The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (435 page)

For some reason she shrank from telling Alayne of his generosity. She asked him to do it. Alayne, when she heard, was ashamed that she had, in her reconciliation with Renny, forgotten her aunt’s predicament. She felt overwhelmed by such a magnanimous solution of the problem, but somehow the thought of Aunt Harriet at Jalna did not please her. She could not picture her there. There was also a subtle shrinking from the bringing together under one roof of the two antagonistic spheres of her life. There would always be a note of discord in the harmony she now yearned toward.

The effect on Miss Archer of this assurance of her future was magical. She had a naturally happy nature. She had always had a desire for more excitement, more experience, than had come her way. In her sister’s lifetime she had sought always to please her, and her sister had been timid and retiring. Now she saw opening before her a new and thrilling life, among people of strong personality, in a house whose very name had acquired a strange glamour for her. Where she had lain awake at night in terror, she now could not sleep for sheer excitement. She was tired too. It was not restful to have a man and a child in that house, where there had never been man or child, even though the child was as good as gold and the man turned himself into combined nurse and housemaid. He and she did the work together in a sort of devil-may-care agreement that she found immensely stimulating. He talked to her of his stables, of the characteristics of his various horses. He filled the little stucco house with his noise and laughter. He placed the kitchen chairs as hedges and oxers and initiated her into the mysteries of high jumping.

She drank in all he had to tell her, preparing herself for the life in his house. At the same time there rose in her a critical attitude toward Alayne. Why had Alayne dwelt only on the dark side of his nature? After all, he had done no more than many a man. Why had Alayne never invited her to visit her at Jalna? This had always been a faint hurt. Now it rankled in Miss Archer’s breast.

As she looked at Renny’s thin, muscular form, his red head, and felt her affection for him deepen day by day, she would say to herself in dismay — “And to think that I said aloud, in my own bathroom, that it would serve him right if he cracked his skull!”

She would come behind him where he sat and stroke his hair like a loving aunt. She would exclaim, when he emerged from the cellar after putting coal on the furnace:

“Oh, you naughty boy! Look at your hands! Go straight and wash them!”

It was the first time he had ever been petted and he savoured it to the full. He would stretch out his hand to catch her skirt as she passed where he sat. He would lay his head against her and cajole her into an affectionate passage. He was an enigma, a marvel and a delight to her. When he fell halfway down the stairs with a tray from Alayne’s room and Miss Archer ran terrified to see whether he had broken any bones, he only looked up defensively from where he sat on the floor and exclaimed:

“I haven’t cracked a dish!”

Had he expected that she would think of her china at such a time as this? It did not speak very well for Alayne….

Frequently he went into New York and, on one of these occasions, returned with a dachshund puppy under his arm. He set the curious-looking, long-bodied creature on the floor and explained:

“A man in New York has owed me seventy-five dollars for three years. I’d given up all hope of getting it out of him but this morning he gave me this puppy out of a champion-bred litter. It’s looking rather seedy because it’s just been wormed. But it is a good one and he swears that it will be worth ninety dollars when it is grown. I hope you don’t mind my bringing it here. It’s a quiet little thing and it can sleep on the foot of my bed.”

Harriet Archer’s brain reeled. Her world was rocking beneath her but she thought — “Let it rock! This is life! It is real. It is earnest.” She said:

“Of course, I shan’t mind!” She wished he could have known what a heroine she was being, she so longed, in a measure, to repay him. “Do you think it would like a saucer of milk?”

To him it was the most natural thing in the world that she should take the puppy to her heart. He liked to see her sitting with it in her lap. But to Alayne, when she was first able to come downstairs, it was a sight so amazing as to be comic. Miss Archer resented Alayne’s air of levity. She took her relationship to the dachshund and its master seriously, almost aggressively.

Now that Alayne was strong enough they discussed the details of their plans for the future. It had already been arranged that friends of Miss Archer’s, a college professor and his wife, were to take her house furnished. It was at rather a low rent but it would pay the rates, keep up the repairs and leave something over for her personal needs.

Though there was so much to be done in preparation she found time to amuse Adeline. She made a scrapbook for her. She made paper dolls for her. She made ginger cookies for her and cut them into the shapes of little animals. Renny thought she was the busiest woman he had ever seen. She never sat down with her hands idle. Before a week had passed she had knitted a beautiful green jumper for Adeline and was at work on a cap and scarf. He thought she was a wonder and told her so.

Alayne’s health steadily improved. She recuperated more quickly than the doctor had hoped. At the end of a fortnight she, Renny, Adeline, Miss Archer, and the dachshund pup, with all Miss Archer’s personal belongings, set out for Jalna.

H
OW
T
HEY
T
OOK THE
N
EWS

N
ICHOLAS
W
HITEOAK READ
and read again Renny’s brief letter. Then he pushed his spectacles from the arch of his big nose to the crest of his grey hair and said to his brother:

“Here’s a pretty to-do!”

Ernest never liked to hear his brother use their old mother’s pet phrases, so to punish him he ignored the remark, though he was burning to know what had caused it. He went on with his embroidery.

Two could play at the game of being stubborn, thought Nicholas. He gripped the letter in his hand, rose rather totteringly because of his bulk and his gout, and began heavily to pace the room. He muttered at intervals:

“Well — well, this beats all!”

Ernest endured this as long as he could, then he spat out:

“Don’t act like a fool, Nick!
What
beats all?”

Nicholas halted beside him and threw down the letter on his embroidery frame.

“Read this! Read it aloud. I can’t properly take it in.”

Ernest read:

D
EAR
U
NCLE
N
ICK
—
I expect you think I have been rather a long time in writing home but you will not wonder when you hear what I have been up against. Alayne has been very ill. When I arrived I found her in a dead faint on the floor. She is going to have a child next month. She is better now and we are coming home Wednesday, on the train arriving at 9.30 a.m. Aunt Harriet is coming with us. I have invited her to make her home at Jalna as she has lost practically everything. She is a very delightful woman and I am sure she will be a nice companion for you and Uncle Ernest. I am very fond of her already. Adeline is in grand fettle. I have acquired a very good dachshund pup in payment for a long-standing debt. Please have Aunt Augusta’s room got ready for Aunt Harriet. Tell Finch to get out in the air if he can.

L
OVE TO ALL
, R
ENNY
.

The brothers stared at each other in mutual astonishment. Yet they were not displeased. They had been finding the winter very long. They were candidly bored by each other. The thought of Alayne’s return with Renny, even though in a delicate state, was pleasant. The thought of an addition to the family brought its own pride. The acquisition for their circle of a cultivated woman, such as they knew Alayne’s aunt to be, was nothing short of exhilarating. The one thing of which they disapproved was the dachshund.

They wasted no time informing Piers and Meg of the news. That very afternoon there was a gathering of the family to discuss it. Finch alone was not present. He resented the shattering of his privacy by what he thought of as an avalanche of people. Day by day, in the indolent company of his uncles, in the quiet depths of the snowy weather, he had felt himself growing stronger. He could see a change in the looks of his hands and the reflection of his face in the mirror. He began to enjoy reading and, if it had not been for his fear of meeting Sarah, he would have ventured a walk in the brilliant weather. Now everything would be changed. He would have to face the eyes of a stranger.

If Finch was resentful, Meg was furious.

“To think,” she exclaimed, “that Alayne would foist her impecunious old relation on us for the rest of her days! And after the way she had behaved to Renny — going off and sulking, as everyone knows she has! She could always wind him round her finger. I think we should rebel. Simply refuse to get Aunt Augusta’s room ready for Miss Archer. I think you should write and tell Renny so, Uncle Nick.”

Nicholas looked dubious. “Well, Meggie, I don’t think I could quite do that. I dare say we’ll find her very nice. And — as Renny says — she’s lost all her money —”

“That’s the awful part!” interrupted Meg. “If she had any money we might tolerate her! I dare say, if the truth were known, we should find that Alayne has little enough of her own left — the money she was so penurious with.’’

Maurice put in — “Renny always had a foolhardy generosity.”

“Well,” said Piers, “it’s Renny’s own house, and if he chooses to make it an asylum for relatives who pay nothing for their keep, it’s his own affair, isn’t it?”

Nicholas glared at him. “Is there any personal insinuation in your remark?”

“Yes,” agreed Ernest nervously, “I should like very much to know.”

“Of course there isn’t!” exclaimed Pheasant.

Piers looked at his boots and blew out his cheeks. He said slowly:

“Yes, I think there is. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of this for some time.”

Meg looked at him, blinking a little. She did not know what he was going to say, or which side she was going to be on.

He said — “You two uncles have made a long visit here. You’re both far from impecunious. It looks to me as though you were staying on indefinitely. Now — what about it?”

“What about it? What about it?” repeated Ernest huffily. “What about your coming in here, young man, and poking your nose into affairs that are none of your business?”

“But they are my business,” said Piers. “Maurice speaks of Renny’s foolhardy generosity. I quite agree with him. I call it foolhardy to support two well off old gentlemen who own a house in Devonshire, without getting a penny in return for it. I’m damned if I’d do it!”

Nicholas returned, with less temper than might be expected — “Renny would be insulted if we offered him money.”

Piers gave a snort. “Try him! Just try him!”

“Everyone is not such a money-grubber as you are, Piers,” said Ernest severely. “Renny is a real Whiteoak, a true Court. He has a mind above such pettiness. If you had a better memory you would recall the stories my mother told of her father’s house in Ireland and of the relatives who lived there with him — free to come and go as they pleased — free as the air!”

“I have an excellent memory,” said Piers. “I remember Gran telling how one of those relatives lived with him because Great-grandfather had won all his money at cards and the poor devil had nowhere to go. I’ve also heard her tell how, at the day of his death, her father had never paid for her wedding trousseau. Renny Court didn’t trouble to pay his debts. Our Renny is a man of honour.”

“It is small wonder if my mother’s trousseau was not paid for,” said Ernest. “It filled seventeen trunks when it was taken to India.”

Nicholas said — “Could you expect a woman of her appearance to be satisfied with less?”

“I should expect her father to pay for it,” retorted Piers.

“When I think,” said Meg, “of the modest trousseau I had when I was married!”

“It was your second,” said Piers. “Remember the one you had twenty years earlier. There was nothing modest about that.”

Meg gave him a scornful look. “What can you know about it?” she said. “You were a babe in arms.”

“I’ve heard.”

Pheasant was scarlet. Maurice stared at the ceiling. With his gaze still on it he said:

“I agree with Piers that Renny would not in the least object to your uncles giving him something regularly. It’s surprising what a help paying guests are. If it weren’t for them Meg and I should be on the rocks.”

Nicholas heaved himself in his chair. “It’s intolerable” he said, “that you and Meg should depend on that!”

“What
I
think is intolerable,” said Meg, “is that Alayne should force her wretched aunt on us.”

“I suppose she considers that one more in such a houseful doesn’t matter,” said Piers.

Nicholas turned his deep gaze on him. “You seem to forget,” he said, “how you and your wife and child lived here for years without responsibility.”

“I was working the farm. Paying rent for it.”

“And being paid in turn for the feed you raised.”

“When Renny would fork over.”

“He told me only lately that he had paid you a large bill.”

“Yes — poor devil — I hated to take the money.”

Meg put in — “I wish I had a close-up of you hating to take money.”

Ernest said with dignity — “There is no disgrace in liking money. As a family we like it for what it will bring — not for its own sake.”

“What about Gran?” cried Meg. “She hoarded hers for its own sake!”

“She hoarded it for the power it brought her,” said Piers. “She knew she had us all on a string.”

His sister groaned. “Oh, if only she had divided it among us! Or left it all to Renny — or, perhaps me!
Anything
but what she did do!”

A brooding silence fell on them all. The wind swept shrewdly against the house, carrying bright particles of snow and depositing them wherever there was any roughness of surface. Through the window the turquoise blue of the day showed a new phase in winter’s progress. The sunlight brought out the heavy lines in Nicholas’s face, the pinkness of Ernest’s scalp showing through his hair, the increasing greyness of Meg’s and Maurice’s heads, Piers’s fresh colouring and the length of Pheasant’s lashes.