The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (342 page)

He was so proud of the verses he himself wrote that he longed to read them to someone. A certain instinct told him not to read them to Renny. No—Renny would think he was being a sissy. And, if he read them to Rags, or Pheasant, or Meggy, they would be sure to tell Renny or Piers, and he would be laughed at. At last he thought of Alma Patch. There was something about her pale freckled face, her sandy head, that seemed ripe for listening. He carried his verses to her
and sat down beside her on the lawn, where she minded Mooey. He commanded Mooey to be silent. If he moved or spoke, a tiger with eyes of fire would come up from the ravine and carry him off to feed her young. So the tiny boy, bare-legged and bare-armed, sat, scarcely breathing, staring fearfully into the shadows of the ravine, while Wakefield read his verses to Alma Patch. Alma was all receptivity. She listened, holding a blade of grass to her lips. When it was done she whispered—“My, how lovely!”

After that he read all his poetry to her, having first made her take a fearful oath of secrecy. At the end of each one she tickled her lips with a grass blade and whispered—“My, how lovely!” But, though her words and her look were always the same, her receptivity was so great that he was satisfied. He grew happier.

When Alayne was gone he was happier still. He hoped that her aunt would not get better too quickly. When he was cold that she had died he thought it would be rather nice if :he other aunt were to have a little illness—be just ill enough to want her dear niece at her side... He went boldly into Alayne’s room and took the anthology of poetry from the bookshelves and laid it in the bottom of the chest of drawers where he kept his special things.

He did exactly as he liked in these days, and he noticed how well this agreed with his health. He had never felt better. Mr. Fennel was away on a holiday, so there were no lessons. The servants were jolly and devil-may-care. He could go to the kitchen whenever he liked and possess himself of tarts, cheese cakes, or currant scones. He washed or not, just as he felt inclined. He seldom combed his hair. Pheasant was too lackadaisical at present to notice his dishevelled look. Piers and Renny were in a relaxed mood, lenient toward
everybody. They talked a good deal about their annual duck-shooting expedition, in which Crowdy and Chase were, for the first time, to be members of the party.

On this morning Wakefield had a most beautiful idea for a poem in his head. It was to be more ambitious than anything he had yet written—longer, more thoughtfully worked out, filled with smooth and singing words. He sat down to write it in his bedroom but somehow, for that poem, it would not do. For the first time he noticed the wallpaper, how ugly it was, with its green and yellow pattern of scrolls and bilious-looking birds. The shiny photographs of horses distracted his eyes. The calendar, tacked to the wall above the table, with its gaudy picture of a grinning girl, offended him; the smell of Renny’s pipes... He looked about him disconsolately. What was he to do? Here he was, with a most glorious poem in his head—all atiptoe to be written—and suddenly he had turned against his own loved retreat... His eyes sought the window, rested on the treetops, gold and red against the hyacinthine sky. He gazed and gazed, forgetting himself and his poem, lost in contemplation of the brimming beauty of the day.

He knew what he would do. He would go out into the morning freshness and write his poem there. He would have lovely things about him while he wrote... He gathered up his paper, pencil, and the little lacquer writing-case, and glided down the stairs and through the hall.

He chose a yellow field from which the grain had been cut, and in which three old pear trees stood. He sat down on the warm sandy soil beneath one of these, his folio on his knees... He noticed his hands, how they were getting long, and the knuckles beginning to show, noticed that his wrists protruded from his sleeves. He bent his face to the shining lacquer of the folio, and caressed it with his cheek, his lips.

His face touched the flesh of his hand and he sniffed its warm sunburned sweetness. He loved himself passionately that day as he loved the pear tree and the warm sandy soil. He pressed his body against the ground, feeling its warmth. He looked up into the innermost depths of the tree. The leaves were turning yellow, whispering together in the merest waft of air. Among them the fruit, beautifully shaped, golden green, hung ready to drop the very instant that its dried stem wavered in the support of its luscious weight.

He wrote and wrote. Frowning, he sought for words, found them, and, as a hound that has caught the scent, his spirit ran forward, panting after its quarry. To write a perfect poem! As lovely as one of Eden’s. To write something that, in years and years to come, people would say over to themselves and feel happy... Who was the author? Why, the author was Wakefield Whiteoak, the brother of Eden Whiteoak... Poet brothers... the younger was thought by many to be the greater of the two.

Just as he finished, a pear fell, impaling itself on a spear of stubble. He reached out and curved his hand about it, held it to his nostrils, sniffing it. He was divinely happy.

He re-read the verses, polished them tenderly, copied them out again in his most careful handwriting. How quickly they had flowed out of his head! Only a short while ago the paper had been blank, and now a picture was drawn on it in lovely words that would last forever. Though the writing of it had not taken long, the thought of it had been haunting him lor weeks; in fact, ever since he had watched the family of ducks with the new understanding that had come to him.

He had rushed to find Bessie when the thought of the poem had first come to him. “Look here, Bessie,” he had said, “would you mind being called a farmer’s wife in something
I am going to write?” Bessie had agreed with alacrity. Indeed she had simply thrown herself at the farmer’s head.

To whom could he read the poem? He had read it to the pear tree, but her leaves had gone on whispering together as heedless of him as of the nuthatch that twittered among them.

He lay watching a flock of birds flying high on the journey southward. He saw how some of the birds would press forward in their haste, passing their fellows, and how the conformation of the flock was still unbroken. Passing and repassing each other, they were still contained in their formation like winging words in a poem.

The thought of Pauline Lebraux came to him. He remembered the way her lip curled when she smiled, giving her smile an odd shadow of pain. He felt that he would like to read the poem to her—for this one, Alma Patch’s “My, how lovely!” would not suffice.

He would go to the fox farm and read the poem to Pauline...

He was panting when he reached the gate, for he had run all the way. He hesitated there to take breath. Standing behind the gatepost, he thought: “What if Mrs. Lebraux should come to the door? I cannot read my poetry to her. I must find Pauline and take her to some place where we can be all alone.” He walked cautiously beside the fence, peering between the palings, hoping for a glimpse of her. But, before he saw her, he heard her laughing. She was squatting in the shade of a group of cedars playing with her pet fox.

It had been a puny cub, the smallest of the first litter of an immature vixen. It had promised to develop into a “Samson,” of inferior woolly underfur and uneven rusty pelt. But Pauline had taken it under her protection. She had fed it with milk and stolen eggs for it. She had brushed it till
it shone; had taught it to know its name. It was a secret name—formed of an English word spoken in a French way— and known only to the fox and herself. Now it was growing into a rugged animal of good girth, the glossy black of its pelt shading to blue-black, the silver bands on the guard hairs bright as polished metal.

Wakefield stood watching girl and fox romp gracefully together. A new shyness came over him. The thought of reading his poem to Pauline made him feel strangely timid. The very thought of speaking to her, of her speaking to him, made him shrink. Yet he liked to stand, hidden, watching her. He forgot all else in the pleasure of that till a voice calling from within the house caused her to spring up and, followed by the fox, disappear.

He turned back the way he had come and met Renny on the path through the birchwood.

“Hullo!” said Renny, “where have you been?”

“To the fox farm.”

“Were you? Em glad of that. I think you should go sometimes to see Pauline. She’s a lonely girl.”

“I just looked in... I wasn’t speaking to anyone.”

Renny stared. “But why did you go?”

Wake shook his head petulantly. “I don’t know.”

“Well, when you’d got there, why didn’t you speak?”

“I don’t think I like Pauline. She’s so silly about her old fox.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew what she’s made of him. He was such a poor specimen I was for stripping his pelt off him, but now he’s to be saved for breeding.”

“Well, well,” said Wakefield judicially.

“It would be a good thing for you to have a companion of your own age. You’d better come back with me. I’m going
there now.” He noticed then the unkempt appearance of his young brother. “Look here. When have you had a bath?”

“I went to the lake with Piers yesterday. I took soap with me.”

“But your clothes—” He touched the ragged jersey.” “How long have you been going on like this?”

“Please, Renny don’t touch me! I hate to be pulled at... I like my rags.”

“And your hair—Good Lord, I must take you to the barber. You look like the Minstrel Boy.”

Wake’s eyes blazed up into his. “I am! I’ve just been writing a beautiful poem!”

It seemed too bad to be true; but Renny controlled his lips, held back the expression of dismay that rose to them, forced them into a genial grin. “You have? Right now—out in the open? I see you have your writing-case that Meggie gave you. What do you say to reading the poem to me?”

“Oh, I’ll like that! If you won’t be contemptuous.”

“Of course I shan’t! We’ll sit down here. Now, fire away!”

They sat down in the shadow of the silver birches—the little cold faces of the Michaelmas daisies were turned towards the young poet. Renny stared at him—his little boy, his darling—at that cursed rhyming already! Oh, that fanciful, second wife of his father’s!

Wakefield opened the lacquer case and took out the verses. He read them in a small, carefully modulated voice, with an ecstatic singsong to it.

THE DRAKE

He has two wives, both plump and blonde,
Complacent, roguish, kind.

I’ve never seen a family
So sweetly of one mind.

In May beneath the hemlock’s shade,
Each duck arranged her nest,

And each upon a dozen eggs
Composed her downy breast.

Each thrust her head beneath her wing
And breathed the heady scent

Of feathers, warm straw, warmer eggs,
While drake his ardour spent

In rocking round and round the coop
To ward off stalking foe,

Or taking each in turn to swim
In the cold stream below.

In dim green pools they floated, dived,
Then up the slope he led,

Each in her turn, while wetly gleamed
His jewel-bright, dark blue head.

Full twenty cowslip balls one morn
Into the nests were spilled,

Drake, hearing those faint, infant pipes
With pride of life was filled.

Down a green vista of rich shade
The farmer’s wife, their god,

Bore one warm duck, and the two broods
To a run set on fine sod.

Nor anger, pain, nor jealousy
Inflame the two outside,

Only between the bars they peer
In love and simple pride.

Round and around the run they rock
In ceaseless, sweet converse.

Each loves the other, each the brood
For better and for worse.

But there’s no worse, time sweetly flies.
’Tis August now, the flock

Troop down the lawn to the cool stream
And on its wavelets rock.

Wakefield’s face was flushed, his lips trembled, as he waited for what Renny would say.

Renny said: “I think it’s very good. I like it very much.”

“Oh, Renny, do you really? I think it’s by far the best thing I’ve done.”

The best thing he’d done! So this wasn’t the first time! He’d been at it for God knew how long. “You’ve written others, then?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve been working hard all summer. I’ve written any number of poems. I’ve read a whole book of poetry Alayne had. I’ve read Eden’s two books, and I know some of his poems by heart. But this is the first thing I’ve done that I think is really beautiful.” His eyes glowed happily into his brother’s. “I’m so glad you think so too, Renny.”

The master of Jalna achieved a wry smile. “Yes, it appears to me to be a perfectly good poem. The only question I should like to ask you is—why write it?”

“Why, that’s the whole thing—writing it! You see something you like. Then you want to make others see it. Only you want to make them see it more clearly than they could ever have seen it for themselves.”

“But why? Why not see it yourself and be satisfied?”

“Because”—he knitted his slender black brows—“you want to give them a picture to keep. You want them to see it the way you did.”

“But you only give yourself a lot of trouble. People will read your poem and forget all about it in five minutes. I don’t understand.”

“But, Renny, when Cora had her last colt, and she was so proud about it, you came to the house and told us just how she’d whinnied to you, and how pleased she was with herself. You mimicked her till it was just as though we saw her.”

“That wasn’t writing a poem about her.”

“It was your kind of poem, Renny.”

“Now, look here! When Eden was a boy he was always writing rhymes. Now he’s a man, he’s still at it. It’s never done him any good. It’s mostly got him into trouble.”

“Do you mean marrying Alayne?”

Renny’s loud laugh shattered the quiet. “No, I don’t mean that. The trouble there was all hers.” He changed the subject. “Now, take young Finch. Music is his trouble. He’s been strumming on the piano ever since he could toddle. He used to stand on tiptoe to reach the keyboard and got his hands smacked for it. I’ve spent a lot of money on him because I was made to believe that he was a genius. I never really believed it. He acknowledged himself that he had never played worse than at his recital last spring and yet he practised six hours a day for it. Music has brought him nothing but trouble. Poetry has brought Eden nothing but trouble. Neither of them is strong. Now, Wake, do you want to be like those two or like Piers and me? I know we’re not artistic or anything of that sort. Intellectual ladies don’t get hysterical over us. But we’re normal chaps. We’ve good digestions, good nerves, and healthy appetites.”