The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (276 page)

“Many a woman has taken a man back to her bed after such an escapade… I was only suggesting that if Alayne could be persuaded to return to Jalna with us—to help look after Eden—how splendid it would be… I was thinking of her hands. They’re so cool, so capable.”

“You must think she’s without character,” said Renny.

“Not at all! I think she has great strength of character, or I should not suggest such a thing… She’s sick and tired of her life as it is. If she should return to Jalna she might never leave it again. Mama is really too much for Augusta.”

Renny turned to Eden. “What do you think? Should you like Alayne to nurse you?”

Eden rolled over, hiding his face in the pillow.

Finch exclaimed: “He doesn’t want her! He doesn’t want her!” He could not bear the idea of Alayne’s being drawn again into Jalna, as into a whirlpool in which she would be sucked under.

“Let him be,” said his uncle. “Let him have time to think.”

The three sat with their eyes on the hunched-up figure on the bed. In and out, through the mazes of their thoughts, the shape of Alayne moved, in a kind of mystic dance. The roar of traffic from below rose as a wall around them.

At last Eden rolled over and faced them. “I give you my word,” he said, “that unless Alayne comes to help me get well, I shall die.” His eyes were challenging, his mouth feverish.

Finch said over and over again to himself: “It’s a shame— a shame to ask her.”

“You are the one to ask her,” said Ernest to Renny “You must see her at once.”

“How soon can he travel?”

“In a few days.”

“I think you are the one to ask her. You’ve been talking to her.”

“No—no. It must be you, Renny.”

“I will bring her here, and he shall ask her himself.”

“I am afraid it will upset him.”

“I’ll prepare her, but he must do the asking.”

“Very well,” said Eden. “Bring her here to see me. She can’t refuse that.”

Renny’s feelings, as he stood waiting for Alayne to answer her door, were a strange mixture. He had a disheartened, hangdog feeling at being forced, through his solicitude for Eden, to come on such an errand. He had scarcely slept for two nights. In a city he was miserable as a wild animal trapped. Yet stirring all through him was a ruthless exhilaration at the thought of once more becoming a moving force in Alayne’s life, in tearing her from her security and exposing her to the tyranny of passons and desires which she had thought to set aside.

As she stood before him, his thought was that she was in no way striking, as he had pictured her in his fancy. She was less tall, her hair was a paler gold, her eyes more grey than blue, her lips closed in a colder line. Yet, his reaction to this meeting was greater than he had expected. He felt a magnetic fervour coursing in his blood as his hand held hers. He wondered if this were palpable to her. If it were, he marvelled at her selfcontrol.

Alayne’s sensations were the very reverse of his. Standing before her in the flesh, his characteristics were even more intense than in her memory. He was taller, more incisive, his eyes more burning, his nose larger, more arrogantly curved at the nostrils. Inversely, his effect on her was less profound than she had feared. She was like a swimmer who, dreading the force of the current, finds himself unexpectedly able to breast it. She felt that since she had last seen him she had gained in self-confidence and maturity.

With the conflict of these undiscovered emotions surging between them, they entered the living room.

He said: “One after another we are appearing. Only wait and you shall have Gran at your door with Boney on her shoulder.”

She gave a little laugh, and then said, gravely: “But it is too bad that it is trouble that brings you.”

“Yes,” He looked at her shrewdly. “You know how serious Eden’s condition is?”

“I have talked about it with your uncle.” Her face was quite calm.

He said, his eyes devouring her: “God, it seems strange to see you!”

“And you!”

“Has the time seemed long or short to you?”

“Very long.”

“Short to me. Gone like the wind.”

“Ah, well, you have your horses, your dogs, your family. I am rather a lonely person.”

“But you’re busy” He glanced at the books on the writing-table.

She gave a little shrug, and then said: “I am afraid I think too much and take too little exercise.”

“You should have more exercise. I do my best thinking on horseback. Do you remember our rides together? You thought I was a stern riding-master, didn’t you?”

“Our rides together,” she murmured, and in a flash saw herself and Renny galloping along the lakeshore, heard the mad thud of hoofs, the strain of leather, saw again the shining, flying manes. Her breath came quickly, as though she had indeed been riding. “How is Letty?” she asked. Letty was the mare she had ridden.

“Beautiful as ever. Ready—waiting for you to ride her again.”

“I’m afraid I shall never do that,” she said, in a low voice.

“Aren’t you ever coming to visit us?”

“Renny,” she said with sudden passion, “we said goodbye on that last night. You should not have come here to see me.”

“Have I disturbed you?” he asked. “You look cool enough in all conscience.”

“That is what I wish to be. I—I want to forget the past.”

He spoke soothingly, as to a nervous horse. “Of course. Of course. That’s right, too. I should never have come if I weren’t so worried about Eden.”

She opened her eyes wide. “I cannot do anything for Eden,” she said, abruptly.

“Not come to see him?”

“Go to see Eden! I could not possibly. Why should I?”

“When you have seen him you won’t ask that question. He’s a sick man. I don’t believe he’ll get over this. His mother went in consumption, you know.”

Consumption! They would still call it that at Jalna. What a terrible word!

“I am the last person Eden would want to see.”

“You’re mistaken. He’s terribly keen to see you.”

“But why?”

“There’s no accounting for the desires of anyone as ill as Eden. Possibly he has something to say to you that he thinks is important.”

“That is what has brought you here?”

“Yes.”

A flash of bitter disappointment pierced her. He had not sought her out because he must set eyes on her, but for Eden’s sake. She said: “I cannot see him.”

“Oh, but I think you will. You couldn’t refuse.”

He sat doggedly smoking, endeavouring to override her opposition, she felt, by his taciturn tyranny.

She murmured: “It will be a difficult scene for me.”

He replied: “There will not necessarily be a scene. Why should women always expect scenes?”

“Perhaps I learned to expect them in your family,” she retorted.

He showed his teeth in the Court grin, which, subsiding, left his face again dogged.

“You will come, Alayne,” he said. “You can scarcely refuse to see him for five minutes.”

“Do you know,” she said, “I believe I guess what he wants. He is frightened about himself and he wants me to look after him—nurse him back to health!”

“That may be,” Renny replied, imperturbably. “At all events he absolutely refuses to have a trained nurse. I don’t know how Aunt Augusta and Mrs. Wragge will make out with him. Uncle Ernest suggested old Mrs. Patch, and Finch said at once that she ought to know something of nursing consumption, as she had buried three of her own with it!”

He looked shrewdly into her eyes to read the effect of his words there, and saw dismay, even horror.

“Mrs. Wragge—Mrs. Patch,” she repeated. “They would be the end of him!” Her mind flew to the scene of Jalna. She saw Eden, beautiful Eden, lying on a bed, neglected by Mrs. Wragge or Mrs. Patch. Another thought struck her. “He should not be in the house with the boys—Wakefield, Finch. It would be dangerous.”

“I had thought of that,” said Renny, “and I have an idea. You remember Fiddler’s Hut?”

Was she likely to forget it? “Yes, I remember.”

“Very well. Early this spring I had it cleaned up, painted, made quite decent for a Scotch couple who were to work for Piers. Something went wrong. They did not turn up. Now,
I’m
wondering whether it might not be made quite a decent place for Eden. We have quantities of furniture at Jalna that could be spared. If some pieces were taken to the cottage and some rugs, it wouldn’t look so bad. It might be made quite nice. And if only you would see Eden and use your influence—”

“My influence!”

“Yes. You have a great deal of influence over him still. You might persuade him to have a trained nurse. God, if you only knew how troubled I am about him!”

Suddenly he seemed, not domineering, but naive to her; pathetic in his confidence in her. She did not look into his eyes, which for her were dark and dangerous, but at the troubled pucker on his forehead, above which the rust-coloured hair grew in a point.

She pictured the mismanagement of a sickroom at Jalna. She thought of Fiddler’s Hut, embowered in trees and rank growths. And Eden terribly ill. All her New England love of order, of seemliness, cried out against the disorder, the muddleheadedness of the Whiteoaks. She was trembling with agitation, even while she heard herself agreeing in a level voice to accompany him to the hotel.

In less than an hour she found herself, with a sense of unreality, by Eden’s bed, pale, with set lips.

He lay, his fair hair wildly tossed, his white throat and breast uncovered. She thought of dying poets, of Keats, of Shelley sinking in the waves. Young as they had been, both older than he. And his poetry was beautiful, too. She still
loved his poetry. She knew it by heart. What might he not write if he could only be made well again! Was it her duty to Art? To the love she still felt for his poetry, his beauty? Ah, he had been her lover once, lying with that same head on her breast! Dear heaven, how sweet their love had been, and— how fleeting!

Their love had been a red rose, clasped, inhaled, thrown down to die. But the faint perfume of it lingering made her soul stir in pain.

Eden caught her hand and held it. He said, huskily: “I knew you’d come! You couldn’t refuse me that—now… Alayne, don’t leave me. Stay with me—save me! You’ve no idea how I need you. I refused to have a nurse because I knew it was only you who could help me. It’s your strength—your support… I can’t get well without it.”

He broke into a passion of tears, and, with his eyes still wet, fell into a paroxysm of coughing.

She looked down on him, her face contorted like a child’s, in the effort to keep from crying. She heard herself promise in a broken voice to accompany him back to Jalna.

T
HE
A
RM OF
J
ALNA

T
HE TRAIN
seemed to be flying with passionate purpose through the night. The engine shot forth smoke and sparks, its bright eye glared, its whistle rent the air. Its long hinder-part, trailing after it, the intricate, metallic parts of which revolved with terrific energy, seemed no less than the body of some fabulous serpent which, having swallowed certain humans, hastened to disgorge them in a favoured spot. In the steel cavern of its vast interior their tender bodies lay secure and unharmed. It seemed to Finch, imaging it thus, that its journey was made for the sole purpose of returning five souls to the walls of Jalna, from which they had wandered.

Eden had borne the journey well. Renny had taken a compartment for his comfort, and had shared it with him that he might be on hand to wait on him. Ernest, Finch, and Alayne had had berths at the other end of the coach. The four—for Eden had not been visible to the other occupants of the coach—were the subjects of much conjecture. The men— tall, thin, absorbed in themselves and their female companion—made their numerous passages from end to end of the coach in complete obliviousness of the other travellers. Thus
the Whiteoaks revealed their power of carrying their own atmosphere with them. With calculated reserve they raised a wall about themselves, excluding the rest of the world. In the smoking compartment not one of them exchanged more than a glance, which itself lacked any appearance of friendliness, with any other passenger.

They were met on their arrival by two motor cars. One was of English make, a very old car but still good, owned by Maurice Vaughan, Renny’s brother-in-law, and driven by him. Eden was installed in it, and with him went Ernest and Renny Watching their departure, Alayne wondered why Renny had not chosen to ride with her. She was relieved that the propinquity of a long drive had not to be endured, but she felt a quick disappointment, even resentment, that he had shunned her. His mixture of coldness and fire, of calculation and restrained impulse, had always disturbed her. To be near him was to experience alternate moods of exhilaration and depression. She was glad that she was not to be in the house with him. Fiddler’s Hut was near enough.

As she settled herself in the familiar shabby car of the Whiteoaks beside Finch, beheld the remembered form of Wright, the stableman, driving, and dressed to the height of his power for the occasion, she wondered what had been the force which had impelled her to this strange return. Had it indeed been the shadow of her dead love for Eden—springing desire to cherish his life for the sake of his poetry? Or was it that, knowing Renny willed it so, she had no self-denying power to resist? Or was it simply and terribly that the old house—Jalna itself—had caught her in the coil of its spell, had stretched forth its arm to draw her back into its bosom?

Finch and she said little. An understanding that made words no obligation had been born between them. He too
had his moving thoughts. He was passing through the town where his school was. What a great city it had seemed to him until he had seen New York! Now it looked as though it had had a blow on the head that had flattened it. Its streets looked incredibly narrow. The crowd, which had seemed to him once to surge, now merely loitered. They had different faces, too, less set, more good-humoured. And how jolly the policemen looked in their helmets!

When they had left the town and were flying along the country road, past fields of springing corn and gardens bright with tulips and heavy with the scent of lilacs, Finch’s face was so happy that Alayne said, with a half-rueful smile: “Glad to be home after all, aren’t you?”