The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (381 page)

“I’ve been good!”

“What!” roared Santa Claus. “Good all the year? Every single day?” His gaze was all the more terrible because it was so strangely familiar. Now it searched the faces of the collected family. “Has he really been good or is this just bluff?”

“He’s been angelic,” growled Nicholas. “Give him that puff-puff or I’ll pull your beard off!”

Mooey hugged the train to his breast and dived behind the towering forms of his uncles.

“Now,” said Santa Claus, in a gentler tone, “who’s this I see?”

It was Patience. She pointed, bright-eyed, to a doll’s perambulator. Santa Claus placed a blue rabbit in it and trundled it toward her. She grasped the handle and, breaking into a loud song of triumph, wheeled it between Ernest’s legs and almost upset him.

Renny, who had been holding Adeline on his shoulder, now set her down and she started off like a small automaton toward Santa Claus. He glared at her.

“Have you been good?”

Adeline stood intrepid. Then, as Santa Claus did not offer her a present, she marched to the tree and pulled the lowest candle from its place.

“You have exasperated the child,” said Augusta. “She must be pacified.”

Santa Claus extinguished the candle and gave Adeline a flamboyant doll chosen by Renny.

The jovial saint must be embraced for that, and Adeline liked the feel of his smooth lips and woolly beard so well that nothing less than a score of kisses would satisfy her.

“She’s Mamma all over again,” said Nicholas.

“What a pity Gran couldn’t have seen her,” said Renny.

Present by present the tree was stripped and Santa Claus offered a pungent remark with each gift. The presents had never been so inexpensive but there had never been so many candles.

When the library was again in darkness and the children had been put to bed, the spirits that had upheld the older folk failed. They talked, in low desultory tones, about the fire. Piers demanded to have a window open to cool his head after the heat of the wig and beard.

“Open that window,” he tersely ordered Wakefield. “I’m as hot as blazes!”

“What about me?” demanded Ernest. “D’you think I can stand the cold night air?”

“Why, Uncle Ernest, the air can’t touch you where you’re sitting,” said Pheasant, “and Piers is frightfully overheated.”

“Let him go out and stick his head in a snowbank,” said Nicholas.

“Will someone play bridge, then?” asked Piers, without resentment.

Augusta and Meg looked at each other. They said:

“We must go. We’ve been away too long as it is.”

Piers brought out the card table and seated himself before it. He began to shuffle the cards.

Maurice said—“I’d like to play but I suppose I must go.”

“I’ll drive them over,” said Renny. “I’d like to see him.”

Pheasant’s gaze was fixed timidly on Piers’s downcast eyes.

Alayne thought—“Oh, I wish it were over! I wish it were over!”

Nicholas turned his grey head from side to side on the back of his chair. He stretched out his hand and took his sister’s.

“Yes. You must go to him, Gussie. He should not be left too long.”

Meg said—“The maid is there, Uncle Nick, and she is very kind.”

“But it’s not the same. It’s not the same. Tell him I’ll be over tomorrow.”

“Tell him that I’ll go too,” said Ernest, “just as soon as it thaws. Give him my love.”

Piers tapped the pack of cards sharply on the table. “Who is going to play?” he asked.

Meg bent over him to kiss him goodbye. She took the opportunity of whispering:

“You might show a little sympathy when all the rest of us are feeling so badly.”

He wrenched his shoulder free of her embrace.

“The hell I will!” he said stubbornly.

Renny said—“Hurry up, Meggie! Get your things on.”

She and Augusta went upstairs. Alayne never knew whether or not to treat Meg as a guest. She always felt that
Meg resented whichever attitude she took. She stood hesitant, wondering whether she were expected to accompany her upstairs.

Pheasant went to Piers. “Shall I play?” she asked.

He looked at her sullenly, without replying.

“Now, Sarah,” said Maurice, cheerful at being left behind, “you and I will play Piers and Alayne. Pheasant looks tired. Bed is the place for her.”

Alayne suffered herself to be drawn into the game of bridge though she did not care for cards, and Piers as a partner was exacting. Throughout the game he was too attentive to Sarah to please Pheasant, who, from the corner of the sofa, kept jealous eyes on them.

Ernest leaned toward his brother.

“We could arrange another table,” he said.

Nicholas shook his head. He took out his pipe. “Not tonight. I’m tired. That was a hard walk to church.”

Ernest pulled at his lip. He considered what possibilities were left. Finch, Wakefield, Pheasant (she was looking rather mopy), and himself.

“Fetch the other card table, Wakefield,” he said, authoritatively. “There is no reason why we shouldn’t have a game.”

Pheasant was glad of the distraction. Finch sat where he could watch Sarah unobserved. Wakefield’s thoughts were on Pauline, who, with her mother, had gone to spend the day with Clara Lebraux’s brother.

Finch suddenly remembered something. He said, in an undertone to Wakefield, while the others were discussing a hand:

“Eden gave me something for you. A present, I think. It went completely out of my mind.” He slid an envelope under the table on to Wakefield’s knee.

Wakefield fingered the bulky packet wondering what it might contain, excited by the possibilities of the belated present. Still keeping it concealed, he tore open one end and looked into it. Saying nothing, he continued the game. But it did not last long. Pheasant became faint, all but keeled over, and had to be half-carried upstairs. Wakefield retreated into the dining room. A few minutes later he called out to Finch.

“Hullo!” said Finch. “What was it?”

Wakefield stammered with excitement.

“Why—why—I could hardly believe my eyes! It’s a secret, but I’ll tell you, Finch! He has sent me practically all he made from his readings. He didn’t spend it and now, he says, he doesn’t need it. It’s to buy the engagement ring for Pauline! He says he’d rather do that with it than anything, so I’m not to feel too grateful. God, how excited I am!”

A dramatic gesture, Finch thought, and how Eden loved to make them! He looked enviously into Wakefield’s happy face. To be able to love like that… To be able to give oneself without reserve… He himself might have felt so about Pauline… If only Wake had given him the chance… A kid like that—why, he couldn’t marry for years! The affair was ridiculous and Eden should not have encouraged it. He said:

“Well, it was generous of Eden and I suppose it’s true— what he says about not needing it himself. But when I think how he worked—for that paltry sum—” His eyes darkened and he saw, not Wakefield’s happy face, but Eden’s sunken cheeks, his too brilliant eyes.

“Don’t think I’m not appreciating it! I’ll never forget it as long as I live. You see, I was so young when Eden left home that I’ve never known him very well. And I’ve always heard Piers saying things against him. The thought that he’s not going to get better hasn’t meant so much to me as it has
to you and Renny. But now—if he wasn’t so ill I’d go straight to him this minute and thank him.”

Finch could not bear to hear this child babbling about Eden. He said gruffly:

“I suppose Pauline will be pleased.”

“Pleased! She’ll be overjoyed! I’ll not tell her a thing about it until I put the ring on her finger. Have you ever noticed her hands?”

“Yes—I’ve noticed them. Look here, Wake, don’t tell Pauline how you got the ring.”

“But why? I think she ought to know.”

“I think it would be better for her to think you had saved up for it.” He could not bear to think of those two babbling together over Eden’s generosity.

“I believe you’re right. She’ll have all the more confidence in me if she thinks I saved up for it. She looks on me as rather extravagant, you know. But, on the whole, we’re perfect in each other’s eyes!”

“Oh, Lord—” Finch turned away.

“You won’t tell anyone,” said Wakefield to his back, “because Eden says he’d rather they didn’t know.”

“Of course I won’t.”

Going moodily through the hall he met Renny returning from Vaughanlands. He said:

“I suppose he’s just the same?”

Renny nodded, frowning.

Sarah appeared in the doorway of the drawing-room.

“They want us to make some music, Finch,” she said.

He looked at her sombrely.

“I wish you would,” said Renny. “I’d like it.”

The two had never before played together with such sympathy. They were released from all the conflicting emotions
about them. They found themselves so happy in their music that they forgot the presence of the others and played each to each.

Wakefield sat, shading his eyes with his hand, his heart going out through the night to Pauline. Renny’s hand slid along the sofa to Alayne’s.

They two were the last to go upstairs. She stood on the bottom step and so could look levelly into his eyes. She touched her finger to his forehead between the brows.

“Those lines are getting deep, poor darling,” she said.

“Kiss them away.” He bent his head toward her.

She kissed his forehead tenderly, then his cheeks, then his lips, and clung to him.

“See what I have,” he said. He showed her the corner of one of the silk handkerchiefs she had given him, projecting from his pocket.

“Do you like them?”

“Do I? Do I like you?” He took the handkerchief from his pocket, shook it out, and, with a short laugh, laid it over their two heads.

“Now,” he said, “you have me alone.”

Under this silken tent his eyes looked black and mysterious, but the harsh contours of his face were obscured. He did these childish things, she thought, and calculatingly increased his power over her. Each fragment of experience with him was laid upon the preceding one, and so was being built up the edifice of their inner life. By his most trivial act he was unconsciously making more concrete her imagining of him. While she craved his gentleness she feared it, as though by it he would transmute her into the passive creature of his need.

He, on his part, thought only of a moment’s sweet escape from the thoughts that harassed him.

I
N THE WEEKS
following Christmas Eden’s decline was rapid. In the New Year he had a second haemorrhage and, after that, it was apparent to all about him that his time was short. Yet, toward the end of January, his strength rallied. He was up every day for a while, sitting, in his light-blue dressing gown, at the table where his manuscripts were littered. His interest and pleasure in this last book of poems gave him strength. He felt a certain enchantment in his isolation, his lack of responsibility. He had only one thing to do and that was to get the proofs ready for the publishers. He hoped to live to see his book between covers, and he had a yearning to read one or two good reviews.

Finch spent several hours each day with him. He was constantly amazed by Eden’s matter-of-factness, his cool acceptance of his fate. It was rather shocking to see him so detached, to hear his callous, and often ribald and blasphemous remarks. Eden was pleased when he could startle Finch into laughter. The unexpected laughter would make Finch lose control of his nerves. He would laugh until he croaked and the tears would run down his cheeks and his breath come with a sob.

Augusta would say, looking into the room:

“You boys seem to be having a good time. I think you

feel a little better today Eden.”

And he would look up at her with his mocking smile, and

say:

“This fellow is an awful ass, Auntie. It takes nothing to set him off.”

The one thing that Eden was bitter about was the weather. It was a cold snowy winter and he grew sick of the sight of all the whiteness. More than anything he loved the colours of the earth and now it was drained of all but black and white. Out of the cold sky came the weary drift of snowflakes, muffling all sound, blurring all contours, making mounds that softened and sank, only to be wearily replenished. He longed for spring, even while he scarcely hoped to live till spring.

He showed decided preferences for certain members of the family. He liked to have Wakefield come to see him but this was not encouraged, because of the boy’s delicacy. Gentle Ernest, for some unknown reason, tired him, while Nicholas, big-bodied and sonorous-voiced, made him more tranquil. He could not bear to have Meg about him for long but yearned toward Augusta, whose rather stuffy style of dress and long gold earrings hardly seemed suited to a sickroom. Renny, in his lean strength, his look of outdoors, his troubled, compassionate eyes, his forced cheerfulness, cast down Eden’s spirits more than any of the others. It was to Finch he clung, Finch whom he could move to wild laughter or—by a tone of the voice or a gesture—to scarcely concealed tears. He liked to watch Finch’s face as Finch read aloud to him—his large flexible mouth; his long, actor’s upper lip; the sensitive structure of his face. When he chose he could send Finch down to the piano to play for him.

The new book was a bond between them. They discussed phrases and rhythm together, Eden placing dependence on Finch’s ear for music. Finch thought that these poems were the best Eden had written. He wrote to the New York publishers urging them to hasten the publication.

As the snowy weeks moved on, with dragging days but terrifying swiftness, the burden of apprehension pressed more and more cruelly on the family. Even Piers had less vitality and would often sit silent, buried in thought.

For the first time in his life Finch’s appetite failed him. He grew to hate the sight of food. The dish of California grapes in Eden’s room became abhorrent to him. Their opaque, sickly greenness, through which he could discern the seeds, was repugnant. The watching of Eden’s swift decline in substance wrung his breast. He had a continual nervous pressure there. And when Eden coughed, with a low rattling sound, as though there were nothing left to cough with, the pressure became a pain.