy-one with Mama so active… He hoped and prayed that he would be like that at a hundred and one. If he could manage to live that long. There was no reason why he should not live to a ripe old age. He took such good care of himself, though, of course, there was his chest—a handicap, certainly.

He remembered his new overcoat. Not a bad idea to try it on now when he was looking his best, flushed a little, his eyes bright. He got it from its hanger in the tall wardrobe and turned it round, looking it over very critically, his lips stern, his eyes knowing. “A damned fine coat!” He uttered the words aloud in the tone one might use in similar praise of mare or woman. Gad, it was a handsome coat!

He put it on, and it slipped over him with a firm yet satiny embrace. He stared at his reflection in the glass. No wonder the tailor had complimented him on his figure! Slender, upright (when he used a little willpower), with an air of elegance such as one did not associate with the colonies.

Suddenly he felt the colonial’s strange nostalgia for England. He remembered a top hat he had bought once in Bond Street. He remembered exactly what the shopman had looked like, and his pleasantly deferential manner. He remembered buying a flower for his buttonhole from such a sweet-faced flower-seller that same morning. He recalled the agreeable elation he had felt as he had walked lightly down the street. It had never taken a great deal to elate him. He had a happier disposition than either his sister or his brother. Eden was like him in that. They both had a way of seeing the beauty of life—poetic temperament, though, of course, one couldn’t say so before the family. Certainly he missed Eden’s little visits to his room—to say nothing of Alayne’s. Such a pity about that marriage… Twenty years ago he had bought that hat in England, and he had not been back since! Perhaps when Mama died, and Augusta returned to her home, he would go back with her on a visit.

When Mama died! The thought of her death always brought a tremor of apprehension with it. There was first the dread of losing her, and, added to that, the prolonged uncertainty as to who would inherit her money. Not a hint had dropped from her lips. She had thought it enough for them to know it was willed in its entirety to one member of the family. Thus her power over them was kept undiminished through the years. And their suspense. She must be worth between ninety and a hundred thousand, all in reliable bonds and stocks. Ah, if she should leave it to him, he would have
independence, power in the family! He would do so many nice things for the boys! Dear boys, it would be best for them if the money were left to him…

Looking steadily into the glass, his cheeks flushed, his body erect, he was sure that he did not look more than fifty, or fifty-five at the most. The coat was so warm, as well as so becoming, he would wear it tomorrow—no more shillyshallying about it.

Before he got into bed he went to the basket where his cat, Sasha, lay sleeping with her kitten beside her. He looked down on them with a wry smile. Sasha, at her age-she was twelve—to have a mongrel kitten! And not only to have it, but be brazen about it! He had thought she was past the age for having kittens—especially mongrel ones—-and then, one morning, she had had this one on his bed. Just given one yell, about six in the morning, and had it. It had sounded like a yell of triumph, rather than an outcry of pain. What a jolt it had given him at rhat hour in the day! He’d scarcely been able to eat any breakfast. It wasn’t only the sudden birth on his quilt, but the thought that Sasha… it wasn’t as though she were a silly young female to be intrigued by a pair of handsome whiskers!

He murmured, “Kitty, kitty.” and touched her with his fingers. It was as though he had touched a vital nerve that controlled her whole body She unfolded like a fan, uncurling her body to its full length, raising the great golden plume of her tail. She opened her eyes, and then grinned impudently up at him—a great three-cornered grin that showed the roof of her mouth and her curling tongue.

“Naughty, naughty.” he said, tickling her.

Her kitten butted its little bullet head against her. It should have been drowned, but his love for Sasha made
him weak. It showed no sign of its mother’s pure Persian birth, but there was something charming about its snow-white underpart, pink nose, and pointed grey ears. It had white paws, too, that looked large for it—working-class paws. The father was evidently a handsome fellow, but of the people.

Even after he was in bed he stretched out his hand and felt for the pair in the basket. It was amusing to lie in bed with one’s hand snuggled against those warm furry bodies. It was comforting.

Piers found Pheasant already in bed, her shingled brown head quite off the pillow on the edge of the mattress, her bright eyes gazing into the cradle.

“piers, do you know, Mooey’s perfectly wonderful! What do you suppose he’d done? Got in between quite different layers of the blankets! I don’t see how he managed it. Goodness, you’ve been a long time.”

“We got to talking.” He came over and looked down at the five-months-old baby. “Looks pretty fit, doesn’t he?”

“Oo, the precious! Hand him in to me. I want him beside me while you get ready.”

“Don’t be silly. I shan’t be five minutes. You’ll only disturb him.”

“I want to see his little toes, don’t you?”

“Pheasant, you’re nothing but a baby yourself… I say, someone’s been at my top drawer!”

“Not me! Not Mooey! Oh, Piers, if you’d only seen the face he made then! His mouth just like a pink button and his eyebrows raised. He looked positively supercilious.”

“If I thought young Finch had been at my cigarettes…” He muttered as he undressed.

“Well, he had none of his own tonight. I know that. What would you do?”

“I’d show him… Good Lord, I wish you had heard Uncle Ernest going on about his new coat after you left! I’ll bet you a new silk undie thing to a pair of socks that he ends by wearing his winter coat after all.”

“Then you’d go and say something to discourage him. Just a few words from you like ‘Some day, this, Uncle Ernest,’ or you might simply come into the house shivering.”

“Well, you’re free to tell him how balmy it is, and how perfect his shoulders look in the new coat.”

“No. I’m not going to bet. It’s against my principles. From now on I’ve got to be setting a good example to my little baby.”

Piers sputtered with laughter. He was in his pyjamas now. “Shall I put out the light?”

“Piers, come here; I want to whisper.”

He came and bent over her. Lying relaxed on the bed, her hair rumpled, a white shoulder showing above the slipped-down nightdress, she seemed suddenly very tender and appealing to Piers. She seemed as sweet and delicately vigorous as one of the young silver birches in the ravine.

His heart quickened its beat. “Yes? What does she want?” His eyes glowed softly into hers.

She hooked an arm around his neck. “I’m hungry, Piers. Would you—like a darling?”

He looked genuinely shocked. “Hungry! Why, it isn’t any time since you were eating.”

“Yes, it is. It’s ages. You forget how long you’ve been sitting downstairs talking. Besides, I’ve fed Mooey There’s practically all the good of my own supper gone. Anyway… will you, Piers?”

He thought, as he descended the steps into the basement: “I’m spoiling her. Before the kid came she’d never have dreamed of sending me downstairs for food for her at this hour. She’d have jolly well got it herself. She’s getting just like those American wives in the magazines.”

Nevertheless, he sought earnestly in the pantry for something to stay her. He could hear Mrs. Wragge’s bubbling snore from the room beyond the kitchen. He could hear the old kitchen clock ticking the night away as eagerly as though the game were fresh to it instead of seventy years repeated. He lifted an enormous dish cover. Under it three sausages. He looked between two plates turned together. Cold salmon. He opened a door. The last of the joint, cold boiled potatoes, beetroots in their own juice, the carcass of a fowl—that looked promising. No,
high!
Whew! He shut the door… What quantities of bread and buns all tumbled together in the bread-box! He chose a bun, split it, buttered it. That was that. Rather doubtfully he laid a sausage beside it. Cold rice pudding, packed with raisins. That was the thing! A saucer of that with cream… Ha! What was this? Plum cake. He cut a slab and devoured it like a schoolboy. Indigestible, that stuff, for a nursing mother.

Pheasant, round-eyed, sat up in bed. “Oh, how scrumptious!”

She clutched him and kissed him before she ate.

The light out, Pheasant snuggling close to him. Mooey making comfortable little noises in his sleep like a puppy. The rain beating on the windows, accentuating the snugness and warmth of the indoors, the peace. The peace. Why was it that at times like these Eden’s face should come out of the darkness to trouble him? First as a pale disturbing reflection on the sea of his content, like the reflection of a stormy
moon. Then clear and brilliant, wearing his strange ironic smile, the blank look in his eyes, as though he never quite clearly knew why he did things. Piers shut his own eyes more tightly. He clenched his teeth and pressed his forehead against Pheasant’s shoulder, trying not to think, trying not to see Eden’s face with its mocking smile.

He tried to draw comfort from her nearness and warmth. She was his! That awful night when Finch had discovered the two in the wood together was a dream, a nightmare. He would not let the dreadful thought of it into his mind. But the thought came like a slinking beast, and Piers’s mouth was suddenly drawn to one side in a grimace of pain. Pheasant must have felt his unease, for she turned to him and put an arm about his head, drawing it against her breast.

Nicholas could not sleep. “Too damn much rum,” he thought. “This comes of drinking scarcely anything stronger than tea. You get your system into such a state that a little honest spirits knocks your sleep into a cocked hat.”

However, he didn’t particularly mind lying awake. His body was in a tranquil, steamy state, and pleasant visions from his past drifted before his eyes. The glamour of women he had cared for long ago hung like an essence in the room. He had forgotten their names (or would have had to make an effort to recall them), their faces were a blur, but the froufrou of their skirts—that adorable word “froufrou” that had no meaning now—whispered about him, more significant, more entrancing, than euphonious names or pretty faces. And their little hands (in days when women’s hands were really small, and “dazzling” was a word not too intense for the whiteness of their flesh) held out to him offering the flowers of dalliance… His thoughts became poetic; there was a kind
of rhythm to them. Realizing this, he wondered if it were possible that Eden had taken his talent from him. That would be rather a joke, he thought. What if he began to write poetry himself! He believed he could at this moment if he tried.

Nip, his Yorkshire terrier, who was curled up against his back, uncurled himself suddenly and began to scratch the quilt with concentrated vehemence. “Spider,” growled Nicholas, “catch a spider, Nip!” The little dog, giving vent to a series of yelps, tore at the quilt, snuggled into it, and at last recurled himself against his master’s back.

Nicholas loved the feel of that compact ball against him. He lay chuckling into the blanket he had drawn pretty well over his head. He began to get drowsy… What had he been thinking of? Oh yes, old days. Affairs. When Nip had begun that bout of scratching he had been recalling a little affair with an Irish girl at Cowes—it must have been quite thirty-five years ago, and the memory of it as fresh as her skin had been then! Ha—he had it! Adeline, that had been her name—the same name as his mother’s. His mother. How she had hung on to Renny and kissed! And how they had stared into each other’s eyes! A thought came to him with a nasty jolt. Suppose Renny were trying to get around her—get on the inside track after her money… One never could tell… That red head of his. He might be as crafty as the devil for all one could tell. Nicholas remembered suddenly how as a child Renny could get things out of his grandmother… What if all his caresses were calculated?

Nicholas became blazing hot, his brain a hotbed of suspicion. He flung the covers from his shoulders and put his arms out on the quilt. Nip began to smack his lips as though he were savouring the imaginary spider he had caught. The
rain dripped steadily. Nicholas lay staring into the darkness, going over in his mind encounters between the two—little things trivial in themselves, but which seemed to indicate that Kenny’s influence was unduly strong with the old lady. Good heavens, if Renny were worming his way in there, how dreadful! He would never forgive him!

He heard a step in the hall, Renny’s step. He felt that he must speak to him, see his face, discover perhaps some telltale predatory gleam in his eye. He called: “Is that you, Renny?”

Renny opened the door. “Yes, Uncle Nick. Want something?”

“Light my lamp, will you? I can’t sleep.”

“H’m. What’s the matter with this family?” He struck a match and came toward the lamp. “Wake’s been having a heart attack.”

Nicholas growled sympathetically. “That’s too bad. Too bad. Poor little fellow. Is he better of it? Can I do anything?”