The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (443 page)

“But those seats! You need not have bought such expensive ones.”

“No use in taking Uncle Nick anywhere but in front. He’d not hear a word.”

“Yes, that’s so.”

He looked at her anxiously.

“You’re pleased, aren’t you?”

“Of course.” But she had a sharp stab of disappointment. She wanted to go alone with him. Just the two of them! His solicitude for these old people was sometimes deeply irritating to her. But she forced herself to conceal it.

They had barely reseated themselves in front of the fire when the dogs began to scratch on the front door and raise their voices in complaint. Renny sprang up to let them in. Alayne never had got used to his way of turning repose into lively action at a moment’s notice, just the way the children did, and felt that she never could.

The dogs came in, talking of the cold and wet outside. Biddy looked in at the drawing-room door but when Alayne cried “No!” she turned away and leaped on to a chair in the hall. Uncle Nicholas could be heard coming heavily down the stairs. He came slowly and carefully, leaning on the banister, for he would be eighty-eight on his next birthday and had been a victim of gout for many years. In truth none of the family but himself remembered the time when his knee had not troubled him. His brother, Ernest, could have remembered but it was easier to think of Nicholas so afflicted because he had somehow fitted this affliction into his strong personality.

Renny went to meet him and the old man leaned heavily as he made his way to his accustomed chair. “Hullo, dogs,” he mumbled under his drooping grey moustache. “Hello, dogs! Been out in the fresh air, eh? Lucky dogs! Hullo, Biddy! Over here again? Your master will have it in for you, old girl. Now then — let me down, Renny! Ha — this weather plays the devil with me!”

He smiled at Alayne, who had to smile back, though the moment before she had been thinking somewhat grudgingly of his presence at the theatre party.

“Well, and what have you been doing this afternoon, sir?” he demanded of his nephew.

“I’ve had a busy day. One thing on top of another. I think I have a likely purchaser for the bay colt. Alayne and I have just arranged a theatre party for tomorrow night. I hope you’ll enjoy seeing
Candida
. It’s the play Wakefield acted in, you know.”

“Yes,” said Nicholas, gravely. “I remember.”

“Mr. Shaw would be flattered!” exclaimed Alayne.

Nicholas beamed. “I shall be delighted to go. How kind of you two!”

“It was Renny’s thought.”

“No it wasn’t! You said yourself you’d been thinking of it.”

How generous he was! Any irritation she had felt toward him was gone. She had a sudden exhilaration in the prospect of tomorrow night. She smiled happily at the two men. Though she had lived so many years at Jalna she had not made friends in the neighborhood. She had begun by considering it a backwater and feeling impatient of its Victorian traditions. The old neighbors were not intellectual and, when newcomers did appear among them, the Whiteoaks held themselves aloof and she did not meet them. Nor did she want to. She had always been of a reserved nature and though she deplored the self-sufficiency of the Whiteoaks, it suited her better than she knew. Yet it was her fate often to be longing for what she would not put out her hand to acquire.

A sound of rushing steps and a clamour of children’s voices came from the top of the stairs. It grew nearer like a rushing wind, inexorable and boisterous, till the three children were in the room. They were Alayne’s and Renny’s two children and the child of Renny’s brother, Eden, who was dead and who had been Alayne’s first husband. She had divorced him and married Renny. Now the presence of his child in her home was an unhappy reminder to Alayne, of Eden. The child had his colouring and his smile that sat oddly on her little face. Though Alayne thought of herself as modern and widely tolerant, her upbringing had been somewhat puritanical and she judged others, more often than she guessed, by the standards of her forbears. So little Roma’s irregular birth would have made a barrier between her and Alayne if nothing else had. Alayne saw her as set apart from her own children — first as Eden’s child, second as the offspring of Eden’s connection with that laughing English girl of few morals, Minny Ware.

The boy of the little group was four-year-old Archer. That had been Alayne’s maiden name and it was an annoyance to her that Renny should call him Archie. And of course, since Renny did, Adeline imitated and was being constantly reprimanded for it. He himself, proud of his name and wishing to emphasize it, pronounced it with a strong accent on the last syllable which was almost as irritating to his mother as the abbreviation.

As the greater part of his days was spent with girls much older than himself Archer had to make the most of his masculinity. He was very straight and the straightness was exaggerated by his carrying his chest high and his neck rigid. His face was inclined to thinness but his arms and legs were sturdy, so that the pedestal of his small being looked firm indeed. He had fair hair, not sleek and glossy like Nook’s or fluffy like Roma’s, but dry and rather stiff. His forehead was high and white and beneath it his blue eyes looked out with an expression almost piercing. This expression seldom changed. He seemed to be searching for something and determined not to rest till he found it. His lips were thin and his mouth wide and usually turned down at the corners. When he did smile his look was sweet and rather surprised, as though he had not believed himself capable of being amused. He was the apple of Alayne’s eye and her constant annoyance. As an infant he had been perfect. She had thought of him as the reincarnation of her beloved father. But, as he developed, he was often an enigma. She could not believe that her father had ever behaved in such a way. She could only believe that he had inherited some perverse strain from the Whiteoaks or the Courts, and she spent many of her waking hours in trying gently to eradicate it and lost sleep over it at night. However Archer went his own way with a kind of blind persistence. He apparently had some scheme of life, known only to himself, which he felt obliged to follow, no matter what suffering it caused to himself or others.

He was a source of amusement to nine-year-old Adeline, partly as a human being and partly because she saw that his behaviour was the cause of grave concern to their mother. This was not so much from cruelty as from a mischievous pleasure in the antics of the little brother who, till he was nearly four, had been held up to her as a paragon of goodness and on whom endearments were lavished which had never been bestowed on her.

She was her father’s darling and she knew it. She knew that she was the image of the great-grandmother whose portrait, in a yellow satin evening dress, hung in the dining room. Her great-uncles never let her forget that she had them same dark red hair, the same brilliant brown eyes, the same milk-white skin and scarlet lips as were depicted in the portrait. She had the same nose, too, and the same temper. She did not know from where she had got her abounding vitality, for she did not know that she possessed it. She only knew that she could ride for hours on a spirited horse and at the end be ready for any kind of wildness. Yet she could on occasion be quiet and even contemplative and sometimes showed real self-restraint. Toward the younger, weaker Roma, she was generous and protective.

“Children! Children!” exclaimed Alayne. “I wish you wouldn’t come into the room like that.”

“But it’s the first time I’ve seen Daddy since early morning,” said Adeline. She got on to his knee and clasped his neck tightly. She kissed him again and again on the mouth. Roma went and sat on one of the beaded ottomans near the fire. She moved constantly on it as though it were her will to rub the beads off.

“Roma!” cried Alayne. “Please get off that ottoman. It has a lovely covering and it is being ruined.”

“Little rascal,” said Nicholas, looking sternly at the child.

Roma held herself suspended above a chair. “Has this a lovely covering?” she asked.

“Come and sit on my other knee,” said Renny. “Nothing can hurt it.” He looked sternly at his son. “And what have you been up to today?”

Archer, for a reason known only to himself, had lately decided that he wanted to be a baby again. Now he held up both hands, in a feeble, flapping kind of way, and tottered across the room. He lisped, in a nasal whine: —

“Can’t walk yet. Somebody help Archer walk.”

This was painful to Alayne but Renny grinned from ear to ear. He asked: —

“How old are you, then?”

“Don’t know,” whined Archer. “Can’t walk yet. Want a bottle to thuck.”

“Archer,” said Alayne sternly, “come here.” She reached out and drew him to her. He took one of her hands and began to gnaw at it in a toothless way. “Thumthing to thuck,” he urged.

“Do you want to go straight back upstairs?” she asked.

He began an affected imitation of an infant’s wail.

Renny stretched out a leg and poked him in the seat with his toe. “Come,” he said, “enough of that!”

Archer continued to make infantile noises and mouth Alayne’s hand. She rose and took him by the arm. “Very well,” she said, “you must go upstairs, I am afraid.”

“Archer can’t walk. Give Archer a pickaback.”

She bent over him and whispered in his car.

“Give him a good smack,” suggested Nicholas.

Archer, propelled by Alayne, took a few wobbling steps into the hall. Out there he shouted in his own loud voice: —

“I won’t go up! I want to stay with Daddy!”

“If I come after you, you’ll be sorry,” called out Renny.

From the drawing room they could hear Archer stamping up the stairs, yelling as he went.

Renny scareely knew what was going on about him, his mind was so occupied by the problem of how he should break the news of his proposed trip to Ireland. He heard Nicholas’s voice rumbling on and on. He felt the two little girls snuggling warm against his breast.

Adeline said — “I do like the smell of you when you’ve been in the stables, washed your hands with Windsor soap, then walked in the frosty air.”

Roma snuffed and declared — “I like your smell best when you’ve just shaved and had a smoke.”

Renny hugged them to him. “What would you think of me if I won the Grand National?”

“It would be the happiest day of my life,” said Adeline.

“What is the Grand National?” asked Roma.

“It’s the greatest race in the world, little silly,” said Adeline.

Suddenly Renny pushed them from him and leaned toward his uncle.

“Look here, Uncle Nick. Read these. I had them today.” He handed him the two cablegrams.

Nicholas put on his spectacles and read them. It took him some minutes to absorb their import.

“What’s it all about? Oh yes, a horse. Dermot Court, eh? Wants to sell you a horse, eh? No, no, don’t you do it! I wouldn’t trust any Court, when it comes to a horse deal.”

“My God, Uncle — he doesn’t want to sell me a horse! He’s recommending one to me.”

“Who owns it? Malahide? Worse still.”

“No. A farmer named Madigan.”

“What a cable that boy Wakefield sent! It’s like a letter. He could have said it in half the words.”

Renny replied testily — “He had to make it clear and he had to make it urgent. What do you think of the idea?”

Nicholas took off his spectacles and stared at Renny from under his shaggy brows.

“I think it’s a very foolish scheme. I don’t like it at all. Five hundred guineas is a lot to risk.”

“I know. And I’d never do it without seeing the horse first.”

As he said these words Alayne returned to the room leading Archer by the hand. She said: —

“Archer says he will be quiet and good if someone will play a game of dominoes with him. Will you, Adeline?”

“I want to hear about the horse.”

“I’ll play with him,” said Roma.

“Thank you, dear,” said Alayne, but her eyes were cold as they rested on the child’s face.

“Archie!” exclaimed Renny.

Archer turned his piercing gaze on him.

“Do you know what the Grand National is?”

“It’s a steeplechase!” He began to gallop about the room, leaping imaginary obstacles.

“Good legs, hasn’t he?” observed Renny. “Go it, old boy!”

“Roma, will you
please
take him to play dominoes?” said Alayne.

“Yes, Auntie Alayne.”

But Archer prostrated himself on the floor.

“I’m down,” he said, “I’m hurt.”

Alayne went to him, her face tense but her voice gentle.

“Archer, darling, you must get up.”

He began to rock rhythmically on the floor, as in a cradle.

“I’m a baby,” he lisped. “Ca-an’t walk. Give me pickaback!”

Adeline stood smiling.

“You make him worse,” said Alayne angrily. “Stop smiling at him instantly. You do it purposely.”

Renny sprang up. “Come, Archie!” He caught up his son and threw him to his shoulder. “Come, Roma.” He took the children to the sitting room.

“Adeline has such a tormenting spirit,” said Alayne to Nicholas.

“She inherited it from momma,” he answered complacently. “Mamma always enjoyed the discomfiture of weaker natures.”

Alayne thought — “Smug old man! Everything the family does is right. I feel half-suffocated by them all tonight.” She passed her hand across her forehead.

“Headache, my dear?” inquired Nicholas, solicitously. “No wonder. This weather is appalling.”

Renny returned with Adeline clinging to his arm. He had overheard his uncle’s words and he too gave Alayne a sympathetic look. He said: —

“I quite agree. For my part I’ve never been so affected by weather. I don’t know what is the matter with me.” He sat down, rested an elbow on a knee and his head on his hand.

If the cast-iron stove in the hall had come into the room and announced that the weather was affecting it, Nicholas and Alayne could scarcely have been more surprised. Alayne asked: —

“When did you begin t o feel like this? Does your head ache? Do you think you have a temperature?”

“I just feel seedy. A sort of lassitude.” The word, on his lips, was terrible.

Alayne sprang up, came to him and put her hand on his forehead.