The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (385 page)

He was about to turn away when he saw her coming down the road. She was returning from Mass, carrying a little book in her hand—He thought: “I wish she weren’t religious. I can see the devout look overcasting her face and I should like to take it away. It is like this cold, still air that so badly suits the spring.”

He drew back among the bushes by the gate and watched her approach. He tried to define what there was in her he found so beautiful. It was something that survived the wrong clothes, for she wore a blue macintosh and a brown hat that hid her hair. It was not her walk, for she was moving slowly, with bent head. It was not her eyes alone, for they were covered by her downcast lids… But what lovely, full, and classically cut eyelids! He could almost love her for the lines of those white lids… But the mouth—the mouth was music, though it drooped silent. He compared its pouting

curves to the small, delicate, in-drawn line of Sarah’s mouth… Yes, it was her mouth that made her so movingly beautiful to him. Her mouth and her eyelids… If Sarah had eyelids he scarcely remembered them. They were no better than a lizard’s. They were like a lizard’s. He hated the thought of her.

Was it possible that Pauline loved Wakefield? But how could she love him—that boy—that child? What had he to offer her but a game of pretence—a playing at being in love? One had only to look in his face to see the child—laughing in his eyes, throned on his mouth. Why, Pauline was the sort of girl who might love a man years older than herself—a man like Renny, for instance.

He stood gazing at the house after she had disappeared into it. He put his hand on the gate to open it and cross the road to follow her, but his impulse died and he retraced his steps in the direction of Jalna.

I
T WAS TRUE
that the jig-saw puzzles, for which Augusta had sent to England, had done good service in whiling away the hours of that late spring. Augusta kept the boxes containing them in her own room and she would not bring out a fresh one until the last was complete to the most minute, captiously shaped portion. Some of them were fairly simple and were achieved with just a pleasant surmounting of difficulty. These she handed out first, when the power of concentration of her brothers was wayward and feeble. But, as their skill increased, and as they took more interest in the life around them, she produced the more intricate puzzles and, knowing herself just how the pieces fitted in, she would stand behind the table over which they bent with the enigmatic smile of a Fate.

Others beside the two elderly men were interested. As soon as Pheasant was about again she would leave her newborn infant to hang over the puzzle, sometimes pouncing with exclamations of delight on the elusive piece. To Alayne the absorption of Nicholas and Ernest in such a trivial pastime was pathetic, but she would occasionally draw up a chair
beside them and evince a pretended interest. Her real interest was in watching their faces. They were both aged by what they had passed through, Nicholas the more so because of the pouches under his eyes and the thinning of the cheeks behind the drooping ends of his grey moustache. He was not so good at the puzzles as Ernest. But he was more aggressive in his desire to be the one to place the wanting piece. He would try one after another, disarranging the entire picture as he fumbled with his large nervous hand to thrust the new bit into place. Usually it was the wrong bit, but, when he did succeed, he would give a triumphant laugh and exclaim— “There, now, Ernie! I told you I would get it. You’re too slow for anything, you know!”

But though on the surface Nicholas seemed the most absorbed it was really Ernest who took the working of the puzzles to heart. He would sit drooping over them so long that, when he got up, he could scarcely straighten himself, and when he lay down for his rest the irregular pieces would dance before his eyes, here a bit of sky, there the hoof of an animal or a tangled patch that might be either beard or grass.

Wakefield’s help was invaluable, for he came to the work clear-eyed from out-of-doors. The spring labour of the farm was beginning and he was happy in it. He asked nothing better than the life he was living, and the study he had promised Renny he would undertake was more and more pushed aside for active things. When Renny thought he was at his books he would be in the library bent over the puzzles with his uncles.

Mooey, too, was fascinated by them, but his presence was not welcomed because his small, quick hands were only too likely to displace the pieces. Ernest was irritated by him, but Nicholas would hold him on his good knee and, while he did
not encourage him to finger the pieces, he would sometimes allow him to put one into place.

Augusta announced one day that there were only two puzzles left. They had worked their way through all the rest. Ernest looked almost relieved, for, in truth, they had been a strain on him. But he would fling himself with all his might into the solving of these.

Nicholas exclaimed—“Well, well, that’s a great pity! They’ve been entertaining—very entertaining. It was a good thought of yours, Augusta, to send for them. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed anything so much.” He looked at her out of his tired old eyes, and tried to smile.

Augusta emptied the second-last puzzle on to the table— a provocative and jumbled heap.

“This will keep you busy for some time,” she said. “Mrs. Thomas Court worked at it for three solid days, playing a tattoo on the floor with her heels all the while, she was so wrought up.”

Ernest selected a corner piece and placed it. “You’ll find,” he observed, “that I shall do it in a day, as I did the last one.”

“Well—I like that!” exclaimed Nicholas. “Who was it that fitted the piece of torn trouser into the dog’s mouth?”

“Of course, you helped,” returned Ernest, “but you must admit that I did the bulk of the job.” Already he had several bits fitted together.

Nicholas snatched up a handful, put on his glasses, and peered into them.

Augusta gave his heavy shoulders and Ernest’s slender ones an encouraging pat and left them. They settled down to their task.

At first they got on fairly well, but there was a great deal of landscape in the picture, mostly formed by bending reeds,
and several female forms with Eastern draperies intricate and confusing. Ernest had indigestion and it made him nervous. Nicholas made a sucking noise on the mouthpiece of his pipe that was irritating. Pheasant spent an hour with them and was a great help. But it was Rags, lingering near the table, duster in hand, who discovered that the picture represented Moses in the bulrushes.

By evening it was three-parts done, but there were pieces that could not be fitted in, though Alayne, Piers, and Wakefield all took a hand in it. At eleven o’clock weariness forced them to desist.

“It was far better,” said Alayne to Renny, “when they played bridge. Now they care for nothing but these dreadful puzzles. I’d be demented if I went on as they do. Yet all you others encourage them.”

“Of course we do. It keeps their minds off other things.”

Ernest was up early the next morning. Betimes he entered the library and advanced with a determined tread to the table where the jig-saw puzzle lay. But he drew back, scarcely believing his eyes, when he saw that it was thrown together in a confused heap. His expression of dismay was so ludicrous that Nicholas, following close after, burst into laughter.

“Whoever did this,” cried Ernest fiercely, “will regret it!” But they could not discover who had done it. There was universal astonishment and innocence. Nicholas suspected Wakefield, and Ernest Mooey, though the little boy denied that he had been near the room. It was the subject of discussion all through dinner and tea. By suppertime the puzzle had reached the stage of the night before but Ernest was too tired to go on with it. His face was flushed and he could scarcely sit still. He refused to lock the door of the library and he slept with his bedroom door ajar.

Before he had breakfast he thought he would look in at the puzzle to assure himself that it had not been tampered with. But he was too late to prevent the disaster and Mooey not quick enough to evade him. Moses and his bulrushes were scattered over the table and even on to the floor. Mooey was trying to again put them in order.

Ernest was upon him in two strides. He had not for a long time felt such a desire for violence in himself. He gripped the small boy by the arm and cuffed him, first on one side of the head and then on the other.

“You young devil!” he stormed. “Take that—and that;— and that!”

Mooey’s howls brought the rest of the family from the breakfast table. Ernest stuttered out his explanations. Nicholas said brusquely—“Well, you needn’t make such a pother about it. Children will do these things!”

“I have seen,” said Augusta, “for some time, that he has been getting out of hand.”

“He’s a young ruffian,” fumed Ernest. “To think of his daring to repeat the offence!” He turned to Piers. “What he deserves is a good thrashing.”

“He’ll get it,” agreed Piers grimly.

Mooey opened his eyes and looked at the faces about him, but, seeing that his mother’s was not among them, he again shut his eyes and broke afresh into weeping.

Renny threw Alayne a mirthful glance.

“I think you’re very cruel,” she said, in a tense voice.

“I like to see the old boys up in the air,” he returned.

Wakefield put in—“It’s not any time since young Mooey put my kodak out of order.”

“Yes,” seconded Finch, “and he put a sponge down the lavatory yesterday.”

“I didn’t!” cried Mooey, in a strangling voice. “It was Adeline!”

“Well, she said it was you.”

Nicholas looked down on his small favourite with severity mingled with compassion.

“What made you upset the puzzle?” he demanded.

“I didn’t upset it! I didn’t! I didn’t! I want to go to my mummy!”

Ernest said to Piers—“If you don’t take this sort of thing out of him now he’ll be a heartbreak to you later on.”

“I’ll take it out of him.”

He gripped his son by the arm and they were heard descending the basement stairs to the wash-room where many a chastisement had taken place.

Ernest and Nicholas were established over the puzzle and had already got young Moses in his basket when Pheasant appeared, leading Mooey.

“He wants to tell you,” she said, “how sorry he is and that he’s always going to be good in future.”

Mooey held up a tear-stained face to Ernest and said:

“I’m sorry, Uncle Ernest. I won’t never do it again.”

Ernest bent and kissed him but his expression was still severe.

“If you had done it only once, my boy, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But to do it twice—that was indeed terrible.”

Nicholas took Mooey on his knee. “Was it pretty bad?” he whispered. “Poor old boy!”

So far but no farther could they complete the puzzle. Yet they were indomitable. By night all the family were engaged in the problem and the room was filled with smoke and loud voices. Even though the child had been punished Ernest did not quite trust him, and that night
he locked the door of the library and took the key upstairs.

But he slept badly. His dreams were tortured by Moses in his uncompleted bulrushes and the sandalled foot that would not fit any of the female figures. He grew more and more excited and at last opened his eyes in the grey morning light, to find himself seated in front of the puzzle with all its pieces in disarray before him. Some were even on the floor.

He crept back to bed humiliated. Now he understood why he had had a cold in the head on the last two mornings. He remembered that as a boy he had been a sleepwalker. He was too just to keep the truth a secret and at breakfast he stammered out his story.

“What I most regret,” he said, “is that poor little Mooey was punished unjustly.”

“I told you you were making too much pother about it,” said his brother.

“Still,” amended Augusta, “the child was getting out of hand, in any case.”

Piers said—“Down in the basement he told me that he had thrown it about because he was sick of seeing it.”

“And I don’t blame him!” cried Ernest. “I never want to see another jig-saw puzzle as long as I live!”

“Aren’t you going to do the last one?” asked Augusta.

“No, no,” said Nicholas. “We’ve had enough. We’ll stick to bridge.”

Augusta carried the discarded puzzle up to her room. There she took out the pieces which had been the stumbling block to its completion and replaced them in the box with the last puzzle, which was a picture of Rebecca at the well, and from it extracted the pieces pertaining to Moses. She had
thought, in this way, to make the puzzles last a little longer. She gave a sly smile as she sorted them.

She sighed then. What should she do with them? She would need them no more. They had served their purpose well. She went to the door and called Mooey.

He came running, for he distinguished kindness in her tone. He was bewildered by all that had passed but exhilarated by the laughing attention of his father and uncles.

“Mooey,” one of them would say, “go and ask Uncle Ernie where Moses was when the light went out.”

Mooey would shout the question.

“Come, come,” Ernest would answer, reddening a little, “you need not rub it in. But I daresay I deserve it. Where was he?”

“Doing jig-saw puzzles!” Mooey would shout.

He came running now, to Augusta. She filled his arms with the puzzle-boxes.

“Here,” she said. “You may have them all, and, if you work at them diligently you will learn a great deal.”

He flew to where his mother and Alayne were talking at the foot of the attic stairs. Pheasant held the infant Philip in her arms, and Alayne smiled down at him, his tiny hand clasping her finger.

“Look! Look!” cried Mooey. “See what I have!”

Nooky appeared and screamed at once:

“Me too! Me too!”

“No!” shouted Mooey. “You can’t have one! Aunt Augusta gave them to me! Look, Mummy!”

Alayne said—“You might give Nooky just one.” She loved Nooky.

Mooey flung one of the boxes to his little brother, then, seeing Adeline emerge from Alayne’s room, a predatory light in her eyes, he fled with his booty up the stairs to the
nursery, pursued by the other children, Adeline on hands and feet screaming as she went.