The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (483 page)

As for Sarah, Parry’s distant cousin, it delighted her to think that two Courts were to possess the Leighs’ wealth. She and Paris threw their arms about each other and danced triumphantly round the drawing room at Jalna.

The marriage followed quickly and from then on Paris bore himself with the dignity of a married man, and a warm one at that!

The day before leaving, Wakefield wrote a short letter to Molly and posted it at the railway station.

D
EAR
M
OLLY
—
I cannot leave without saying goodbye to you, yet I cannot bring myself to meet you. I dare not risk the comfort of a single touch from your hand or a word from your mouth. The ocean will part us but it is no wider than the gulf that has already come between us. I pray that you do not feel — no — I don’t pray — I shall never pray again! But I hope from the depths of my heart that you don’t feel as shipwrecked as I do. I think you are steadier and more sane than I. Perhaps some day you will find another man you can love but I do not believe you will find one to love you more deeply than I did — and do. Darling Molly!

W
AKEFIELD

When Wakefield and Paris were gone, Finch found himself the only one of the brothers at home. It was a strange sensation for him to go to Piers’s house and see only Pheasant, Nook, and Philip. Surely at any moment the door would open and Piers would march in. But no, Piers had marched away to the war, in private’s uniform. It was like him to choose that shortest way of having his fling at the enemy. It was strange to go to Jalna and find only the uncles and Alayne and the children, to know that those three strange girls, with whom he had crossed the ocean, were installed in the house where Uncle Ernest and Aunt Harriet, such a short while ago, had had their home. Perhaps strangest of all was the returning to Vaughanlands to find Sarah utterly engrossed by her son, watching the first dawning of his intelligence, his first reaching out to her breast, with a sensuous delight. At times when Finch saw her curl herself about the child like a supple Persian cat about her young, saw the concentrated gaze in her greenish eyes, where no white but only the iris showed, he felt a sardonic amusement. He had become, in the hour of her delivery, no more than the father of her child, the instrument by means of which she had reached her pinnacle of bliss. She had always been indolent but now she was satisfied to recline motionless and watch the child by the hour. She no longer wanted new clothes for herself. Everything was lavished on him. She embroidered his initials, surrounded by wreaths of flowers, on his cot coverings. She bought him a silver porringer lined with gold with his name engraved and the Court and Whiteoak crests emblazoned on either side. She looked on the other seven children of the family as nobodies and paupers compared to him. It was not long before she had offended Meg and Vaughanlands became too small to contain the two of them. Finch was puzzled as to where he should install her, for he was determined to go back to England and do his share of war work or whatever came his way. He had, since his return, given a number of recitals in the border cities of the United States and in Canada. He had given them with less nervous strain than ever before but his heart had never been so little in his work. He felt strangely free and light. He was filled with wonder when he saw Sarah with her child and remembered how she had enchained him in her passion. He had struggled in the chains of her desire, but now he was freed. She was as placid toward him as the water lily toward the pool on which it floats. Except where the child was concerned.

“I pity you,” Meg would exclaim, “when that boy of yours is older! He’s going to be the worst-spoilt child on the face of the earth!”

Alayne solved the difficulty by suggesting that Pheasant should come with her boys to stay at Jalna. She had always been fond of Pheasant and she loved little Nook. Then Sarah could take Pheasant’s house till Piers’s return. The rental would be a godsend to Pheasant.

Everyone fell in with this plan and it was made the easier because Miss Pink had lately opened a small school which Pheasant’s boys, Alayne’s children, and Roma could attend and be comfortably out of the way for the greater part of each day. Indeed it is probable that Miss Pink opened the school with the Whiteoak children in mind, for with these five and a few others from the neighborhood she would be able to carry on. She found these five quite a handful and there were usually several times a day when, with the exception of Nook, they were completely beyond her control. When this happened she simply opened the door and turned them out. Then they would squeeze their small bodies through an opening in the fence and run wildly about the graveyard or watch Noah Binns in awe as he drove his pick into the earth to excavate a new grave.

Archer attended school in two contrasting moods. Either he went with knitted brow and an avid determination to acquire knowledge, which he acquired at a rate that almost frightened Miss Pink (she and Alayne spent hours in discussing his mental endowments), or he declined to go at all. Then he would have to be carried to the car, lying stiff as a poker across the arms of the one who bore him, and that was a bad day for Miss Pink. In the car he would still extend himself stiffly, in whatever room he could make for himself, and at the school it was again necessary to carry him into the classroom. But Miss Pink was always patient with him for she felt that he had a great mind.

Finch had much time to himself in these days. He found pleasure in wandering about the countryside and in the woods, eagerly noting each fragile evidence of spring — the red leaf buds of the maples, the catkins in the ravine, and the joyful release of the stream. Scarcely a day passed when he did not go to the fox farm. He would spend hours with the sisters, finding their company oddly congenial. He was determined to break down Althea’s shyness and counted it a triumph when she would laugh at some story of his boyhood or sit near the piano when he played. Sometimes he stayed to tea; then Molly would return from the town and join the group about the piano.

One day he found Molly there when he arrived. They were in terrible distress. A cablegram had come telling of Christopher’s death. He had been killed in an aeroplane accident while training.

The four sisters did not seem able to take in the full meaning of the news. They were numbed and bewildered by it. But at the sight of Finch, they ran to him and clung about him, weeping. He put his arms about them, tears filling his own eyes, and tried to comfort them. But in the midst of his emotion he was startled by the electric thrill in his nerves when he felt Althea’s slender body inside the circle of his arm. She lay against his breast, sobbing in complete forgetfulness of herself, he found himself pressing his lips to the silken fairness of her hair, calling her Althea, she calling him Finch. He felt shaken and strangely elated.

He had to be away for several days because of a recital and when he returned to the fox farm found Molly there, instead of at work as usual. She met him calmly. She said: —

“I’ve had an offer from Hollywood.”

“You have! But it’s not the first, is it?”

“No. Wake and I had offers when we were in New York. But we didn’t want to go. Now I’m sure it’s the best thing to do. You see, I must earn money and I should make quite a lot. Then too, the English actors out there give benefits for the British Red Cross. I can help England in that way. I want terribly to help. I want to go away from here and try to forget — all that has happened. I want to work hard and make money and forget — if I can.” She held up her head and looked with proud sorrow into Finch’s eyes. “I’ve lost both Christopher and Wakefield. There’s nothing left but work.”

“Will your sisters be all right without you?”

“Quite. Everything is new and wonderful to them here. I want to do the best I can with — my life — to be worthy of Christopher and Wake. They’re both gone but I haven’t lost them. They still live in my heart.”

Going home, Finch thought of Wakefield. There was something selfish, he thought, something self-centred and even cruel in the way Wakefield had behaved toward Molly. He tried to picture what he himself would have done in Wakefield’s place. For one thing, he thought, he would have tried to do more to soften the blow for her. Wakefield had behaved, he began to feel, as though his own suffering were by far the greater. He had gone away without seeing her. He had behaved toward Renny as though Renny had done him a deliberate wrong. Perhaps he was being unjust to Wakefield. He knew in his heart that he had always been jealous of him, of Wake’s position in the family as opposed to his own. “Little play-actor!” he had often said of him in the old days.

Suddenly Finch stood stock-still in the path. He had been struck by the remembrance of the nervous breakdown he had had a few years ago. He knew that he had made the household miserable because of his own wretchedness. Had he ever given a thought to the suffering of those about him? He could not remember having done so. Wake was not inflicting his unhappiness on the family. He was going forth to fight, perhaps to die. One thing was certain. He and Wake were not made of the stuff of Renny and Piers. Nor even of Eden. Even Eden! Why, Eden had borne one blow after another from fate and no one had heard him complain.

Thinking of Eden, he began to run, as though to escape. He ran through the twilight like a long lank ghost, past the lights of Jalna to Piers’s house. Inside the door he hesitated and listened. Sarah was playing an Irish air on her violin. The smell of freshly baked bread came from the kitchen.

LETTERS

S
PRING WAS NAMED
on the calendar but no one could name her in the open. It was April, cold and wet. Four people sat about the fire in the sitting room. It was a shabby but comfortable room and its coziness recommended itself to them, especially in this backward spring. Birch logs burned on the hearth and Nicholas’s favourite chair was drawn close to the blaze. He was cramming tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. Alayne and Ernest had divided the morning paper between them. She had just been reading aloud of the fall of Copenhagen. Pheasant was in the window seat knitting a pullover for Piers. The door opened and Mrs. Wragge brought in the post.

“Letters from England, ’m” she announced, handing them to Alayne. “I’ve one too, from me ’usband. Now we’ll know all the details of the Grand National. It made me ’eart pound just to see the envelope.” She breathed heavily as she left the room.

Ernest leant forward to peer at the addresses.

“Anything for me?”

“No, Uncle Ernest. There are just two. One for Pheasant, from Piers.” She gave it to Pheasant. “And one for me, from Renny.”

“To think,” boomed Nicholas, “that he would win the race! What a triumph! I’d have given a great deal to have been there to see it. Read out the letter, Alayne.”

She opened it with a paperknife and four closely written sheets of notepaper from the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, were disclosed.

“By Jove,” said Nicholas, “that’s a long letter for him.”

“But what news!” exclaimed Ernest.

“Piers’s letter is from Liverpool too,” said Pheasant.

Renny’s letter began “My own darling wife,” but she read it as

D
EAR
A
LAYNE
, —
I was delighted to get your united cablegram of congratulation. It was a good thought to send it because it made me feel how happy you all are about Johnny the Bird’s victory. He is a grand horse and one of the youngest to win the great race. I got hold of Piers and managed to wangle a few days’ leave for him. He’s writing by this same post to send his news. We came to Liverpool — Rags came too — by car, a few days before the race. So I was able to see Johnny the Bird in action before the great moment. I was very glad to see him and it almost seemed that he recognized me. To tell you the truth, I forgot all about the war for a few days, also other troubles. And even now I can’t help being very happy. Johnny the Bird showed himself in fine fettle. I wished I might have ridden him myself but I’ve nothing to complain of in my jockey. I’ve heard these times called decadent by racing men but I never saw a better race or a horse more perfectly handled, I must tell you that in the Grand National the main thing is to get over the fences. No matter how fast a horse is on the level, he’s got to have any amount of stamina to undertake those thirty jumps. When I have more time I shall make you a map of the course with a full description of every jump. There are the thorn fences — five to eight feet high — the gorse hurdles and, of course, the water jumps. As you’ve heard me say many times, Becher’s Brook is the worst. This is a thick thorn fence four feet six inches high with a two-foot six-inch guard rail. On the landing side there is a natural brook nine feet six inches wide and six feet deep. Well, I can only say that Johnny the Bird went over these just like a bird. Once on the level something startled him and he ran suddenly to the left and my heart sank. But he gathered himself together and was rapidly among the leaders. He is an impetuous horse and he encouraged the other horses to cover the distance faster than usual. He did the four miles eight hundred and fifty-six yards in nine minutes fifteen seconds. This was wonderful because he was trained mostly on a soft muddy track and on this day the track was so dry the horses raised a dust. Oh, Alayne, I was terribly glad. It’s a funny thing but when I led him out after the race I suddenly thought of dear old Gran and how proud she would have been.

The prize money will certainly be acceptable. If it were peacetime nothing would satisfy me but to take Johnny the Bird home and clean up every steeplechase in America with him. As it is I think I shall close with an excellent offer made me by a New Yorker, a man I’ve known for years. I’ll tell you all about that in my next.

Piers was simply hilarious and I never saw him —

Alayne stopped abruptly.

Pheasant leaned forward. “Yes?” she said. “Go on. He says he never saw Piers —”

“Gladder,” finished Alayne, lamely.

“Drunker!” shouted Ernest. “And I don’t blame him. I’d have got drunk too.”