The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (387 page)

“Very well,” said Piers, “I’ll telephone for the mason this afternoon.”

“If you do you’ll pay him for the job yourself.”

Piers’s eyes grew prominent. The air became electric.

Boney, on his perch in the library, seemed aware of this. He flapped his wings and uttered incoherent screams that resolved themselves into “
Shaitan-ka-batka!”

“The ceiling in my room,” said Finch, “has been leaking as long as I can remember, and it has not fallen yet.”

Augusta said—“I entirely approve of your decision, Piers. It cuts me to the heart to see my father’s house going to wrack and ruin. The shutters in my room are ready to fall from their hinges.”

“I’ll have them mended too,” said Piers.

“You’ll pay for them too, then,” said Renny. He continued to eat his dinner imperturbably.

Alayne felt a queer rocking motion inside her that was half sympathy for him and half anger against him.

The parrot, once roused, continued to scream.

Rags appeared with a glass of stout on a small tray and set it before Ernest.

“Well, well, that looks nice! Just what I needed, for I have no appetite at all!” He drank a little of it, beamed at Renny, and began to take an interest in his dinner.

Renny threw Alayne an intimate, laughing look that was almost a wink. It said—“I know how to cheer up the old boy.”

Pheasant said, wistfully—“I don’t see where in the world Piers is going to get the money to pay for all those repairs.”

Renny returned—“He should have married a rich wife, like I did!”

There was appreciative laughter, shot through by Finch’s hysterical giggle. Alayne turned scarlet.

Ernest, seeing this, observed—“Dear Alayne, she has been a blessing to us all.”

“Please spare me, Uncle Ernest,” she said sedately. How could Renny, in front of the family, refer to her pitiful possessions! Especially after the affair of the coal, that very morning. She remembered his proud refusal to benefit by Finch’s legacy. What had come over him since then?

Throughout the meal Wakefield had paid little heed to what was being said. There was a secret, smiling look in his
eyes. When they were leaving the dining room, side by side, Finch said to him:

“Well, and what are you looking so smug about?”

“I suppose I feel smug.”

“You may—but it looks damned silly, I can tell you!” “No sillier than your sulks.”

Alayne overheard them. Was there ever such a disagreeable family, she thought? She spent a part of the afternoon reading aloud to Nicholas.

Renny was out that evening, ostensibly to see a prospective buyer in town, but she suspected that he was playing poker with his horsy friends, Crowdy and Chase. She had discovered that they sometimes went to his office in the stables to play where they felt themselves more welcome than in the house, and she had, with a sense of shame, heard Augusta censure him for having Wright join in the game.

She was asleep when he returned but the sound of his light step woke her. She called softly:

“Renny, can you tell who it is that is coughing? It’s keeping me awake.”

He came to her door and stood listening. The loud insistent cough came from Piers’s and Pheasant’s room.

“It’s Pheasant,” he said. “I suppose she’s getting this beastly cold, now. God, how I hate the sound of a cough!”

“She takes no care of herself,” said Alayne. “She kept me awake for quite an hour and when I did fall asleep from sheer exhaustion you have waked me again!”

“Too bad! I wonder if she has taken anything for it.”

“No. She thinks it isn’t safe when she is nursing the baby.”

“Was Adeline good tonight?”

“Angelic… What about your business? Was it good?” She succeeded in purifying her tone from suspicion.

“Very. The man—he’s from Buffalo—is coming out tomorrow. I think Boniface is as good as sold.”

Adeline stirred and snuffled.

“Sh,” warned Alayne and he bent over her and kissed

her.

Adeline laughed.

Renny went round to her cot and put his hand on her soothingly. She caught it in her strong little fingers.

“If she misbehaves tonight I can’t bear it,” whined Alayne. She heard the whine in her own voice and was ashamed.

He whispered into the child’s ear—“Be quiet and Daddy will give you a ride on his big gee-gee tomorrow.”

“Now!” she exclaimed.

“No. Tomorrow. If you go to sleep.”

She was quiet. He tiptoed to his own room. “My two darling girls,” he thought, and he felt pensive, almost weak, in his tenderness for them.

Wakefield flung his arm across his eyes against the light. His lips pouted in a smile, as though he had been in a happy dream.

A violent spell of coughing came from Pheasant’s room. After that it was repeated every little while. As Renny lay uneasily listening, he thought at first only of Alayne’s distress. She would have another bad night, poor old girl. But, when a sustained cough came from Finch’s room above, a sudden feeling of panic gripped his heart. What if the girl and the youth were both affected as Eden had been? Finch had helped to nurse Eden. The doctor had warned them to be careful of infection. But—had they been careful? He knew
that he himself had not. Finch was delicate—born of a consumptive mother—probably—good God, inevitably susceptible! He should never have been allowed to go near Eden. And there was Pheasant, just at the time of child-bearing— well, if she had it, she would last three months! What had he been thinking of? He was a fool—a brute! And there was Eden—poor boy—he’d told Eden to help Maurice with the work—the worst thing he could have done—he’d helped to kill Eden… He clenched his hands, set his teeth to hold back a groan.

The coughing from the two rooms continued as a terrible duet in the blackness. Renny saw himself burying, first Pheasant, then Finch. Gran would have three young people about her. Wakefield murmured in his sleep… Little Wake— perhaps he’d be the next!

Renny found himself in the middle of the room quivering like a terrified horse. He stood so a moment, then felt his way to the door and groped along the passage, a pale pencil of light under the door at the end guiding him.

He tapped, but Pheasant was coughing and did not hear him. He pushed open the door and went in.

Pheasant was sitting up in bed and a night light threw her enlarged shadow grotesquely on the opposite wall. She looked up at him with the wistfulness of a child.

“I can’t stop it,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

He came close and looked down at her. He saw that Piers was fast asleep.

He said—“You don’t think there is anything wrong with you, do you, Pheasant?”

She repeated, startled—“Wrong with me? What do you mean?”

“Like Eden had… Your lungs.”

“My goodness, no! It’s just a common cold. I’ve had dozens like it.”

“And what about Finch? Do you think he—” he looked at her tragically—“I’m afraid he’s going the way Eden went.”

“Finch smokes too many cigarettes. It irritates his throat. But he’s perfectly all right. He was worried about himself— a little, and he went to a doctor in town. He’s perfectly sound. So now you know.” She began to cough. “Oh, if only I had a hot drink!”

Relief surged through Renny, followed by anger at Piers.

He went round to his side of the bed and, pulling down the bedclothes just far enough, gave him a rousing slap.

“There,” he said, “take that! You good-for-nothing lout—sleeping here like a swine while your wife coughs her head off!”

Piers sat up, furious. “Why doesn’t she take her rum and honey?” he demanded.

“I have taken it!” declared Pheasant. “And it’s making me ill!”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” continued Renny, “to show no more feeling than you do for Pheasant or anyone else in the house! Do you know that Alayne hasn’t slept tonight because of her coughing. I haven’t slept. Nobody has slept—but you!” His fright, his relief, combined to make him thoroughly lose his temper. “You’ve never shown any consideration for other people! If Pheasant died at your side—you’d go right on snoring! You had no pity for Eden—no, by God—you’d no pity for Eden! You’re colos-sally selfish. You act as though you owned the earth. You act as though you owned Jalna—sending for masons and carpenters without my permission! Now you’ll go down to the basement and get this poor girl a drink of something hot.”

During this tirade Piers’s face had gone from flushed and sulky sleepiness to white anger. In one movement he was out of bed and on his feet facing Renny. He said:

“If you think I’ll stand this sort of abuse, you’re mistaken! I won’t stay in the house. I’ll get a place for myself!”

“Yes—I can see you!”

“Well—you shall see me—and before the month’s out, too!”

“Come, come, don’t get in a rage!”

“You like to do all the raging yourself, don’t you?’

“I’m annoyed—and no wonder!”

Pheasant broke in—“Oh, please don’t quarrel.” Then, to drown out their voices, she threw herself into a fit of coughing. She kept it up until she saw Piers put on his dressing gown and Renny leave the room. Then she took a spoonful of rum and honey and lay down.

Renny stopped at the door to say to Piers:

“You’d better bring a hot drink for Finch, too. I’ll take it up to him.”

Piers kept a stony silence.

Renny saw a light under Alayne’s door and went into her room, closing the door behind him. Adeline was asleep, but Alayne was pacing the room with a blanket about her shoulders.

He looked at her mischievously.

“They’re going,” he said, with a nod toward the other room.

“Who?” she asked blankly.

“Of course, I don’t really believe he’ll do it, but he says he will. He was lying there, beside that poor girl, fast asleep, simply paying no attention to her—well, I couldn’t stand it and I gave him a wallop that made him sit up, I can tell you.” He gave the arch grin of old Adeline.

P
IERS
stood by his word, and chance had it that the opportunity of renting a furnished house was offered him inside the week. The Miss Laceys wanted very much to spend a year with a cousin in California, and were eager to have friends as tenants for a low rental. Theirs was not a house that could be let easily, and they had a dread of strangers.

At first Piers’s pleasure was damped by the fact that he had, in his hastiness, ordered mason and carpenter to repair ceiling, roof, and shutters of Jalna. Now that he was leaving, surely he could not be held responsible for the cost of these. Yet he dreaded to suggest this, for fear of exciting the anger of his inflammable brother. He did indeed approach the subject once or twice, but Renny shied from the mention of bills as a horse from fluttering paper.

Then Piers told his trouble to Augusta, and she, with a grand gesture of generosity, expressed herself willing to pay all from her own purse. Piers kissed her, gave her a hug, almost painful in its vigour, and went off to find Pheasant. In her relief and delight Pheasant rushed off to tell Alayne. Alayne, whose feeling at the moment was one of
pessimistic tolerance toward them all, passed the news on to Renny.

He was honestly delighted.

“What a good thing!” he exclaimed. “It would have been a pull for the boy. And it’s quite time the old lady toed the scratch. She hasn’t laid an offering on the altar of Jalna for a dog’s age.”

He forgot that he had been angry at Piers, and that day called on the Miss Laceys and tried to beat them down a little more in the rent. He did not succeed in this, but they had a jolly afternoon together, and he returned home feeling happier than he had in many months. Perhaps, after all, it was a good thing that Piers and his family were going. The house was overcrowded. The noise of the children was trying to the uncles, and Pheasant seemed to be heading toward a large family. Piers would still spend his days at Jalna and would be living so near that there would be constant coming and going. Alayne, he felt sure, would be more contented for the change. It was hard on her not seeing more of him—having more of a private life of their own—and she would see more of him with Piers and Pheasant and their kids out of the house.

Alayne, he thought rather ruefully, would have been a happier woman if she had lived quite by herself all the day, with a tired husband coming home at night to a perfectly ordered house, to a tidy and well-behaved child who would sit on Daddy’s knee and stroke his tired head before she went to her cot. And, after a perfect little dinner, there would be a concert or intellectual conversation. Intellectual conversation—that was what hit him in the weak spot. He had it not nor ever would have. Still, they had their happiness. There was that other side of Alayne’s nature, the passionate selfforgetting
side which, it seemed to him, she was learning to keep under control.

But he felt cheerful. For one thing Maurice had not sold any more of his lots, and the two families who were already building bungalows there seemed to be quite decent folk. Perhaps they could be endured. Then the spring was forward. There was a quick rush of budding and unfolding, and the sun, in the height of the day, gave a generous heat.

Renny became jovial on the subject of the removal of the young family. He would say at table “Well, I wonder where you’ll be this time next year! Sneaking back to Jalna, I’m willing to bet!”

“I don’t see why!” Pheasant would retort, hotly.

“What about the rent? What if you can’t pay your rent? I suppose you think Auntie will pay it for you, but you won’t, will you, Auntie?”

Augusta would look down her nose.

Or perhaps he would urge Mooey to a third helping of pudding. “Eat all you can, old man, while you have the chance! God knows how you’ll fare when your dad has the providing to do.” And Mooey, forcing down his third helping, would look downright alarmed.

But no matter what Renny said, Pheasant could not feel angry with him. She remembered the night when he had come in to her when she was coughing and been so tender with her and so rough with Piers, who, she could not help thinking, had deserved all he had got. In conversation with Piers she was always referring to that night “when Renny was so perfectly sweet to me.”